I give up! Freezing / Lock-ups

I've been at this for a few months and I'm finally throwing the hat in. I just about smashed my system on the floor yesterday. This is my first time putting this out on the web and I'm relatively pretty new to PC building.

Specs: (I'm at work so I'll be as complete as possible)

CASE ANTEC|P-160WF ALUM SLV
MB SOYO|SY-KT600 DRAGON ULTRA PLTN
-w/ SPDIF Audio card
-w/BayOne AVI PLUS 6-in-1 memory flash reader with two USB 2.0
POWERSUPPLY|SOYO RAPTOR SY-PS400w RT
-w/ 3.3v and 5v controller
CPU AMD|3000/400 ATHLON XP BARTON
CPU FAN A/I ZALMAN CNPS7000A-CU
1 Geil Golden Dragon DDRAM 512MB PC-3200
VGA MSI|FX5900XT-VTD128 8X 128MB
HD IDE 80GB|SAMSUNG
HD SATA 160GB|SAMSUNG SP1614C 8MB 72R
DVD+/-RW NEC|ND-2500A
CD read only 52X
Floppy
Windows XP Pro SP1/SP2
Norton AntiVirus
Tune Up 2004

My computer locks up or freezes and it's hard to recreate the problem. The screen will freeze (can't move mouse) and Cntrl-alt-del does nothing. Or, which is more often, the screen will go black with a small block of scribble and the speakers will have a cycle hum coming from them (kinda machine-gun sounding). I have to hit the reset button on the box. This happens randomly- 15 minutes to 2 hours- on IE, Mozilla, Itunes, Desktop. Nothing consistently.

The only way I can really recreate it is to grab the top of the Bar on an open window and move it around as fast as I can. Eventually it will freeze - the The first type listed.

Another way is, If I let I tunes play for a while and come back - It'll lock out with the cycle hum- this happens (not as often) in any program.

I'm on my 6th install of Windows XP (not a copy)(4 of SP1 and 2 of SP2)
-one of the later updates to SP1 did make it crash more but I'm still
crashing in SP2.

I've ran memtest 86 for 7+ hours- No probs
I've done something like Hot CPU tester (Can't Remember)- Seemed quick but Fine
Using Adaware, Norton Antivirus Corp Edition.
I really have very little on the machine with the last build.
Windows Updated (one at a time with a reboot between each one)
Nothing is Oc'd

It sucks because I never get a blue screen or something popping up in the event manager. The machine will just hang and scare the crap out of me. I'm gonna throw it in the shower soon.

Any experience would be greatly appreciated

 

I had this problem with my computer, hey listen it can be the memory RAM, or the CPU, check it. Try changing your RAM and your video card.

 

Ardebaran,

Which did it end up being for you?

 

Well since you used memtest, I would look at the temps next. What are they?

Rick

 

Thanks for your interest!

I'm at work again but I was checking my PC stats out on Everest Home edition last night.

The highest I could get the cpu temp up to would be 51º C - at 100% cpu usage
It averaged around high 40s. The box is a steady 33º.

All voltage rails seem to be adequate with the exception of the 12v running at 11.77 volts.
I don't know if this is adequate or not because I couldn't find any information on this in the past. I can adjust the 3.3 and 5v rails but not sure about the 12v.

I flashed the Bios with the latest update last night and still had problems.

I ran memtest 86 again through the night and it was still chugging this morning.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Your 12v should be ok, if it is within + or - 5% of 12v, so at 11.77v you are within spec. Normally the 12v reads a little lower like that.

Your temps are fine.

If memtest ran all night your ram is fine.

Did you install the chipset drivers, they should be on a cd that came with your board?
Have you tried updating all the drivers for video,sound and any other cards?

Rick

 

Thanks Rick,

The first couple builds (SP1) were with the drivers from the CD with the Mother Board.

The last couple builds I downloaded the most recent drivers from Soyo (MB) and MSI (GC). I burnt these to a CD and then loaded them from there.

I crashed out once while updating to SP2 (from a CD) after the drivers were installed. So , the last build I immediately installed SP2 and then the drivers.

Although, I'm not positive that this may have an effect on the system stability because it seems the system crashes at any random time. But it does install windows smoothly- as far as I can tell.


My device manager has always been clear with the exception of the last build.
I have an "!" on COM Port 2. I Believe that it said it was being used by or couldn't be used for a device. Nothing is plugged into them. I don't think it is relevant to the crashing because the last 5 builds have always been completely clear.

I have also used 2 different XP Pro Install discs.

 

The way you installed sp2 and the drivers should be ok. What psu do you have, make and model? I know you listed it above but I could not find any info on it as listed.

