Windows 2K hanging

[Fergus Gibson]

Hello, all. Like so many before me, I turn to you in hopes that someone on
this newsgroup has some insight on stability issue with a Windows 2000
computer.

The computer in question uses a Gigabyte all-in-one motherboard with an
Athlon XP 2500+ processor and copious amounts of RAM. The problem is that
it randomly hangs with no error message and no event log entries. I will
describe the only hang I was present for, but it seems quite typical of the
hangs on this computer.

I selected a menu item in Internet Explorer, the highlight and text remained
on the screen after I made the selection. The computer became slow and
failed to respond properly. Drop-down lists would not drop-down. Clicking
on the Start menu caused it to half fade in and then remain there like a
motionless ghost. CTRL-ALT-DELETE brought up the normal dialogue, but
since drop-down lists were malfunctioning, it was impossible to restart the
computer.

There is no clear pattern to these errors. They occur once or twice a day.

So far I have disabled start applications. I am considering the following
possible solutions:

System File Checker
checking BIOS memory settings (changing writethrough to writeback if
necessary)
repairing W2K with the install disc
reinstalling W2K

This installation is SP4 and was made fresh; it was not an upgrade.

If you have any thoughts on this, please share them. I'm not sure what is
wrong with this computer. Every other W2K installation I've ever done has
been flawless except one, and I eventually concluded that the FIC
motherboard I was using was garbage.

 

[Dan Seur]

This could be anything from loose cables, loose/failing RAM, or a
failing HDD to system/application corruption or some sort of virus.
Your first 2 suggestions are simple and easy and may help. Your last 2
suggestions - significant surgery - may be unnecessary in light of other
things you can look for. One simple further check would be to run the
hard drive manufacturer's disk checker utility - the website will have a
downloadable copy available. Each manufacturer's is unique. If some Win
code in charge of scrolldown has flipped a bit, that could be a problem
in RAM or on the drive pagefile space or wherever that bit lives.

Detail about your system hardware, recent hardware/software changes,
event viewer entries, status reports in Device Manager, and so on would
be most useful. In particular, since background processes can tie up the
system for minutes on occasion, it would be interesting to know what you
observe in Task Manager|Processes, set "always on top" and the processes
listed by CPU usage, when this occurs. While "copious amounts of RAM"
and that sort of specification are pleasant to read, they leave the
struggling analyst dataless in Gaza.

A question: does this "stall" situation ultimately go away by itself?
You might leave the PC alone next time it happens, go get coffee & spend
5 minutes with a crossword, and see. If it does clear up spontaneously,
it may leave some spoor.

Then there's always Safe Mode. If it never happens there, that's an
elephant on your doorstep.

 

[Fergus Gibson]

This could be anything from loose cables, loose/failing RAM, or a
failing HDD to system/application corruption or some sort of virus.

Norton AV with the latest definition file doesn't detect a virus, so that
one is practically ruled out. The others are all possible. The hard disk
is brand new, but that doesn't mean it isn't defective.

One simple further check would be to
run the hard drive manufacturer's disk checker utility - the website
will have a downloadable copy available.

I'll check that, thanks.

Detail about your system hardware, recent hardware/software changes,
event viewer entries, status reports in Device Manager, and so on
would be most useful.

I understand. I'm having to work from memory here because the system is at
my friend's and she's a very busy person. I think I'll be seeing it again
this weekend, and I can try to get more details then.

For now, I can remember the following:

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ CPU
256 MB SDRAM (it might be 128, but I believe it's 256)
Gigabyte all-in-one motherboard
20 GB hard disk (I think it's Maxtor, but I'm not 100% sure anymore)

My friend reported that the instability got worse when Office was installed,
but that's anecdotal and not necessarily reliable information. There are no
errors recorded to the Event viewer (that'd sure make it easier!).

In particular, since background processes can
tie up the system for minutes on occasion, it would be interesting to
know what you observe in Task Manager|Processes, set "always on top"
and the processes listed by CPU usage, when this occurs.

My recollection is that explorer.exe itself starts taking 100% of the
available CPU time.

While
"copious amounts of RAM" and that sort of specification are pleasant
to read, they leave the struggling analyst dataless in Gaza.

I know. It's a fair comment.

A question: does this "stall" situation ultimately go away by itself?
You might leave the PC alone next time it happens, go get coffee &
spend 5 minutes with a crossword, and see. If it does clear up
spontaneously, it may leave some spoor.

I don't know how long my friend has left it. As I understand it, she has
left it much more than 5 minutes with no improvement.

Then there's always Safe Mode. If it never happens there, that's an
elephant on your doorstep.

But have you ever spent a day using a computer in Safe Mode?

 

[Dan Seur]

Hi Fergus - nothing I see in the hardware specs below should make W2k
misbehave as far as I can tell. 128MB/256MB should affect only overall
response speed. I have an elderly W2k machine running here with 64MB RAM
and an AMD 100MHz processor, as a simple archiver on LAN.

I suppose there might be pagefile thrashing, which I don't think I
mentioned. Is the pagefile large enough? Is it optimally placed
somewhere? (If it's a one-hard drive system you don't have much choice,
but ideally it'd be on the leased used controller's least used drive.)

Didn't know you didn't have the machine right there and appreciate your
graceful reaction to my comment about info. Please stay in the thread
until that problem gets solved! Someone here will doubtless spot the
problem if you don't yourself first. There's a pony in there somewhere.

FWIW, I've had apparently frozen W2k (and, earlier, NT4) systems stay
dormant for over 30 minutes, then spring to life but only long enough
for a keystroke or 2. That has turned out to be a condition invisible to
the OS, prolonged hardware-programmed retry cycles in hard drives,
during which the OS sits in a wait state. This sort of thing can leave
no footprints in the OS (I suspect when the particular disk access
involves highpriority system code or the pagefile... Hence my question
about whether the condition ever clears itself, even for a very short
and almost useless moment, and the suggestion about the disk analysis
utility.

 

[Dan Seur]

Oh, and no - I've never had the delightful experience of using safe more
for much more than 5 minutes, and that very rarely. Ugly, ain't it! Best
kept in the medicine cabinet gathering dust.