XP locking up

[Bob Kitsis]

Have WinXP, 1ghz Athlon, 256 meg ram, GeForce video card
and Soundblaster audio ... and for the most part all is
well.

However, every now and then (as in 3 or 4 times a week)
the computer locks up and cntr/alt/del does nothing ...
only a restart works.

Thought it might be associated with AOL, but finally got
cable modem a week ago, and it's locked up twice since.

Anybody have any ideas? Software includes MS Office 2000,
every XP update that has come from Microsoft, little used
WordPerfect, Sports Car GT (dos game that has always run
fine), some static cursors I like and a screensaver made
with PowerPoint.

Thanks for any and all help.

Bob

 

[Cher]

Could be anything. My problems have been either video conflicts or
pushing the hardware.

Start with verifying you have the latest drivers and BIOS.

Then set everything in BIOS to default. No overclocking, no stretching
the RAM speed, etc.

If that helps, then start resetting each item till you find the
culprit.

If not, pull the sound board and try for a week w/o it.

If not, add 256M of RAM.

If not, reinstall the OS from scratch to get rid of the registry.

good luck.

 

[cimex]

You could run some diagnostics on your machine:

www.memtest86.com (you need a floppy drive)

http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/index.html?dir=dload&location=sware_dl_x86&langx=en&a=
for an advanced diagnostic that tests more than RAM.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm A "torture tester" involving the
computations for finding certain prime numbers.

You can download a disk diagnostic from the website of your hard disk
manufacturer. Since the test may be able to alter stored data, read the
instructions carefully before using.

Alternatively, a good computer repair shop can do these same tests for you,
and more besides (power supplies can be flaky, etc.)