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After an Hour My PC Locks Up

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  • Hardware & Software
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April 6, 2014 9:33:09 PM

Hi all i recently did a fresh install of windows xp on my dell dimension e521 and i also added a new video card and sound card but to get back to my subject after an hour of my computer not being in use my desktop will freeze up but the mouse will still move around where i want it but all items on my screen are non responsive and i will have to do a hard restart. Sometimes it will restart itself and bring me to the boot menu to ask me what i want to boot from. Im thinking i have a bad HDD but i wanted some others input before i change it out just in case thats not the problem. If you post any testing programs can you please leave links because i dont want to go to the wrong site and download any malware/spyware/ransomware . When i did a fresh install of windows i formatted the HDD like 6 times because i tryed to put vista on it before i put xp back on it because it wouldnt take vista when it says on the case that it is vista capable "weird right I know"

My specs are
Dell Dimension E521
Windows XP SP3 Pro
3 gb Ram (2x1gb) and (2x512mb) DDR2
AMD Athlon(tm) 64X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ 2.0 GHz
300gb HDD
Nvidia GeForce 8400GS Low Profile 1gb
Brand New Diamond Extreme Audio Sound Card
305w PSU the one that comes with the dell. When i put my hand back there to check and see if the psu is over heating the air from the psu fan is slightly warm like not hot at all more like baby milk warm or cool luke warm water

ps... This didnt happen until after i reformatted im thinking that the back to back formatting and partitioning of the HDD might have burnt out the HDD but i want to leave it up to the more experienced pc builders and programmers

Thanks to all of you who post responses and does the research. I appreciate all of your time and patience

More about : hour locks

April 6, 2014 10:52:40 PM

Putting my mind back in XP mode, the biggest problems I remember were in the virtual memory area. So, I will begin there. Re- seat the Ram with clean contacts and a blown out slot. When you get a chance run memtest overnight. Check the virtual memory allocation on the hard drive, so that it isn't a problem. If you haven't already done so check the hard drive for bad sectors & errors. How is the hard disk formatted?

With it freezing after an hour of inactivity, it could be coming from several directions. It could be a heat issue. It could be a combination of heat and inadequate power supply on the graphics card. It could be just a failing power supply. It could also be an issue with the power options / sleep mode.

That should give you some ideas on the problem.
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April 6, 2014 11:18:54 PM

well for the ram i put it in about 8 months ago and everything worked fine until i reformatted so i dont think its dirty contacts or slots as for memtest where is the best place to download it? is there a program i can get to see if there is bad sectors on my HDD and where can i find that as for the hard disk formatted i have a hub for HDDs i can plug into another pc via usb i formatted it off of my windows 7 gaming desktop by going into my computer and right clicking the hdd hub icon and clicking format. the hub turns any internal hdd into an external usb hard drive witch i think is really cool. I dont think its anything to do with the power options ive checked in there and i dont have it where the hdd turns off i dont have hibernate or standby enabled either. I just think its really weird that i wasnt having any of this happen until i reformatted my pc also how am i supposed to go about useing memtest all night if my pc freezes after a short while does it run before windows loads in?
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Related resources
April 7, 2014 1:16:31 AM

You can download Memtest86+ V5.01 for XP at this site. Running memtest overnight is FYI (for later on) to eliminate memory errors.

http://www.memtest.org/

You can run Chkdsk.exe to check for disc errors.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265

I was asking whether it was a fat32 or NTFS format. NFTS is recommended for XP. Is there a reason you didn't format the hard drive within Windows XP? Do you have the latest service pack 3 installed? It does sound suspicious that the hard was installed so soon before your problems started. It shouldn't be an issue, but who knows there may be an incompatibility with the WIN 7 format and your version of XP.

Try reformatting and partitioning within XP.