When we talked about votages above and they seem ok there is still the possibility that the psu randomly fluctuates its voltage causing your problem. This is very hard to pinpoint and don't want to jump to conclusions till I see what psu you have and maybe do some tests.

Rick

 

The PSU seemed like a good choice when I was shopping.
Same company as the board...

http://www.soyogroup.com/products/proddesc.php?id=270

 

ok, the 12v measurement, was it on the +12v line or the -12v line?
cause if it was on the +12, thats too low

 

Yea that is a pretty good psu, more on that later because I noticed something else when I was on the Soyo website.

On the soyo site they have the Via 4in1 chipset drivers version 4.53. If you used this version with sp2 there were problems, something to do with apg and freeze ups.

Try going to the VIA web site and downloading version 455vp1 removing 4.53 if thats what you have and installing 455vp1. I think there is more info somewhere on microsofts website about this.

Rick

 

No according to spec the 12v rail can be plus or minus 5% so unless I am mistaken 11.77 is within tolerance.

Rick

 

Zulu-1,

I'll check and see if I can find out what line the 11.77v is coming off of. I'm not sure the utility I used specifies a positive or negative voltage.

Rick,

I'll check the Via 4in1 chipset drivers version but I had the same problem previously in SP1.

I found this 2 page link in ViaArena

http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.cfm?catid=18&threadid=56795&enterthread=y

Seems like there are a lot of other PO'd peoples out there. I can't really sort through out the crap and the good stuff on that post. I'll have to read through it at home.

Any opinions on it???

 

Well from what I can tell most of the post are pretty old and I think maybe Soyo released newer versions of the board and bios updates to solve some problems. With the said older posts maybe at that time they were unaware of the sp2 and 4in1 4.53 driver issues. Most of them are having trouble when in games and yours is other times so I don't know how much help it will be.

I still think I would try the 4in1 455vp1 but if it did it before sp2 then not likely the problem but worth a shot.

Maybe after that try testing the psu? Let me know

Rick

 

yes, test the psu, 11.77 volts is not enough, and that would be a definant cause to instability, you never want the volts to go below 12..

 

OK. I installed the 4in1 driver and it appeared to work pretty solid for a while.
I had a bunch of programs running like never before.

So I tried to make it crash again. It took a bit longer but it locked up with a black screen again. It seemed to happen easier the longer it was on (more frequently). My AGP voltage was at 1.47 and I changed it to 1.57 with no stability changes.

I ran 3dmark05 and it completed without a crash but ran really slow. I never used it before but I assume a score of 952 is pretty bad. It could have been the monitor setting (I believe 1280x1024)- Is this relevant-I don't know.

I ran the Prime 95 torture test overnight for 10 hours
It came up clean
Stopped the test this morning
Surfed the web aggressively (quickly clicking and scrolling while pages were loading) and boom... Black screen lock up.

My specs while torture testing were
CPU temp- 55 c
Case temp- 35 c
12v rail- 11.89
3.3 v rail- 3.3
5v rail- 5.0

I don't know how to put it technically but I believe the problem could be related to how fast the screen is being redrawn and maybe how long the PC has been on. If this is related to the 12v rail/psu and graphics card that could mean something.
But why would 3dmark not crash the system???

I have noticed a dip in the 12v rail while franticly moving a window around the desktop. As low as 12.69v. This exercise has can cause it to crash. I never know the exact voltage of the 12v rail when the crash happens- obviously because the crash takes out the utility.

So...
Stable CPU
Stable Memory
Stable GC ?????
Stable PSU ????
Stable MB ????

So what's next???
Swap out the GC?
Test/swap the PSU
New Mother Board?

Is there a way to increase voltage to the 12v rail?
I can manually control the 3.3v and the 5.5v but I don't know about the 12v.

Thanks for your help guys

 

If prime ran for 10 hours I doubt it is the cpu,mobo,heat related,ram or psu as prime tests all of these. Prime does not check the video card so I suspect it to be the card or driver issue.
Did you ever have a different card and its drivers on the system? If you did the old drivers may not have been uninstalled completely, and you should use a utility such as this Driver cleaner
If you formated and a reinstall this would not apply but I wanted to be sure.

Try using a different driver for the video card and then if that don't work if possible swap the card with another.

Here is a guide to testing the psu if you want to give it a try but again if the computer runs prime for 10 hours the psu should be good cause prime will stress it.

http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/articles/guides/Power_Supply_Guide_1.html

Rick

 

Hey guys,

Thanks for the help. I just thought I would give you guys an update.

I tried 3 different AGP cards and 1 additional PCI Graphics card.

Still crashed hard.

I gave up on the board and called in an RMA request and bought a A7N8X-E Deluxe MB by ASUS. New Egg doesn't even carry the Soyo board anymore. I ate a $50 restocking fee. Talk about painfull.

