XP locks up with inactivity

[Dario Boronat]

All - I have a 10 year old trusty XP box that has never given me any problems. Recently it started locking up randomly if there is no activity on mouse or keyboard.
Machine can stay up without any problems for ever (tought o test forever, but weeks at least) as long as it is just at the logon XP screen. Once I log on and am in XP, it will work as long as I use it, if I leave it for a few minutes (period of time is not exact, could be 30 seconds or an hour) it will lock up and will not respond, forcing a hard shutdown and re-boot.

Eventually I will have to migrate everything to my W-7 machines, but I'd like to avoid that hassle and keep this old girl going as long as possible.


*ERROR: The adfs service failed to start due to the following error:
The system cannot find the file specified.
I am seeing a ton of warnings in the System Log, but not knowing how to interpret them they mean nothing... below are the ones that appear most:
*ERROR: The device, \Device\Scsi\UlSata1, did not respond within the timeout period.
*ERROR: The Windows Search service terminated with service-specific error 2147749155 (0x80040D23).
*ERROR: The device, \Device\Scsi\UlSata1, did not respond within the timeout period.
*ERROR: The adfs service failed to start due to the following error:
The system cannot find the file specified.
*WARNING: An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Dario

 

[Hawkeye22]

My first guess is the hard drive is failing. When's the last time you ran a chkdsk on it? Open "my computer", right-click on the drive and select "properties". Click on the "tools" tab, then click the "check now" button. If it asks to be run at the next startup, say "yes", click ok, then reboot. You can try with no options checked first, then with "automatically fix ...", and lastly with "scan for and attempt...". Warning, the last option can take a long time to complete depending on the size of your drive.

 

[Dario Boronat]

Since the drive in question is less than 4 months old I had not considered the possibility of a bad drive. It's worth checking and I will run chkdsk tonight.

What makes me wonder though is the fact that while the machine is running just outside the Windows environment... on the Windows logon page, it is completely stable. I can turn it on at 6am and log on remotely from my office using TeamViewer at 2:00 in the afternoon and it's just there waiting for me. Once I log in it inevitably locks up and drops the TeamViewer connection if I leave it alone. So I am getting the impression that there could be something else going on also. Will let you know what chkdsk shows.

Thanks for the assist.