Computer hangs after 10 minutes (1 Viewer)

[Mike St.Louis]

Thanks for the recommendations guys. Am running the memtest program even as we speak. So far after 2 hours there are no reported errors....

All fans are working and I checked the placement of the DIMMS. They are in slot 1 and 2.

If the RAM checks out okay I will try removing everything but the video card and see what happens. Also I will turn off the 'automatic reboot' switch.

Here's my hardware:

* Abit BE6-2 motherboard with latest bios (bios flashed several months ago)

* Voodoo 3 2000 AGP card

* Pentium 3 850 flip chip.

* Abit Slotkett riser card to convert flip chip to slot 1

* 512 MB RAM

* Creative Labs SB Live card

* Haupauge Win TV tuner card

* 3 hard drives - all Maxtor

* zip and floppy drives

* Promise Ultra 100 card (2 7200 rpm drives connected)

* HP CD/RW drive (cd 12)

* Toshiba DVD drive

 

[Richard_s]

If memtest did not fail through test 4 you are all set all of your memory and most likely CPU fine also
What Power supply are you using? Also could be your power supply some do go bad over time. Work fine cool but after they heat up they stop working properly. You have a ton of stuff i that system (great system) but I would guess you need a 400+ watt supply to be reliable (just a guess)
Did you add anything recently like more Hard Drives?
Are you Overclocking?
idea(s)
1)I have manytimes had corrupted system files and just did a repair using the win2k pro CD. This is real easy if your win2k drive is attached to the motherboard controller rather than your promise board. If your win2k drive is on the promise board I can post how to deal with that.
To do a repair just boot off the CD (sometimes you have to set the bios to boot off CD first). Watch the screen there will be a message asking you if you want to boot off the CD then just hit enter. Follow the prompts from there. Use the Repair even if you do not have a recovery disk this will still run just follow what it asks. You will not loose any settings etc.
2) Test your Maxtors using maxtors test program a bad drive can cause the problem you are having. This test software is Powermax V3.04. Great utility. This new vertion can even test the drives on your promise board or at least it should without any difficulty. link to software:
http://www.maxtor.com/Softwaredownload/default.htm

 

[Mike St.Louis]

Memtest has not reported a single error and it was running all night.

I literally replaced the power supply 2 weeks ago. I put in a 300w power supply (the previous one was 250w).

That seemed to fix the original problem of the machine hanging. Now it is rebooting.

I have installed a clean copy of XP so I don't think it is an OS problem.

No new hardware has been added and I am not overclocking.

I wonder if it is a power problem from the outlet? I have the computer on the same outlet as my home theatre system. I have the computer and peripherals on a power strip and the home theatre equipment on its own power strip.

The power strip for my computer is nothing fancy in terms of surge protection.

UPDATE: I have tested all the maxtor drives with the PowerDiag utility. All drives passed the heavy duty test.

 

[Max Leung]

*alarm bells ringing* You have a Voodoo3 2000? Ouch.
Try reseating the cards in your PC...removing the cards, then put them back in again. Could be that a card wasn't seated right and isn't making good contact.
Also, perhaps you're having a software problem. Try disabling your screensaver. Maybe also disable power management (make monitor and hard drives always on for example). Reinstall your sound card driver and your video card driver, which might help.
I resolved a crash problem on my machine by reinstalling my video driver. Strange, but it worked.

 

[Richard_s]

Mike:
I am not that familiar with the VooDoo 3 but as Max stated it could be the video card but more likely the video card driver. I have had many of these issues and just had to find a stable driver. The latest released driver I can find for the Voodoo 3 is this link:
http://www.voodoofiles.com/3202
The driver is quite old 11/28/2000 and it appears they do not have a newer one optimized for Windows XP. In your original post you stated that you were using win2k pro but did a clean install of windows XP. It is possible that you are having a problem with the VooDoo driver and XP. I have had numerous problems with XP and have all my systems back to running win2k pro. My problems were the kind of failures you are describing. Just a sugestion: go back to win2k, install the latest driver in the link above for your video card and make sure you install DirectX8.0 or higher from the microsoft website. Generally win2k drivers will work fine with XP but I have had more problems than I would like particularly with video drivers with XP.
There are some newer drivers for your card at this link but they are Beta (but also not XP optimized):
http://www.reactorcritical.com/download.shtml
Voodoo3Win2000.exe - 1 February, 2001 (download this one if you want to try it)

 

[Mike St.Louis]

Max,

Previously I removed each and every card and then reseated them. Also I disabled the screen saver and any power management settings. I also tried switching to another video card as well as removing the video drivers and rebooting.

All these things were done under Windows 2000.

I usually check for drivers and get updates so I am sure I had the latest Voodoo 2000 driver for Windows 2000 since it is an old card.

When installing XP I just let the installer recognize the hardware and install the necessary drivers.

Do you really think it could be a video driver causing this? The card has worked fine for some time under Windows 2000. I could try getting a newer video card if it will solve the probelm.

What about power fluctuations? I have my HT plugged into one outlet and the PC in the other. Could that be causing problems?

 

[Max Leung]

Not sure about the HT power thing...should be easy to test though, just turn off all your HT components.
I think power line problems is not very likely. Are you running a PC monitor program, that tells you the temperature and voltages of your motherboard and CPU?
If possible, try borrowing a friend's video card. Maybe he'll have a spare Geforce 256 or some other older card (but not a Voodoo!) lying around. With all the specialized hardware you have, I'm not surprised you have problems. Did you try removing every card except the video card, and see if the problem goes away? Then you can slowly reinstall the cards one by one until the problem shows up. The WinTV also makes me suspicious.