Anyways, it works super awesome. Haven't had a problem yet.

The funny thing is that the 12v rail on the Soyo was reading 11.76 and it reads 12.16 on the Asus. It's all the same hardware on the PSU except for the MB.

Something was definately wrong with the Motherboard and graphics part of the board. What or how? -I don't know.

Thanks once again

Andre (Louee)

Oh yeah, anyone else have this problem???

 

Would've liked to have been here a month ago... Me same problem... exactly. different equiptment. And I already know I have more money than brains when it comes to building but I like to show off too so no comments on my poor under developed processor or the overkill in everything else from the peanut gallery.... unless its the problem
Abit AT7max2
ATI 8500 AIW
2x 512 Dual channel OCZ 3500 (lat enh)
XP 2200 (hang in there little guy)
2x WD 36GB Raptors (raid 0)
2x Max 160 DiamondMax (raid 0)
1x Max 200 " (which still thinks it is only a 136 GB)
Problem: crashes between 3-5 times a day
sympyoms: draging windows around the desktop like a crazed lunatic, after running (Azureusing or Shareazaing) for a few hours as soon as I do anything ... cold shoulder, freezing seems to happen more frequently when downloading and less frequently when babysitting virtual people. (Did I just admit to playing The Sims?)
Tried: re-thermalpasting processor, replaced with non AGP GC (helped alot but not completely... and who the hell wants a PC with 2d video.) new ram (from 1x512 to 2 brand new dual channel 512's same 3500 ocz), 15 "clean" reloads of windows. 517 reloads from ghost back-up (that might be a conservative guess. It takes 3 minutes to re-install a clean, defragmented copy of ghosted OS and cuts the lockup ups to one every other day for a week or two. did I mention that I have been puting up with this for over two years), Took it in to a technition (yeah right)... you get the picture.

So from reading the rest of this post the only thing I see us having in common is the VIA 4in1 chipset. So before I run off to burn down VIA labratories both for their chipset and the processor they put in my first IBM pc years ago, I though I would ask you guys if I might be missing some crucial piece of information.....

 

With those symptoms, I'd be wondering about the video card and its drivers. I know that intermittent problems can be a b.... to confirm and fix, but you might make sure you have the latest drivers for the card, and test the card in another machine.

I'd also be wondering about a possible IRQ or other similar conflict. You might have to dig around some in your Device Manager if you haven't already.

 

for awhile there I thought it was the video card as well. it seemed that the only direct action I could take to noticeably reduce the freeze was to re-install the drivers. When I disabled the ATI hotkey poller that runs in the background my pc stopped freeezing every hour or less. But as time went on I found other things that affected lock-up frequency. Torrents are a big one.... Nic, AC3 sound, Firewire/usb2.0 and AGP are all on board.... talking directly to the chipset processor. And besides I think the other person that had this problem had a nvida card. It is possible that, because VIA is VIA and not Nvidia or ATI, they didn't have a handle on 8 AGP, a very new tech when I bought my MB. Nvidia was just about to launch their first 8x card. Nvidia and ATI are both in the chipset game now so any board I ever buy henceforth will be represented by either of those two high speed, information courrier masters. I don't know ANYTHING about IRQ's so if you know of any online crash courses on IRQ's please point me in that direction..... But, at this point, I'm not gonna stop loading shells with a VIA monagrams on them into the tank....

 

Yeah, I went through driver versions like mad. Both 4 in 1 and for the GC. I've rebuilt with all the current drivers on a CD. I've used multiple Win XP discs. It was 6 or 7 months of complete frustration. It worked for a period then would lock hard.

I RMA'd my board and bought an A7N8X-E Deluxe MB by ASUS. Over a month and not a single crash. Solid operation with all the same hardware (excluding the MB) and same build.

The Soyo/Via Chipset MB had a definate problem communicating with the AGP/PCI slots. The crashes happened more frequently the longer (or more warmed) up the GC was.

Since I tried 4 different GC I'm asuming that there were some problems on the Soyo MB and the Via chipset. My board was discontinued not long after I bought it. Usually a sign.

Voltage could have been an issue on the MB but the Rails all come out fine on the ASUS

If you need a new MB, Newegg has the asus for $88 with the nvidia chipset.
read the reviews.

"ASUS "A7N8X-E Deluxe" nForce2 Ultra 400 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket A CPU"

I can't really say what your problem is, but mine could only be reproduced by dragging a window all around the screen (thus heating up the GC) and finally a lock. This lock would also happen randemly. The only solution was a new motherboard. I'm positive of that. My power rails are stable. I have a Nvidia card talking to a Nvidia MB. I have no problems now.

Good luck