XP Pro Freezes

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Running XP Pro on Dell 8200. With no pattern, anytime from shortly after
startup to within 20 minutes, everything freezes. Cntrl+Alt+Del will not
bring up task magr, nor will "enter" or mouse movement, the machine is
locked. Only killing power at the surge protector will turn off main power.
I have checked the obvious, fan is working and dust bunnies are cleaned out
virus scan detects nothing. It has been suggested I may need to upgrade the
BIOS after SP1 and SP2, but I added the SP's over a month ago and the machine
was running fine, this problem just started a couple of days ago. Any help
would be appreciated.
--
Jim Pickett

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Jim, how's the temp of the CPU? Fan running smoothly and clear of dust?
I just had to remove my Heatsink Fan and give it
a good cleaning and replace the Thermal paste on the CPU. Temps had gone
up about twenty degrees. Fine now.
"Jim Pickett" <JimPickett@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E38FE479-8E37-4BD3-A7B6-C66E6BD9E52D@microsoft.com...
> Running XP Pro on Dell 8200. With no pattern, anytime from shortly after
> startup to within 20 minutes, everything freezes. Cntrl+Alt+Del will not
> bring up task magr, nor will "enter" or mouse movement, the machine is
> locked. Only killing power at the surge protector will turn off main
> power.
> I have checked the obvious, fan is working and dust bunnies are cleaned
> out
> virus scan detects nothing. It has been suggested I may need to upgrade
> the
> BIOS after SP1 and SP2, but I added the SP's over a month ago and the
> machine
> was running fine, this problem just started a couple of days ago. Any
> help
> would be appreciated.
> --
> Jim Pickett

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Did not measure exact temp, not sure what it should be anyway, but I did
clean the fan, in fact the entire case inside. Problem still persists, and I
really do not want to reformat the drive and reinstall all the software,
although I have several recommendations to do that. The machine is 3 years
old and the consensus seems to be that a lot of junk has piled up in that
time, eventhough I am religious about running Norton, AdAware, SpyBot, disk
clean and defrag every Sat morning. I did turn off Norton and XP firewall to
see if that may have been conflicting, still froze. Virus scans are
negative, but the machine has seemed to slow a bit since I installed SP1 and
SP2.

"Rich Barry" wrote:

> Jim, how's the temp of the CPU? Fan running smoothly and clear of dust?
> I just had to remove my Heatsink Fan and give it
> a good cleaning and replace the Thermal paste on the CPU. Temps had gone
> up about twenty degrees. Fine now.
> "Jim Pickett" <JimPickett@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:E38FE479-8E37-4BD3-A7B6-C66E6BD9E52D@microsoft.com...
> > Running XP Pro on Dell 8200. With no pattern, anytime from shortly after
> > startup to within 20 minutes, everything freezes. Cntrl+Alt+Del will not
> > bring up task magr, nor will "enter" or mouse movement, the machine is
> > locked. Only killing power at the surge protector will turn off main
> > power.
> > I have checked the obvious, fan is working and dust bunnies are cleaned
> > out
> > virus scan detects nothing. It has been suggested I may need to upgrade
> > the
> > BIOS after SP1 and SP2, but I added the SP's over a month ago and the
> > machine
> > was running fine, this problem just started a couple of days ago. Any
> > help
> > would be appreciated.
> > --
> > Jim Pickett
>
>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Jim Pickett wrote:

> Did not measure exact temp, not sure what it should be anyway, but I did
> clean the fan, in fact the entire case inside. Problem still persists, and I
> really do not want to reformat the drive and reinstall all the software,
> although I have several recommendations to do that. The machine is 3 years
> old and the consensus seems to be that a lot of junk has piled up in that
> time, eventhough I am religious about running Norton, AdAware, SpyBot, disk
> clean and defrag every Sat morning. I did turn off Norton and XP firewall to
> see if that may have been conflicting, still froze. Virus scans are
> negative, but the machine has seemed to slow a bit since I installed SP1 and
> SP2.
>
> "Rich Barry" wrote:
>
>
>> Jim, how's the temp of the CPU? Fan running smoothly and clear of dust?
>>I just had to remove my Heatsink Fan and give it
>> a good cleaning and replace the Thermal paste on the CPU. Temps had gone
>>up about twenty degrees. Fine now.
>>"Jim Pickett" <JimPickett@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>>news:E38FE479-8E37-4BD3-A7B6-C66E6BD9E52D@microsoft.com...
>>
>>>Running XP Pro on Dell 8200. With no pattern, anytime from shortly after
>>>startup to within 20 minutes, everything freezes. Cntrl+Alt+Del will not
>>>bring up task magr, nor will "enter" or mouse movement, the machine is
>>>locked. Only killing power at the surge protector will turn off main
>>>power.
>>>I have checked the obvious, fan is working and dust bunnies are cleaned
>>>out
>>>virus scan detects nothing. It has been suggested I may need to upgrade
>>>the
>>>BIOS after SP1 and SP2, but I added the SP's over a month ago and the
>>>machine
>>>was running fine, this problem just started a couple of days ago. Any
>>>help
>>>would be appreciated.
>>>--
>>>Jim Pickett
>>
>>
>>

That looks like a hardware problem. Could be anything really but I
agree with Rich Barry, check high temperatures first. My P4 2.4 has been
running (a little warmer than I would like) around 42C for a couple of
years. Google for SisSoftware Sandra to check it out. Next suspects are
power supply, hard drive(s) and memory stick(s) in that order. The power
supply is a tougher nut to check but the rest can be done by downloading
free apps. and checking connections.

John