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April 7, 2014 2:00:09 AM

ok i just ran memtest86 for about an hour to an hour an 15 mins before my pc froze i had to run 3 different copies of it because xp limits mem use so i ran 3 of them at 900 mb a piece but all three of them showed no errors. i think its in ntfs im almost positive its in ntfs because ive seen ntfs in xp installation but ive never seen fat32 but i probably looked over it. i did both i formatted it with my external hub off of my windows 7 and then i formatted it during windows xp installation and yes its win xp sp3. i reformatted it about a week and a half ago and these problems didnt start untill i put in my new sound card or at least i didnt notice them until then. i had a sound blaster audigy that burnt out or the drivers wouldnt recognize that the card was in my pc so i believe the card is bad and shortly before i put in my new sound card i had an older bigger graphics card i think it was a ati radeon 1300 pro 256mb graphics card and i replaced it for a much smaller low profile geforce 8400gs 1gb which i didnt check power usage but i assumed it uses way less power because its like 1/3rd the size of the radeon 1300 pro but the geforce does have a tiny fan on it and the much bigger radeon does not so im assuming the low profile card uses just as much or less power than the older bigger crappier radeon card. on the other hand my sb audigy sound card was the same size as my low profile graphics card but my brand new diamond extreme audio sound card is the same height and width as my old ati card now these are all just assumptions but im assuming im using the same power as if i didnt change any hardware out at all or maybe just a tiny bit more but anyways ill get back at you with the hard disk check in a bit
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April 7, 2014 4:46:58 AM

ok so i did a chkdsk and this is what happened on the verifying file data part i think its 4 of 5 at 37% it replaced bad clusters in file 16455 of name \WINDOWS\system32\dllcache\ntkrpamp.exe at 49% completed it froze but i figured maybe it hit a big file so i sat....and i sat...........and i sat.........................and my computer restarted itself and went into the boot thingy asking what i want to boot from again like it does if it sits frozen too long on desktop so i did a hard restart and it went back to chkdsk and it is currently stage 5 of 5 now at 0% but i think its froze again because its been at 0% for about 10 minutes now ugh this is so frustrating
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April 7, 2014 4:50:28 AM

oh and also it is in NTFS It said that in chkdsk its one of the first things it said before it started checking
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April 7, 2014 8:13:22 PM

Did Chkdsk.exe finally make it through? Did you see any improvement?

You mentioned that you now think that the sound card is bad. Have you tried removing it and using the motherboard audio outputs? That would eliminate the sound card as a problem.
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April 7, 2014 9:58:22 PM

no it didnt improve anything. i said i replaced the sound card the old one and the onboard dosnt work but i didnt notice any of this happen untill i installed either my graphics or sound card but anyways yeah it finished because it rebooted and went to desktop when i went to go check but it was froze on desktop by the time i checked on it but for some reason now my pc wont boot windows it will go to the windows loading screen and act like its gona load and when it finishes loading it will go to a black screen with the mouse pointer and then for a split second go to the blue crash screen then reboot and loop all over again. do you think i should take everything out of socket, dust buster the hell out of my pc then do another clean install or does this sound more like a bad install of windows?
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April 7, 2014 10:49:41 PM

Do you have another PSU that you can switch the dell PSU out with? I put your system into a PSU calculator. It came up with around 265 watts for your system. So you didn't have much wattage headroom when the PSU was brand new. I'm sure it probably isn't still putting out 305 watts now.
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April 8, 2014 12:11:28 AM

i do have a couple i think i have a 300 or 305 psu from an old hp vista system where the mobo and hdd went out at the same time i can try that one i just hope the cords will be long enough . ive had experiences where i had a psu from one pc and tried to put it in another and the cord were not long enough i guess the psu was custom built for that pc brand and mobo like the psu in my dell is custom built for dell computers because the cords are just long enough to reach specific points on the mobo but i tried putting it in another pc and it was the wrong fit and the cords were too short
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April 8, 2014 12:14:23 AM

and the psu in my dell says dell on it also
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April 8, 2014 1:23:42 AM

