Xp Pro Screen "freezing"

[Steve2UK]

This one has got me stumped. Starting about a week ago, my screen started to freeze or seize up from time to time in a session - all but the mouse pointer which moves around the screen as usual but had no effect on anything touched or when I clicked on it. To all intents and purposes, the screen was like a picture with no "live" elements - this might be the TV forum or the XP Pro Explorer screen.

It mostly happened after the PC was on for 2+ hours but this morning it happened within a few minutes of boot-up. A re-boot fixes it - until it happens again.

If everything (i.e. including mouse pointer) froze, I'd think of maybe a memory issue - but not with this. In any case, I have 2Gb of RAM and 512Mb on the graphics card. As you'll see from the spec below, it's not exactly an under-powered set-up - and the problem occurs when I'm running nothing much more than the browser - or today just Explorer.

Asus P5K-E mobo

Quad 6600 2.4GHz (not O/C'ed)

2Gb RAM

8800GT 512Mb graphics card

Logitech MX700 cordless mouse with Mouseware

XP Pro SP3

Firefox 3

One thing I did notice from this morning's episode (freezing very soon after boot-up): a calendar programme that I use (Remind-Me Please) put a "Post-It" style of task reminder on the screen as part of the boot-up and I could close that - but everything else under it was "dead" to the mouse pointer's touch. Again, a re-boot put everything back to normal.

Any thoughts as to what to look for? If needed, I'll post a list of the various start-up bits and pieces I have on the system. Incidentally, I did scans with Spybot S&D, Nod32 and AdAware 2008. AdAware found a key-logger in an installation of Isobuster I had been trying out, but that's it; I removed the key-logger a few days ago but I still get the "freeze" problem.

Thanks in advance.

[A_Traveller]

Suggest checking the video drivers, the Asustec card version have had a few 'issues'.

Regards

[Guest Reimar]

To first I would check the temperature of the different devices, special: CPU, Chip set, Graphic Card and Memory.

Download the Free version of Everest from HERE and let them run. It will shows all possible temperatures of your running devices.

Also open the Case and if you have, place a Fan in front of the open site to cool down the system.

I supposed that you checked the system Fans already and that they work.

Cheers.

[Steve2UK]

Suggest checking the video drivers, the Asustec card version have had a few 'issues'.

Regards

Good instincts - it is an Asus EN8800GT card. I looked on their forum and found that quite a few users have been having issues with freezes (and colour artifacts etc) - including one who mentioned that the mouse pointer continued to work. As mentioned in my first post, I haven't O/C'ed the mobo and I also haven't changed the default settings on the graphics card - though some users mentioned they found a fix by underclocking the speed from 1,800 to 1,700. Interestingly, nearly all the users had problems when playing demanding games - e.g. Call of Duty, Crysis etc. I have played Call of Duty without a problem - though there is a separate NVIDIA compatibility issue with the original Medieval/Rome Total War games. But my issues are more recent and when running next to nothing - e.g. just Firefox or the XP desktop.

My system was built for me to my specs about two months ago. When I got it, the first thing I did was comb through the drivers to apply the latest updates. The latest NVIDIA graphics driver available from the Asus website was then and is still now 169.21 (Jan 2008) - whereas the NVIDIA site offers 175.16 (May 2008). Would I be better updating to the later NVIDIA generic driver rather than the Asus-specific one?

[Gary A]

I was about to re-install XP Pro because of similar problems. I actually blamed the problems on hardware and re-installing XP Pro would have been a last ditch effort. Instead I downloaded Service Pack 3 and everything has been working so well that it's scary.

[Steve2UK]

To first I would check the temperature of the different devices, special: CPU, Chip set, Graphic Card and Memory.

Download the Free version of Everest from HERE and let them run. It will shows all possible temperatures of your running devices.

Also open the Case and if you have, place a Fan in front of the open site to cool down the system.

I supposed that you checked the system Fans already and that they work.

Cheers.

Thanks for the tip about Everest - I only knew about SiSoft Sandra until now. Here are the readings I got from both:

The "auxiliary" temperature mentioned in the SiSoft figures is obviously way high - but I can't work out what it refers to? I couldn't find a section in Everest that give me more readings than the ones I have shown above - did I miss something?

