Computer problem

[Nardz]

Anyone who can help me with this i would be very grateful.

I have a AMD Athlon 2000XP, 512mb, 40GB HD which is 3/4 full running XP and so on...

Now the problem... the thing always freezes during intensive applications.

Freezes while i encode DVD's using DVD Shrink
Freezes while playing CM 03/04 (pretty much the only game on PC that i play)
Freezes sometimes even while viewing media in windows media player.

Annoys the crap out of me. I have formatted my PC, reinstalled windows, but to no avail, still the same problem.

Anyone had a similiar problem, or may have a solution???

I'm getting withdrawel symptons without being able to utilise my DVD Burner

 

[feher]

possibly over heating, you might want to buy a case fan if you don't have one, how long has this being happening? does it happen all the time? or just during certain periods e.g. hot days? The only other thing that i can think of is faulty ram, if you have 2 sticks try running with one, to see if doens't freeze.

 

[Nardz]

possibly over heating, you might want to buy a case fan if you don't have one, how long has this being happening? does it happen all the time? or just during certain periods e.g. hot days? The only other thing that i can think of is faulty ram, if you have 2 sticks try running with one, to see if doens't freeze.

Its been happening for a while, on and off.

Ive had 2 sticks of ram, for the last year or so, and it never caused an issue.

I use to have a AMD athlon 1000, and the fan on that went. Chip was still working but was probably half fried so i decided to get the fan/heatsink/cpu combo.

I've suspected that it might have something to do with heat, i tried to monitor CPU heat but couldnt really notice any relationship between it, and the freezing.

 

[feher]

i see the first two as being processor hungry, so it could be extra generated heat, if you don't mind opening the computer i would take one stick of ram out and see what happens, then do it with the other ram. RAM can just die like that, otherwise its really hard to say, it could be the hard drive, motherboard, video card, power supply the list goes on, very hard to troubleshoot. It could even be driver problems such as your video card not having the right drivers installed

 

[Nardz]

i see the first two as being processor hungry, so it could be extra generated heat, if you don't mind opening the computer i would take one stick of ram out and see what happens, then do it with the other ram. RAM can just die like that, otherwise its really hard to say, it could be the hard drive, motherboard, video card, power supply the list goes on, very hard to troubleshoot. It could even be driver problems such as your video card not having the right drivers installed

i can't really see the video card being an issue.... I could be wrong, but encoding the dvd is cpu/ram intensive, but wouldnt put strain on the video card i dont think. (encoding without a preview)

i'll have to try the ram thing....

The one thing i was possibly thinking (as a last resort hoping this is a software problem)


could directx have anything to do with it? or directx pretty much a non issue in windows XP?? is there a latest version do download somewhere??'

and are there any sort of diagnostic programs that would help me pin point the problem??

 

[jim boy]

It certainly isn't a heat problem. I can tell you from experience with a heat problem, also running an AMD, that there is only one way performance hit when you have a heat problem, and that is your PC stops dead.

To be honest, the first thing that strikes me with the problems you are having is your DVD drive. Everything you've mentioned as being a problem seems to be when you are using your DVD drive. And if you got the DVD drive new along at the same time as the processor (say 2-3 years ago), then I would suspect that the drive is starting to fail and giving you erratic problems, which for a drive of that age, isn't unusual. This has also happened to me a couple of times.

Other things to be wary of are any codecs you have loaded.

 

[mighty mick]

i no computer expert so this is out of left field, but with a 3/4 full hd could it be a virtual memory problem?

with the leftover space in the hard drive having to work to hard?

do you defrag the hd? diskeeper is a good one for that.

it would give the hd back somw space and speed.

 

[googem]

Is your PC virus free. Never overlook viruses.

 

[feher]

i can't really see the video card being an issue.... I could be wrong, but encoding the dvd is cpu/ram intensive, but wouldnt put strain on the video card i dont think. (encoding without a preview)

i wouldn't rule it out, i can remember having an old computer, if you use the default video drivers it would freeze up every time you went to the dos screen via windows, but as soon as the driver was updated, it wouldn't freeze up anymore.

one other thing are you sure its freezing up? how long do you leave it before you know for sure its frozen? have tried pressing ctrl-alt-del during this period?

