Win XP help, random freezes (+ tweeking tips)

[Glaucus]

Hmm...  try PIO just for fun.

Somehow I doubt your CPU is overheating, but it's possible some other components are. Video overheating usually causes weird things to appear on your screen and the occasional lockup/crash. Other things could affect the system in a similarly unpredictable manner. Heat is always a concern.

So what's the lockup pattern like? Does it happen within minutes of booting up or only after it's been on for some time. Does it lockup more when being driven hard (ie, playing games) or even at idle? Is there any particular app that's always running when it locksup?

I suppose with a laptop it's not so easy to diagnose and fix hardware problems when you can't remove or disable the actual parts (although you can still use the Device Manager to disable some devices and the BIOS for others). You may end up having to return it to be serviced so that you don't void your warranty. That kinda sucks, but that's one of the many pitfalls of owning a laptop. Good luck!

Btw, what's the make and model number of your laptop? Just curious.

  - Mike

[Waccoon]

I think this is a critical update issue with the Pentium 4.

My dad has had a P4 runing XP service pack 1, for over 6 months and it has worked very well.  In fact, the speed and noise levels of his system encouraged me to trade up my Athlon for a P4 (and now I'm quite sorry).

About a month ago, he started complaining about sudden freezes, where the mouse would lock up for about a second or so.  This happens regularly about every 15 seconds or so for a few minutes, then it would go away.  Recently, within the last few weeks, he started complaining about hard resets.  Not the BSOD, not a lock-up, but a hard, sudden reset, with no hard drive access, like you pushed the reset button.  He has an Asus board with Corsair memory and an Antec power supply.  This is NOT cheap hardware, so I was quite baffled.

After "upgrading" from an Athlon to a P4 2.4, I started having similar problems with Win2K service pack 4.  Sound in Mediaplayer and Goldwave would skip for no reason, I started getting the BSOD frequently (which I didn't get for 2 years with my Athlon).  For the hell of it, I re-installed my system to clean out all the Athlon stuff left behind and did all the WindowsUpdates.  Now my system still crashes occasionally, and now gives me the dreaded 1-minute shutdown notice from TASKMGR.EXE.  I've gotten that one twice in the last week and it's really getting on my nerves.  Memtest86 shows no problem with my memory.  FlashPlayer6 (several revisions) are well known to crash like crazy on the P4, but that's all I know.

I really want to know if this is a P4 issue, or if MS is screwing things up, again.  If this keeps happening, I might just call my P4 a loss and see if my old Athlon 2600+ fares better.

[Glaucus]

Well, I'd love to blame the P4, but there's just so many of those out there I don't think such a problem would be obscure. It's probably a combination of hardware that doesn't work well together. What else does your machine have in common with your fathers? Same mobo perhaps? Are you overclocking or doing any other performance mods? How about your BIOS? Has it been updated? Did you reset it after it was updated?

Luckily, I don't have such problems with my Athlon system, although every now and then my Logitech TrackMan Marble+ stops working and I need to unplug/plug it to make it work again. I think it's the trackman itself though, as I've tried my sister's trackman on my machine and it works fine! Is it just me or is Logitech quality control down the toilet? My Logitech Wingman Extreme 3D also has issues.  :-(

  - Mike

[Waccoon]

Different mobos, no overclocking, updated BIOS.  The only thing I can think of is that my dad isn't terribly knowledgeable about computers, and my system has some server stuff running in the background, namely Apache 2.0 and WinMySQLAdmin.  I just re-installed my system and all my drivers are up to date, except my nVidia drivers, since I hear the newer Detonator drivers are pretty buggy.  Also, my CPU and mobo temps are OK.

Correction:  It's not Taskmgr.exe that's the problem.  The exact error I get for the 1-minute shutdown notice is:

The system process "C:\WINNT\system32\services.exe" terminated unexpectedly with status code 128.  The system will now shut down and restart.

I've gotten that error 3 times today and I'm getting really annoyed.

Logitec seems OK in my book so long as you avoid their bloated drivers.  I mean, their driver pack for a PS/2 wheel mouse for NT4 is over 6 megs.  WTF?!

[Paul_Gadd]

The system process C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\SERVICES.EXE terminated unexpectedly with status code 128. The system will shut down and restart.

This behavior will occur if the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Lanmanserver\Shares registry key contains references to non-shared objects.

To fix this problem:

01. Restart your computer.

02. Press F8 when the Please select the operating system to start message is displayed.

03. Select Safe Mode on the Windows Advanced Options menu.

04. If you have multiple operating systems, select the instance of Windows 2000 that has the damaged registry key.

05. Use Regedit.exe to navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\Shares.

06. Press Export Registry File on the Registry menu.

07. Type Save_Shares into the File name box and press Save so that you have a backup.

08. For every Value Name in the right-hand pane, make sure that the Path= value is a valid, existing, shared object, either printer or folder. If the Path= value is not valid, delete the Value Name for this REG_MULTI_SZ data type.

09. Exit the Registry Editor.

10. Restart your computer normally.

[Waccoon]

@Paul_Gadd:  Thanks!  Unfortunately, I didn't see anything there besides my two CD-ROMs and Zip250 drive, and the paths are correct.

I did realize, though, that I had a Playstation disc in the first CD-ROM, because I was using it with the ePSXe emulator.  Still, I did have this problem last week, before downloading ePSXe.