Shame on the rest of you for not looking it up and especially that guy who suggested the graphics card might be a problem (that is not a personal or group attack, I am just pointing out an oversight, as a teacher would), I checked, it has a minimum requirement of 350 watts, problem solved, new psu, even a crappy but reliable 400 watt oem will work, to check download power consumption software that will look at power usage from idle to peak, I don't know enough to recommend any good ones, but they are out there, even if you have a 350 watt 80 plus gold, you are better off going a little higher to be safe, after an hour it probably pushes the power use too high and freezes the system because the graphics, sound card, and hard drive are fighting for power
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April 8, 2014 2:03:36 AM

well if what your saying is true then i need to put back in my old ati radeon x1300pro and take out the geforce 8400 gs low profile and hat should solve it?
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April 8, 2014 2:04:17 AM

or get a new psu
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April 8, 2014 2:25:25 AM

yes, and that should've been tried in the first place, if you have spare compatible ram, pop that in too, when you have a strange PC problem that isn't software, and you've recently changed hardware, then its probably that. I know that you are thinking that it started with the OS change and the reformat, but just try it and see. the glaring fact of the minimum power requirement means to try that, and of course, don't buy a new PSU, if you have one lying around, test it out and see if that helps, if not, test the other graphics card, test other RAM if you have it, if the problem stops, then buy or permanently obtain the proper power supply, a computer repair shop (not the big guys, but local places) may let you try out one they have in-house on the off chance ull ask them to install it, that way you can find out for sure without dropping unnecessary cash

i know what you are thinking, that you've had it for a while, and then you reformat drive and it freezes. What were you doing with it beforehand? Did you game on it or use graphics intensive things? Also, did you add the sound card and graphics at the same time? If not, the sound card probably uses very little power, but can easily push a system over the edge as it tries to power the grpahics, because remember, the PSU gives power to what takes it, there's very little power management, if the comptuer starts up, you do simple things like browse the net, type a document, even wathcing a youtube clip might not be enough, then you start a game, and the graphics needs te power, but its already going to everything else

To everyone else's compliment, the minimum power requirement of that card was hard to find, it wasn't on any retailer's product page, i had to go to the manufacturers website (which of course is just reference board inf
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April 8, 2014 2:28:01 AM

just checked and apparently the other card also requires 350 watt, was that system fully functional? was there no sound card? did you mis-type the wattage of the PSU is your current one 305? that is such a weird number, lol

not that dell or the large manufacturers wouldn't make a PSU that exactly fits the specifications of the build, and not any future needs
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April 8, 2014 3:06:34 AM

also, does it happen even when you start doing intensive things right away?

Start the computer, let it completley load into windows, then open intenseive applications that it should handle, obviously XP, so I'm only expecting Word, and older games, but run a game that is full screen, 3D, if it crashes then that is probably it, if it still runs for that hour or so then stops, it may very well be a software issue, because putting the computer under stress should force it to fail, the fact that it is automatically restarting doesn't usually happen with power issues, because the hard ware just crashes, if windows is deciding that the computer needs to restart then it may know what is wrong

there are usually logs for those sorts of things, but i don;t know enough to find them, maybe someone will come along who does
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April 8, 2014 11:46:17 AM

yeah the thing is my computer freezes when im not doing anything so very little power should be going into any of the internal hardware. when it freezes it does so when i havnt been on it for about an hour the desktop locks up but my mouse still moves so when it freezes up it does so when very little power is being used but that was when i first made this post NOW my pc wont even load windows. it will get to the point to where its loading windows then it will go to a black screen with the mouse pointer and then for a split second it will go to the blue crash screen and restart itself before i can read what the crash log said and for what i use it for it used to be for WoW gaming but now its just for browsing and movies and i did sort of install both the sound card and graphics card in at the same time. first i put in the graphics in the morning and then i put in the sound later that night and no im not miss typing thats what it says DELL 305w psu and says the same thing on my other psu i took out of a burnt mobo and hdd vista system but it dosnt say dell on it i think it says hp but ill give it a try and put my old radeon x1300 pro graphics card back in and see if it does the same thing i think the requirements for that one is 265 psu or so ill post back in a bit to see if that fixed anything
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April 8, 2014 12:29:22 PM

well it seems like putting back in my old graphics card might have fixed it but i havnt let it sit for a couple hours to see if it locks up again. i took everything out of my pc and dust busterd every slot and reseated all of it and put my radeon card back in and it loaded windows just fine ill post again later and let you all know what happened and if the problem is solved
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April 8, 2014 12:37:20 PM

if both cards have the same minimum power requirement, it could be a driver issue; btw, if you just bought any of those components, and not just harvested from old, do not just plop in PSU's from older PCs, they could overload if old or you never know reach full capacity for some strange reason like accidentally opening firefox with 10 youtube HD tabs and then it burns everything

in the meantime for quick testing and assurance, check driver compatibility, reinstall and find latest ones, XP is going out so there may not be ones to find for the future, but now there should be

