XP freezes on rapid cursor movements under heavy cpu load

[nirwana]

Hi,
when I "work too fast" under heavy system load, i.e. I switch between
task windows, open and close browser tabs and move the mouse cursor
rapidly across the screen I experience random system lockups (system
hangs or system freezes). I can only press the power switch and
restart the system.

It happens about once in 48 hours but it happens out of a sudden, I've
never found an error message close to the crash time in the logfiles.

I am running XP-pro SP2 on a Mobile AMD Athlon XP-M 2800+ Fujitsu
Amilo K 7600 Laptop PC with 1GB of RAM

Video: KN266 integrated S3 Prosavage 32 Mbyte shared memory, true
color
Audio: 18-bit stereo audio (AC97)
Pointing device: Synaptics Touchpad, SynTPLpr.exe running but not
SynTPEnh
a D-Link Airplus DWL-G650+ wireles adapter sits in the Cardbus slot
(PC-Card, PCMCIA)

Hardware Manager shows a clean tree without warnings.

My web browser is Firefox 2.0.0.6. I always have at least 2 dozen
browser tabs open so Firefox consumes up to 350-400 MB of my 1000 MB
RAM.

I tried to run msinfo but I get the Windows Help window.

I have changed Windows' performance options to give background
services more CPU time and to give programs more memory. I feel that
helped a little. But Firefox appears a bit lame now and the freezes
still occur.


What else should I try?

Best regards,
Dieter

 

[R. McCarty]

Ever run any type of Registry Cleaner on the PC ? It's MSInfo32.Exe
that you should be invoking. I wouldn't toggle the enable bit for
"LargeSystemCache" on a notebook PC. Hardware listing in Device
Manager won't show 100%, unless you add a System Environment
Variable "DevMgr_Show_NonPresent_Devices" and set it's value
= 1 and then tic/check "Show Hidden Devices" in Device Manager.

I'd concentrate on the Synaptics TP driver as the cause. Sometimes
you can use the "Generic" latest driver from Synaptics' website instead
of the one provided by your OEM. The mouse pointer issue might
also be related to your Video driver so a check for the latest one is
also a good idea.

The Synaptics generic OS drivers found at:
http://www.synaptics.com/support/drive.cfm

 

[Guest]

Hi,
when I "work too fast" under heavy system load, i.e. I switch between
task windows, open and close browser tabs and move the mouse cursor
rapidly across the screen I experience random system lockups (system
hangs or system freezes). I can only press the power switch and
restart the system.

It happens about once in 48 hours but it happens out of a sudden, I've
never found an error message close to the crash time in the logfiles.

I am running XP-pro SP2 on a Mobile AMD Athlon XP-M 2800+ Fujitsu
Amilo K 7600 Laptop PC with 1GB of RAM

Video: KN266 integrated S3 Prosavage 32 Mbyte shared memory, true
color
Audio: 18-bit stereo audio (AC97)
Pointing device: Synaptics Touchpad, SynTPLpr.exe running but not
SynTPEnh
a D-Link Airplus DWL-G650+ wireles adapter sits in the Cardbus slot
(PC-Card, PCMCIA)

Hardware Manager shows a clean tree without warnings.

My web browser is Firefox 2.0.0.6. I always have at least 2 dozen
browser tabs open so Firefox consumes up to 350-400 MB of my 1000 MB
RAM.

I tried to run msinfo but I get the Windows Help window.

I have changed Windows' performance options to give background
services more CPU time and to give programs more memory. I feel that
helped a little. But Firefox appears a bit lame now and the freezes
still occur.


What else should I try?

Best regards,
Dieter

This exact symptom happened to my Sony laptop, which also was running a
D-link wireless card(DWLG-630). It always happened when i was online. So
about
4 months ago i got a ethernet cable and plugged it into my Actiontec
Modem/router and used that instead of the wireless card and i have eleminated
lockups. Run an ethernet setup for awhile and see if that makes any
difference. When you installed your card did it use unsigned drivers like
mine did? . You can try using a different wireless utility to configure the
card. Use WZC utility instead of the D-link utility or vice versa. My lockups
were somehow related to my wireless card. Good luck

 

[Bill Sharpe]

Hi,
when I "work too fast" under heavy system load, i.e. I switch between
task windows, open and close browser tabs and move the mouse cursor
rapidly across the screen I experience random system lockups (system
hangs or system freezes). I can only press the power switch and
restart the system.

It happens about once in 48 hours but it happens out of a sudden, I've
never found an error message close to the crash time in the logfiles.

