pc freezes

mooky

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Jul 8, 2007, 3:23:35 PM7/8/07

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Seems lately, that my pc freezes on occasion, sometimes upon boot, not
a lot, but ocne in a while. Also a few mins ago I was waking up my pc
from sleep mode, I have XP, and the monitor was flickering and I had
to reboot to get it to stop. That hasn't happened before...there are
times when I am browsing the web or whatever and the PC locks up. not
sure why this is. I do have new memory I put in a several months ago
when I also installed my new hard drive....hope someone can help me
out here.

Malke

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Jul 8, 2007, 3:37:36 PM7/8/07

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Random issues like you are describing are usually caused by faulty
hardware, with RAM being one of the prime suspects. Since you installed
new memory, you should test it. I prefer using Memtest86+ from
www.memtest.org. You could also simply remove the new memory and see if
the machine runs fine without it. Memory must be correct for your
motherboard and if you just added some without doing prior research, you
might have bought the wrong type. Or the new memory could be flaky. It
happens.

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

mooky

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Jul 8, 2007, 4:27:08 PM7/8/07

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On Jul 8, 2:37 pm, Malke <notrea...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> mooky wrote:
> > Seems lately, that my pc freezes on occasion, sometimes upon boot, not
> > a lot, but ocne in a while. Also a few mins ago I was waking up my pc
> > from sleep mode, I have XP, and the monitor was flickering and I had
> > to reboot to get it to stop. That hasn't happened before...there are
> > times when I am browsing the web or whatever and the PC locks up. not
> > sure why this is. I do have new memory I put in a several months ago
> > when I also installed my new hard drive....hope someone can help me
> > out here.
>
> Random issues like you are describing are usually caused by faulty
> hardware, with RAM being one of the prime suspects. Since you installed

> new memory, you should test it. I prefer using Memtest86+ fromwww.memtest.org. You could also simply remove the new memory and see if

> the machine runs fine without it. Memory must be correct for your
> motherboard and if you just added some without doing prior research, you
> might have bought the wrong type. Or the new memory could be flaky. It
> happens.
>
> Malke
> --
> Elephant Boy Computerswww.elephantboycomputers.com
> "Don't Panic!"
> MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

thanks for the info...just started having this happen...doesn't happen
that often, but sucks when it does I can't remove the new memory
because both sticks are new. might try doing a test later..

$Bill

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Jul 9, 2007, 7:58:32 AM7/9/07

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I just had a similar encounter. The monitor and cursor were frozen and
nothing I tried made any difference. Is there something similar to
Ctrl-Alt-Del for XP or a way to force control from whatever if locking
things up? I don't like to do a hardware reset with files open.
I didn't see any IDE activity going on (LED). I don't know if it was
a display adapter lockup or CPU lockup.

There ought to be a way to regain control in the OS and allow you to
kill/deschedule apps one by one till you find the culprit or have it
report on its own which task is locking either the CPU or video and
allow you to kill it.

Any system utilities available that can monitor for this sort of thing
and take control with a hotkey ?