Certainly, the many fans are all running cleanly and normally and the overall temperature in the case (Lian Li and not crowded - plenty of space around the graphics card) is not high. I also didn't have this problem when we were in the height of the hot season with room temperatures around 38C compared to say 32C now and less at night (Chiang Mai).

By the way, the Quad 6600 comes with a massive fan/heatsink combination - but I had it replaced with an even better Freezer 7 Pro. If heat is an issue now, it will be even more when I install the PCI video-editing card (DVStorm2) sometime soon. Maybe I would add another fan nearby in the case for that?

[Steve2UK]

Further to my last post, I just installed Asus "Smart Doctor" - which tells me that the GPU temperature is 53C with the message "Your VGA card is running OK" I still can't find a route to show the RAM temperature?

And, just before that - I got another freeze...............

Edited May 29, 2008 by Steve2UK

[Guest Reimar]

May you try a 3. party modified driver. Take a look at http://www.guru3d.com and download the latest driver from there.

Some experiences I had in the past was all positive and a much better result than the driver from the manufacturer.

Cheers.

[malcolmswaine]

If you suspect maybe a rogue program is freezing up your machine try turning off the unessential programs that start up with your machine automatically using the MSConfig utility. Click Start --> Run and type msconfig in the tex box and click OK. Click the startup tab.

[Steve2UK]

May you try a 3. party modified driver. Take a look at http://www.guru3d.com and download the latest driver from there.

Some experiences I had in the past was all positive and a much better result than the driver from the manufacturer.

Cheers.

Thanks, Reimar [and A_Traveller earlier] - I have looked at guru3d before and checked again after you mentioned it. I'm really unsure about using a "modified" driver - and guru3d doesn't seem to offer much guidance about which modifications are for what. I downloaded the latest generic driver from the NVIDIA site and have now installed that (after first uninstalling the Asus driver). So far, the system seems stable - but we'll see what happens................

I still don't know which temperature ("auxiliary") SiSoft Sandra is showing (119C) - but I'm reasonably happy from checking physically that most things are getting cooled OK. Or am I still missing something?

BTW, I also discovered what seems to be a better-than-average driver update checker - http://www.radarsync.com. So many of the other sites seem to be just a way of getting you to sign up for about US$30 with driveragent.com etc - when it's fairly easy to just work from the scan list and find them yourself for free.

One other thing that surprised me was the amount of criticism on the Asus forums about poor driver fixes for both Asus mobo's and graphic cards. Until now, I generally regarded Asus boards as being among the most solid and well-supported gear; what I read makes me doubt that now - even allowing that all user forums tend to show mostly problems rather than benefits.

[Steve2UK]

If you suspect maybe a rogue program is freezing up your machine try turning off the unessential programs that start up with your machine automatically using the MSConfig utility. Click Start --> Run and type msconfig in the tex box and click OK. Click the startup tab.

Good point & thanks. I already do that - usually via the start-up manager in Tune-Up 2007 (same thing really). Far too many programmes/utilities etc add themselves to start-up without asking/telling you. As a habit, I always go for "custom install" to try to reduce that - but I still find some sneaking into start-up and have to disable them.

[Steve2UK]

Six hours after installing the new NVIDIA driver and verifying that temperatures seem OK - frozen again........

[Guest Reimar]

I just uploaded a NVidia Bios Editor to the Download of TV: NVIDIA BIOS Editor (NiBiTor) 4.1

May you try this one to adjust your Card.

May you also download the program Whatsrunning from http://www.whatsrunning.net

This utility will show you all programs, services and much other whats running on your computer and you will be able to stop and change setting to your requirement. By an right click on an prog name and than Get Info Online you will get a lot more info about that special program, but you must on the Internet.

May some of this can help you.

[Steve2UK]

I just uploaded a NVidia Bios Editor to the Download of TV: NVIDIA BIOS Editor (NiBiTor) 4.1

May you try this one to adjust your Card.

May you also download the program Whatsrunning from http://www.whatsrunning.net

This utility will show you all programs, services and much other whats running on your computer and you will be able to stop and change setting to your requirement. By an right click on an prog name and than Get Info Online you will get a lot more info about that special program, but you must on the Internet.

May some of this can help you.