 

[Nardz]

It certainly isn't a heat problem. I can tell you from experience with a heat problem, also running an AMD, that there is only one way performance hit when you have a heat problem, and that is your PC stops dead.

To be honest, the first thing that strikes me with the problems you are having is your DVD drive. Everything you've mentioned as being a problem seems to be when you are using your DVD drive. And if you got the DVD drive new along at the same time as the processor (say 2-3 years ago), then I would suspect that the drive is starting to fail and giving you erratic problems, which for a drive of that age, isn't unusual. This has also happened to me a couple of times.

Other things to be wary of are any codecs you have loaded.

the dvd drive isnt in use while playing CM 03/04
i may.. or may not have it copied onto my hard drive :

 

[Nardz]

i wouldn't rule it out, i can remember having an old computer, if you use the default video drivers it would freeze up every time you went to the dos screen via windows, but as soon as the driver was updated, it wouldn't freeze up anymore.

one other thing are you sure its freezing up? how long do you leave it before you know for sure its frozen? have tried pressing ctrl-alt-del during this period?

na its defitly frozen up. Sometimes id leave a dvd encoding over night, only to wake up finding it still on 10% (usually takes about 40 minutes to encode 100%)

and when CM freezes, it just hangs. Even when im playing in windowed mode, the whole PC freezes and not just that window which i find quite strange. Usually a program stops responding u can just kill it with windows but windows goes as well.

 

[Nardz]

i no computer expert so this is out of left field, but with a 3/4 full hd could it be a virtual memory problem?

with the leftover space in the hard drive having to work to hard?

do you defrag the hd? diskeeper is a good one for that.

it would give the hd back somw space and speed.

Is your PC virus free. Never overlook viruses.

i dont think either of these would be an issue.

I have thought of the virtual memory possibilty. Origionally my hard drive (40GB) was partitioned into 3 (10,20,10), and i also formatted this hard drive and installed a fresh copy of windows over the weekend, but the problem is still there just as before.


I now have merged them all back into a 40GB C:\, so its got all the virtual memory space in the world.

For the same reason i dont think a virus is the issue, I have formatted the PC many times since

 

[mighty mick]

Anyone who can help me with this i would be very grateful.

I have a AMD Athlon 2000XP, 512mb, 40GB HD which is 3/4 full running XP and so on...

Now the problem... the thing always freezes during intensive applications.

Freezes while i encode DVD's using DVD Shrink
Freezes while playing CM 03/04 (pretty much the only game on PC that i play)
Freezes sometimes even while viewing media in windows media player.

ok maybe its time to up the system a bit,
what speed hard drive RPM? is it serial or ata?
up the processor an AMD 2000 runs at about 1.5 to 1.8 ghz pentium equivalent.
More ram always helps.
what was the video card again?

sounds like drastic action but maybe your computer needs have grown but the computer has reached its limit.

if you got it built get it serviced, if its a brand name ..pray!

 

[Nardz]

Anyone who can help me with this i would be very grateful.

I have a AMD Athlon 2000XP, 512mb, 40GB HD which is 3/4 full running XP and so on...

Now the problem... the thing always freezes during intensive applications.

Freezes while i encode DVD's using DVD Shrink
Freezes while playing CM 03/04 (pretty much the only game on PC that i play)
Freezes sometimes even while viewing media in windows media player.

ok maybe its time to up the system a bit,
what speed hard drive RPM? is it serial or ata?
up the processor an AMD 2000 runs at about 1.5 to 1.8 ghz pentium equivalent.
More ram always helps.
what was the video card again?

sounds like drastic action but maybe your computer needs have grown but the computer has reached its limit.

if you got it built get it serviced, if its a brand name ..pray!

I dont think the system really needs to be upped, it runs fine when its not freezing. and its never running low on system resources.

video card is a 64MB GeForce 2

and na its not brand name, however sometimes i wish it was at least you know there wouldnt be any compatibility issues between any of the hardware....