 

[Richard_s]

Mike:
I agree with MAX it does not seem like a power problem caused by the HT.
Memtest86 running for hours tells me that there is nothing wrong with your Motherboard, CPU or memory and also if it were a problem with your HT or the outlet power memtest86 would have hung. Memtest is running an old version of LINUX so the system was running just fine the main difference is the drivers and the fact that Windows XP is managing alot more hardware.
My guess is that if the system ran fine before that two things happened. 1) Your win2k became corrupted and if you had done a clean install (maybe you did) after the new supply was put in you would have been fine as long as you first checked and let the Maxtor diagnostic software test and if needed repair your harddrive. 2) XP was a driver nightmare for me on two very different systems all driver problems. So now that you have XP this may have just caused a different problem for you that apears the same.
Again I am guessing but I assume that the two drives on the promise are just data drives and your third drive is you operating system attached to the primary master. If that is the case you can unplug every card but the Video and the system will run. Only programs that you installed to the Promise drives will not work (XP is a pain with hardware configurations changing so it is not a given that XP will run without the other hardware but this is the best way to isolate the problem).
If you have another hard drive even if it is only a 1gig I would put that in as the primary master and install win2k on it with only the video card in the system and of course some software that is giving you trouble running now so you can see if the system is stable. If this works start adding each board to win2k and see how it goes. This way you will find out either which piece of hardware/Driver is the problem or that windows XP is the problem (with your current hardware/drivers).
As far as boards my experience is that in order of problems the top three are:
Video card & their drivers
Sound Cards and their Drivers
Network interface cards and their drivers.
I would also test the maxtors with the test software I listed above. The key tests canbe run without hurting the data just follow the descriptions.
Hang in there

 

[Drew Wimmer]

Mike-

what brand of power supply did you get?

 

[Mike St.Louis]

Drew,

It was a generic power supply from a computer supply store.

----

Last night I unplugged all of the cards and left only the video card in. I started it up a few times and it rebooted after only a few minutes!

I have an old Matrox card that I'll try and see what happens.

 

[Max Leung]

Hmmm, you could be running some hidden program somewhere, that XP didn't flag as being incompatible (and hence did not disable). Try booting in Safe Mode and see if the problem goes away. There could be a virus or spyware or some utility that is kicking in shortly after you hit the desktop that is causing the crash.
You can also run msconfig.exe (from the Run icon in the Start Menu) and peruse the Startup list, and try disabling all of the Startup Items, then boot normally and see if the problem goes away.
(Hey you live in Calgary too...guess this town is so boring when this is all we can talk about. )

 

[Drew Wimmer]

Mike-

simply playing the devil's advocate here, it's possible that since your other PSU was bad it may have damaged some of your other hardware on it's way out, it'd be a good idea to try and mix and match your hardware with hardware you know to be working to try and isolate the problem

 

[Mike St.Louis]

All that I have in the machine right now is the video card, one hard drive and a CD burner. All other cards have been removed.

I put in a different video card and it still rebooted after a few minutes.

So I started it up in Safe mode. Same thing!!

Thinks its time to start looking at a new motherboard.

Max, Calgary will be better when it stops snowing every week!!

 

[Max Leung]

I should move back to Edmonton...the people are more fun, and the weather is PREDICTABLE, just like your computer.
Good luck with your new motherboard...you might be forced to upgrade everything else if they don't sell a P3 compatible motherboard anymore.

 

[Mike St.Louis]

I found one for sale. $125.

I would consider just getting a new motherboard and cpu combo (better future upgrade options) but I just got this p3 last summer and I don't want to abandon it. I don't have any other use for it as my other pc is even older.

Thanks to everyone for their help. I've read every post and tried all the suggestions.

I will update this thread as to my success or failure.

---

Max. Ever since I moved here in October the weather has sucked. Wonder if there is some cosmic balance that I'm upsetting?!

The people here seem nice but everyone I know/met is from Saskatchewan!!

 

[Max Leung]

Heh, I was part of the B.C. refugee wave back in 1999/2000. Everyone I knew back then was from BC.
Now I see Saskatchewan plates all over the place. Man, it's amazing how different they drive. The concept of signalling is foreign to them. Guess that's what happens when your highways go perfectly straight for over 300 km. I suppose you really could see your dog running away for days and days, it's so flat there!
Mike, you realize you're gonna have to reinstall Windows again eh? Might as well clean install XP, uh, after you back up your vital data, of course.

 

[Max Leung]

A bit too late for this, but hey it might help:
Correcting System Hang at Startup

If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can't access the Start button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent Transfer) running in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn't work for me. Here's what you do:
1. Click on Start/Run, type 'msconfig', then click 'OK'.
2. Go to the 'Services' tab, find the 'Background Intelligent Transfer' service, disable it, apply the changes & reboot.

 

[Mike St.Louis]

Update:

My new motherboard appeared to be a dud. My minimal system with a video card and hard drive wouldn't even boot from a floppy. I was so mad I decided to leave it for a few days until I cooled down.

I decided to try some different RAM and see if that enabled it to boot up. If that failed then I was going to return the motherboard.

Lo and behold, new RAM seems to have worked. The computer booted from the floppy and I spent the night reinstalling Windows and all my other hardware.

So right now it seems to be okay. I have changed the power supply, motherboard and RAM. I suspect that a problem with one thing led to problems with others. I am quite surprised about the RAM because the memtest utility said there were 0 errors.

 

[Max Leung]

Cool you got something working!

The RAM could just be incompatible with the new motherboard. Or the BIOS misidentified the RAM and used the wrong clock timings, causing it not to boot. Oh well.