WinXP PC locks up!

HI Folks

I have a WinXP Pro SP3 PC, Dell fairly basic desktop (Vostro 200), about 4 years old, fully updated, running Avast antivirus & Spybot.
Every so often, the PC just locks up solid, not responsive to mouse,
Alt-Ctl-Del or anything else...
Only way out is to pull the mains plug (I know it's not a good idea - but what can you do ?)

Happens most often when running a particular web authoring package
(Netobjects Fusion) - but has also happened (once) with another web authoring package (WYSIWYG).

Tried blowing the muck out of the PC fans etc. - but doesn't seem
to have made any difference. Lifted & reseated the memory.

I looked in the Event Viewer and found a number of Warnings (Event 51, An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation)

Does this mean it's time for a new harddrive (currnet drive is a Hitachi HDP725025GLA380) ? I'm guessing that this message relates to the main drive, I have a usb-connected backup drive also...

I have a spare hard drive and Acronis, and could do a disk clone...
if at all possible I'd rather not do a new install of Windows...

Any comments or suggestions, please ?
Thanks in advance

Adrian

 

The main drive is normally Harddisk0\C so it reads like it would be a secondary or USB connected drive that has the problem. I'd guess that the web authoring software is looking for some data from the USB drive when the lockup happens.

 

Thanks for the reply
........Interesting

The USB devices include a DVD R/W drive and an external hard disk.
The web authoring s/w has no good reason to be talking to either of those.....
when images etc are added to webpages they're copied to a folder on the C: drive

...unless, a while back when I cloned the old (failed!) hard drive, I might have left the new one connected to the second sata port ?
How would I tell ?

Thanks
Adrian

 

Quick question,
If some could answer for me:
What's Event Viewer and where is it located?

 

Adrian, Disk Manager should be of some help here, right-click (My) Computer and choose Manage: see attachment.

The lower right pane of the DiskMan window gives the drives in the order they're listed by Windows but this may not fully reflect the order of the drive letter as that depends on other partitions (or not) on the drives. The first drives listed are internal, USB drives are listed later.



Spock96: same shortcut, in the attachment, Windows logs are higher up the left pane.

 

Ah - thanks for that....

Here's the Computer Management screen (hopefully!)



It seems to show Disk0 as having 2 partitions - the Hidden Dell partition and my C: drive
Disk1 is the USB-connected Seagate Replica drive

The errors were reported as being on Harddisk1 - now does that mean my C: drive (system drive) or the Seagate ?

The System part of the event viewer has been reporting the 51 errors all day - but there weren't any system lock-ups (I wasn't actually using the PC for most of the afternoon)

Any thoughts you might have would be welcome!
Thanks
Adrian

 

Greetings, adrian5750.

Pardon the intrusion, guys - just a quick thought:

Why not pull the Seagate for a while, see if the symptoms change?

 

Hi Caliban

Thanks for joining in.
Well - the seagate's supposed to be doing a nightly backup via Arconis - but I guess it'd do no harm to unplug it.....

There - done it!

I'll keep an eye on the logs and report back!

Thanks
Adrian

 

Well - I unplugged the Seagate backup disk, got a warning "error51 on \Harddisk1\D during a paging operation"

closely followed by a warning 'error 57 from ftdisk, the system failed to flush data to the transaction log'

and then, as I wandered around the System Log in event viewer, a solid system lockup.....

Took the opportunity to reboot into Dell Diagnostics (the 'hold the power button down for 7 seconds' thing worked beautifully - thanks!)
and the diagnostics ran overnight with the following results

SATA quick check OK
Read Test OK
Seek test OK
Smart test OK
Verify Test OK

Acronis is complaining that it can't do its nightly backup - which is to be expected as the usb hard drive is unplugged...

Where should I go from here ?

Thanks
Adrian

 

Another update <g>

I downloaded Hitachi's own disk diagnostics, ran both the 'quick' and 'thorough' disk tests and all passed with flying colours....

I'm beginning to suspect the memory......?

Any thoughts ?
Thanks in advance

Adrian

 

Good morning.

Oh, well - it was worth a shot. Obviously not the Seagate if you're getting the same error 51.

If you're suspecting memory, you could always try reseating/swapping modules, and try the Memtest86+ .iso - let it run for at least 7 passes.

Is this the only symptom? Machine runs well without using the web authoring software?

 

HI Caliban

<g> - probably nothing to do with the Seagate - but, as you say, worth a try!

I've reseated the RAM.
Actually - looking at the Cricial memory website - it detects two slightly different pairs of RAM sticks

Memory Type: 2 x DDR2 PC2-5300, 2 x DDR2 PC2-6400, DDR2 (non-ECC)

so whether that could be significant...??

Yes - the PC runs fine, generally.... it tends to be left 'on' 24/7 -
and it's particularly on the web authoring s/w that I've noticed the lock-ups - but it did fall over last night when viewing the event logs.

My friendly local PC fixit man has offered to drop me off a set of RAM next week - so we might swap those out & see if it makes any difference.
Unfortunately, it's not a repeatable fault, so any 'has that made a difference?' debugging takes a while....

Thanks for your assistance so far
Adrian

 

It's always a good idea to stress and/or test the RAM, but it would seem that if this is a memory problem you'd be seeing it system-wide. The memory mismatch shouldn't be an issue, but stranger things have happened.

Is the machine set to save minidumps? If so, maybe satrow can spot something there.

And, I keep looking back to the 'secondary or USB connected drive' symptom - that's really bothering me for some reason.

 

HI All
OK - friendly local PC support guy called on Sunday - left me some spare RAM.
Installed it, and the Event 51 Warnings were still happening.
Cloned the hard drive - and the Event51's are still happening.

To be fair, I've not had a hard lock-up so far today - so whether the problem's been fixed and the Warning 51's are 'something else' - hard to say. I've not been using the PC much today - so it's not much of a test....

So - if Event Viewer's not lying to me, then the only bit of hardware that's not been changed is the motherboard.....

At the moment I'm thinking new 'barebones' PC and drop the cloned hard disk in....?

Any other thoughts, please ?
TIA
Adrian