 

[mighty mick]

I dont think the system really needs to be upped, it runs fine when its not freezing. and its never running low on system resources.

video card is a 64MB GeForce 2

and na its not brand name, however sometimes i wish it was at least you know there wouldnt be any compatibility issues between any of the hardware....

you dont want a brand name service in some cases is crap.

hows the power supply?

only offering ideas

 

[KingyOrTheKing]

I would say a virus. There are viruses that take 99% of CPU time making running other apps impossible. To check you can alt+ctrl+del and check the processes tab. If theres a process other than ones you are running that are taking a majority of CPU time then you most likely have a virus.

 

[Nardz]

I would say a virus. There are viruses that take 99% of CPU time making running other apps impossible. To check you can alt+ctrl+del and check the processes tab. If theres a process other than ones you are running that are taking a majority of CPU time then you most likely have a virus.

at the moment my CP usage is at 1-3%

the way it happens, the computer would be running fine, then BANG it would just freeze

 

[Nardz]

you dont want a brand name service in some cases is crap.

hows the power supply?

only offering ideas

never really considered the power supply to be an issue....

and thats fine ideas is what i need, its driving me crazy...

im downloading directx 9.0c as we speak, hopefully that helps.

 

[KingyOrTheKing]

Umm. I remember when I used to overclock my computer and I overclocked the FSB which is the sh_it way to do it. I would use DVD shrink and the computer would not just freeze but shut down. One extra coaster, so I decided to go to default

 

[KingyOrTheKing]

So if you are overclocking at all, that could be the problem esp. FSB overclocking.

 

[Nardz]

not overclocking.
but one issue that does spring to mind, my computer in windows xp shows that the chip is an AMD Athlon 2000xp, but underneath that it says 1.66GHz

it also says 1.66GHz when the machine is powering up

could this have anything to do with it???

when i installed the cpu i played around with bios couldnt fix that at all....

for the record i have a K7S5A mother board if that means anything to anyone, click the link for the specs and tell me if u see where there may be an issue?

 

[feher]

not overclocking.
but one issue that does spring to mind, my computer in windows xp shows that the chip is an AMD Athlon 2000xp, but underneath that it says 1.66GHz

it also says 1.66GHz when the machine is powering up

that sounds about right, i don't know how to do the conversions, but it's about right.

 

[Nardz]

When is a cpu too hot?????

i installed a motherboard monitor. I notice in normal usage its around 40 degrees celsius for the CPU, and 25 for the case


i then started encoding a dvd using dvd shrink and sat around waiting for it to freeze (and freeze it did)

i noticed the case temperature went up to 26, and the CPU temperature went up to 44

could this possibly be the cause of the problem????
how hot does a CPU have to get for there to be a problem????

 

[feher]

When is a cpu too hot?????

i installed a motherboard monitor. I notice in normal usage its around 40 degrees celsius for the CPU, and 25 for the case

thats seems fine to me

i then started encoding a dvd using dvd shrink and sat around waiting for it to freeze (and freeze it did)

i noticed the case temperature went up to 26, and the CPU temperature went up to 44

the cpu needs to be accessed more often and work harder, their for generates more heat, but it still seems fine to me

could this possibly be the cause of the problem????
how hot does a CPU have to get for there to be a problem????

in your bios you should have an option to automatically turn of your pc if it gets too hot, but i think the temp's you have is fine, you might want to check out amd site and see what you can find on temp.

here are some amd xp utilities not sure if any will help:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_2364,00.html

 

[feher]

I have a amd 2600xp, and when i first got it, i constantly had games crash back to windows, so i had to either lower the fsb or the speed of the ram,

right now i think i have my ram running at 266Mhz (should be able to do 400Mhz) and FSB at 333Mhz (which it should be at, and its not overclocked) and i don't get crashes any more, the other options i had was to have fsb at 266 and ram at 400 or 333. to this day i still don't know what is wrong, i have tried different ram, power supply, but the cpu i think is fine, anyway ...

so what you might want to try is setting your fsb to 266 and your ram to 133 in the bios and see what happen's its not ideal but worth a go