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April 8, 2014 12:42:51 PM

im not an expert or experienced at this that much at all really, i just read the forums a lot and typically this is the advice u find, more or less with computers if you dont have testing equipment like voltage meters, and programs for memeory and check disk going, u pretty much just check hard ware, power supplyu, and drivers/software compatiblity
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April 8, 2014 1:01:57 PM

no i think you were right before about inadequate power supply the pc is about 8 years old and its a 305w psu so like what the previous guy posting said its old so its not pushing 305 watts anymore probably and like you said jcol87 is that the graphics and sound cards are 350w required to run it. plus the card is plug and play so i dont think it has anything to do with drivers. if one of the drivers was faulty it should still load to desktop as if i didnt download drivers in the first place but im not an expert so i might be wrong
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April 8, 2014 3:16:22 PM

Quote:

Shame on the rest of you for not looking it up and especially that guy who suggested the graphics card might be a problem (that is not a personal or group attack, I am just pointing out an oversight, as a teacher would), I checked, it has a minimum requirement of 350 watts, problem solved, new psu, even a crappy but reliable 400 watt oem will work, to check download power consumption software that will look at power usage from idle to peak, I don't know enough to recommend any good ones, but they are out there, even if you have a 350 watt 80 plus gold, you are better off going a little higher to be safe, after an hour it probably pushes the power use too high and freezes the system because the graphics, sound card, and hard drive are fighting for power
Pic

The OP suggested that it was his graphics card. So go shame yourself (whatever you mean by that).
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April 8, 2014 3:43:56 PM

ok guys simmer down and yes i am the one that suggested it was my graphics card and also to my surprise it was and also by learning from you 2 it was do to inadequate power supply so it was a combination of both psu and graphics and yes its been about 3 hours now and everything is running back to normal since i reinstalled my old less power consuming graphics card nothing has froze up again and it seems to be that the problem has been solved thanks to you 2 posting knowledge into my cranium the problem has been solved
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April 8, 2014 3:58:20 PM

I think it's weird that it works with the other card, despite similar power requirements, and now the OP knows to check it himself, it just looked funny when I read everyone's post all saying it was the graphics and pus and then no one verified, if u read this thread and saw those responses ud think the same thing, lol, and u r more than welcome to read my previous posts as I make a complete donkey of myself asking about compatibility of amd Radeon and sli
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April 8, 2014 4:02:38 PM

And besides power usage calculators that only check hardware specs and don't measure system use r great and the other guy posted one's that actively measure wattage and all but a pus that is 8 yrs old 305 watts is probably like 60 % efficient, and clearly not gonna cut it even if measured use is within the range the mediocre hardware can reach
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April 9, 2014 11:08:42 AM

yeah it might say that the sound card has a requirement of a 350w psu but i really dont think it needs that much i mean think of it a sound card needing as much power as a graphics card i dont think so and thats why it works in my pc now is because i dont have a sound card and graphics card hogging power from one another to the point of locking up my pc or not loading windows at all like it was when i had a sound card and graphics card needing the same amount of power
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April 9, 2014 11:24:04 AM

You can find decent psu for pretty cheap, it might not Be efficient but even 500w at 70% is 350
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April 9, 2014 11:37:09 AM

nah its fine i just wanted an upgrade for my browsing/movies pc but cant cuz of the psu i have a gameing desktop with 550w psu in it and a 2gb evga geforce gtx 750 ti ftw w/atx in and 8gb of gaming ram in it with a 3.9 gh 6 core the machine is a gameing beast i love it but yeah i just wanted a little better graphics card in my browsing destop but i guess the old card is just fine in it for its purpose
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April 9, 2014 11:50:07 AM

You're lucky it didn't burn out and fry the components
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