[Glaucus]

Well, I did a search for you and Paul_Gadd's suggestion seems to be the only real solution out there. Me thinks you may have a hard time tracking this one down. :-(

Just a shot in the dark here, but what anti-virus software are you running?

  - Mike

[DonnyEMU]

You guys aren't even looking in the right place here..

when you see services.exe, you should check on what "services" windows is running. It's probably one of them taking your system down when it crashes. It may have a dependency on another service that isn't running and when it calls it, it crashes in a bad way (you probably installed something that runs all the time like a virus checker or something) that go removed when you uninstalled or a dependent service is not running..

Windows "services" are the equivalent of DAEMONs that run under Unix OSes (and yes for you righteous Amiga owners, you have them too in some programs if you run a web server an ftp server etc. It's just a program that runs all the time in the background)...

It's not windows being bloated.  The very first thing you need to do is go to the event viewer ( log in under safe mode as directed in an earlier post) and view the event log and find out which of them is ERRORing out.. Most likely it's not anything to do with drivers such as your video driver as it's a separate subsystem (did you install the web server after windows update, that could do it)..

The event log is where you need to start.. go to the control panel and look under "adminstrative tools" and the event viewer. Then go to support.microsoft.com and type in the error the event viewer gives you..

-Don

PS if you are using norton anti-virus try updating that using live update as well as the windows update stuff.

If a service is failing it's not a random lock up and the Amiga people slamming windows need a life..

[bloodmoney]

The guy who said to disable hardware devices untill it stops locking up is on the right track. You have tried all the driver stuff so I would guess bios or hardware. You should be able to backup your original bios to a floppy disk. If its hardware, diabling the onboard sound in bios, if possable might work but of course no sound. Another possability is bad sectors or scratches on the hard drive. run a checkdisk on your c: drive with all advanced options and see the results.

[Glaucus]

Another possability is bad sectors or scratches on the hard drive. run a checkdisk on your c: drive with all advanced options and see the results.

Actually, come to think of it, make sure the recovery console is installed (Installing Windows XP Recovery Console) and from the recovery console run chkdsk. I find it does a much better job of fixing things from the recovery console. Worth a shot, especially if you have weird things going on. Worked for me once.

  - Mike

[Waccoon]

Event viewer shows hundreds of red X's trying to access the CD-ROM.  If the Playstation emulator isn't causing that, I guess that's my problem.

Glaucus:  I find it does a much better job of fixing things from the recovery console.

Anything in particular?  Chkdsk from the command line seems to work fine for me, so long as you schedule a disk check on reboot.  The GUI version of chkdsk is useless, and will actually IGNORE any error it can't fix.  Stupid.

Is there any way to save a log when running chkdsk?  Scandisk under Win98 always told you what it fixed, but chkdsk never seems to give you any useful information unless it's related to partitions.

[adz]

Not too sure about the mobile version of the P4 3.06, but I would assume that it would support some form of speed step. Recently I deployed around 40 IBM R40's with the new Pentium M cpu (a P4 that uses less power) and I have noticed similar problems occuring with them. Speedstep slows your cpu down during periods of no/low cpu activity to save power and reduce temperature, what I have noticed is that the cpu slows down too much, to the point that it is like using an XT, and then the speed shoots back up again. You should be able to disable it via BIOS orPower Management. Its probably a long shot, but its all I could think of besides whats already been mentioned.

[bloodline]

mikeymike wrote:

Anyway, I punched what I know into Google, and that said to check for CPU overheating.

Well the P4 3GHz does spout out a LOT of heat, but the usual symptoms of over-heating CPUs are as follows (in order of likeliness):

 - complete hardware lockups (up to and inc. the point of having to pull the power out the back)
 - app crashes
 - spontaneous reboots (sometimes rebooting properly or not)
 - computer doesn't boot full stop :-)

- edit - a 3GHz laptop?  Are you nuts? :-)

I still strongly suspect drivers though.

Well, a Sysinfo shows that it's not overheating. :-D -Edit- my CPU is not the Mobile one it is the desktop one.


The Machine just freezes for about a second and then goes on it's merry way (though the lockups often happen in a cluster, 5 happening in the sace of a minute).
XP has always done this on this Laptop.
I'm going to try Safe Mode tonight and give Linux a quick go and see how they perform.

I personally think it is a dodgy IDE driver. Even though I have the latest driver. PIO mode will be tested (and the other UDMA modes).

3Ghz, I hear you cry! Well I want to be able to run some seriously cycle hungry music programs (soft synths and effects)  all at the same time, when I'm on stage.
 Memo: look for some ASIO drivers...

My Mobo number is the common N251S6 (if anyone has any experinece with these I would be very greatful).

[mikeymike]

my CPU is not the Mobile one it is the desktop one.

In a laptop?!?  :-o  That would probably end up melting components, the keyboard mould particularly!

[bloodline]

mikeymike wrote:

my CPU is not the Mobile one it is the desktop one.

In a laptop?!?  :-o  That would probably end up melting components, the keyboard mould particularly!

It's got a great fan! pumps out heat like some kind of industrial space heater.  :-D

[pjhutch]

Do you have the Indexing Service enabled? This service will index all the files on your HD for fast searches and can slow down HD access.
Disable it via Services.msc or uninstall via Add/Remove Windows Components.