I am running XP-pro SP2 on a Mobile AMD Athlon XP-M 2800+ Fujitsu
Amilo K 7600 Laptop PC with 1GB of RAM

Video: KN266 integrated S3 Prosavage 32 Mbyte shared memory, true
color
Audio: 18-bit stereo audio (AC97)
Pointing device: Synaptics Touchpad, SynTPLpr.exe running but not
SynTPEnh
a D-Link Airplus DWL-G650+ wireles adapter sits in the Cardbus slot
(PC-Card, PCMCIA)

Hardware Manager shows a clean tree without warnings.

My web browser is Firefox 2.0.0.6. I always have at least 2 dozen
browser tabs open so Firefox consumes up to 350-400 MB of my 1000 MB
RAM.

I tried to run msinfo but I get the Windows Help window.

I have changed Windows' performance options to give background
services more CPU time and to give programs more memory. I feel that
helped a little. But Firefox appears a bit lame now and the freezes
still occur.


What else should I try?

Best regards,
Dieter

If you close some of those 24 browser tabs does the problem go away?

Bill

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

My web browser is Firefox 2.0.0.6. I always have at least 2 dozen
browser tabs open so Firefox consumes up to 350-400 MB of my 1000 MB
RAM.

Like you really need that many open windows, huh???

I stopped using Firefox MONTHS ago... it kept consuming more and more
RAM, the more I used it - no matter how few open windows there were.

Memory leak... eventually it would freeze my computer.

No such problems with IE7.

 

[nirwana]

Ever run any type of Registry Cleaner on the PC ?

....sure, I run Registry Mechanic every once in a while.

It's MSInfo32.Exe

Yes that's what I started. It results in starting the Help and Support
Center.

I wouldn't toggle the enable bit for "LargeSystemCache" on a notebook PC.

Perhaps you're right. I wrote I gave programs more memory so the cache
size should be lower now. My "LargeSystemCache" setting was a relict
of times of slower HDDs and smaller memory.

..."Show Hidden Devices" in Device Manager.

....only shows my USB scanner is not connected.

...the "Generic" latest driver from Synaptics' website...

Version 8.3.4

...the one provided by your OEM.

Version 7.8.1

I always thought I had the newest one. Thanks for pointing me to it!
I'll install it as soon as I've posted this reply.

The mouse pointer issue might also be related to your Video driver so a check for the latest one is
also a good idea.

Mine is S3 Prosavage DDR KN266 6.14.10.12 of May 2003. I found a newer
one at VIA, I'll install it immediately after hitting the Send key.

Another interesting hint I found in this forum is to lower the video
load by setting the graphics acceleration slider one tick to the left.
I'll try that too and I promise I'll report the results here.

BTW, I tried a driver update for the D-Link Airplus DWL-G650+ wireles
adapter but it wouldn't install correctly. I can only install the one
from the CD that came with the Airplus. I guess I didn't dig deep
enough into the problem. Maybe I could replace the driver used by the
setup program and make a new install CD image.

Many thanks to all of you guys in this great forum!

ps
I really love Firefox, especially for it's plugins and I got so much
used to tabbed browsing (e.g. I save and restore whole browsing
sessions etc.). And I need all the lot of open tabs for my work (or
say most of them). If I use IE it's mostly the FastBrowser, a tabbed
overhead to IE.

 

[nirwana]

Interim report:

I tried to update the graphics driver. VIA suggests to use the
Touchstone DriverAgent. I allowed the program to download install but
when I clicked o "Scan Now" the PC just froze like described before.
This is repeatable but I don't like to demonstrate it.

What does the DriverAgent do? Scan the registry? Scan the PCI-Bus?

What should I do, report this to Touchstone?

My graphics adapter is the S3 Pro SavageDDR integrated graphics KN266.
I managed to get the driver S3G_ProSavageDDR_winxp_v139433.exe without
DriverAgent but I'm unable to install it. Message during install
process (translated):

--------------------------- Error
in 16-Bit-Windows program ---------------------------

File "C:\S3Graphics\ProSavageDDR_wxp_139433\SETUP.EXE" (or component)
not found. Check if path and file name are correct and if all required
library files are available.


--------------------------- OK ---------------------------

Any ideas?

 

[nirwana]

Addendum:

I eventually managed to run the 16-bit setup.exe by truncating the
folder names created by the Winzip executable to 8 characters and then
manually starting setup.

Now with the new driver DriverAgent gets a bit further:

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 36%
Scanning hardware

Start time: 2007.08.29 21:07:26
Plugin version: 2.2007.08.23, DA-NP
Scanning smbios --> Done
Scanning chipsets --> Done

....frozen again!