Thanks for both the programmes, Reimar. "Whatsrunning" is clearly way better than Task Manager for showing absolutely everything that's running - and I did spot a couple of items that I preferred to get rid of (even though I doubt they had anything to do with my "freeze" problem). I looked at the NVIDIA bios editor, but I couldn't use it - basically because I have no idea what the changes would do and so it seemed more likely that I would cause a whole lot of new problems rather than help to fix the first one. I think maybe RivaTuner is more user-friendly for various tuning/speed changes etc - or Asus' own Smart Doctor 2 which does some of the same things.

I took a risk and flashed the mobo bios to the latest version - and it went without a hitch .

Remembering Gary A's comment about SP3 and because I'm not 100% confident about the SP3 version I got before, I decided to un-install SP3 and update to a fresh one. Interestingly, after re-booting into was by then just XP SP2 - the screen froze again early in the update process. I again re-booted and this time downloaded the full 316Mb distributable SP3 - which then installed very smoothly.

Since then (i.e. today anyway), my system seems to run quicker and no more freezes. We'll see...........

For those in search of at least some guidance as to what to look for in similar circumstances (not just freezes but also conflicts etc), I recommend a couple of free tech support forum sites I found - no offence to Reimar but he doesn't have the time to help with everything from all of us :

http://www.protonic.com

http://www.techguy.org

In my case, I found that the problem could be caused by any one (or more) of a dozen or so factors.

[Gary A]

I really thought I was going to have to replace the motherboard and the processor. Sometimes on booting, it would tell me that I had no keyboard. While running, USB ports would simply quit working and frozen screens that no matter what I clicked on, nothing would happen. Everything is still working fine and actually I'm a little disappointed that I did not get the chance to do a motherboard and processor up grade.

[Steve2UK]

I'm a little disappointed that I did not get the chance to do a motherboard and processor up grade.

Go for it - you know you want to!

[and thanks for giving me the idea to look again at my SP3 installation - if I don't get another freeze, I'm betting it's thanks to that]

[Gary A]

I'm a little disappointed that I did not get the chance to do a motherboard and processor up grade.

Go for it - you know you want to!

[and thanks for giving me the idea to look again at my SP3 installation - if I don't get another freeze, I'm betting it's thanks to that]

I'm a firm believer in if it works, don't fix it.

[Steve2UK]

Sad to say, the saga continues - freezing again. I started to think it might be connected with the power-save screen shut down (I don't use a screen-saver - maybe I should keep the screen active?) so I set it to "never". A few hours later - frozen.

I also had a "corrupt file" error message when I attempted to use my downloaded SP3 distributable file to update a friend's laptop - which made me wonder whether it had really installed properly on my PC. Uninstalled my SP3 yet again and this time ran the XP repair process from the XP Pro SP2 install CD. It stalled four times at the device install stage - stuck on "34 minutes to complete" with just the "much more stable", "most user-friendly" etc promotion statements cycling around endlessly. Finally got it to complete the repair install and then let it update itself from MS website to SP3 again. Left the system running with screen permanently "on" - and it froze about five hours later.

To sum up: temperatures seem OK (except the "auxiliary" temperature of over 100C that Sisoft Sandra reports - and I still don't know what it is); every driver and bios is up to date; apart from the freezing, the system runs very efficiently.

All I can think of now is to work back and remove one by one in reverse order every programme I installed until (maybe) the freezes don't happen. Beyond that............ format and re-install OS etc from scratch? Replace the new Asus EN8800GT?

[Gary A]

I used the Windows update site to install SP3. I think it was only about 36 MB. I use EDGE so since it didn't really take that long, the download must not have been very big. After it installed something that was apparently missing, it started the update and installed it without any glitches at all. I'd be wary of using any site or source other than the Windows Update site.

ADDED - I was a big fan of the add on speed up, clean up, registry tools and other programs most of which I paid for. After using those programs to tweak everything I started having the problems. I decided that I will NOT use anymore of that junk.

Edited June 2, 2008 by Gary A

[Steve2UK]

In case it helps anyone else with a similar issue, I finally identified and fixed the problem. It turned out to be some kind of conflict with the Logitech MX700 cordless mouse I was using - possibly IRQ-related even though that's not supposed to arise after Windows 98. Having tried everything I could think of and most of what others suggested, I had got the freeze occurrences down to an irritating but manageable rate. I did notice that most freezes occurred on boot-up and otherwise often if the PC had been left on a few hours without use when I then started to use the mouse. Updating every conceivable driver including Logitech Mouseware only reduced the number of freezes.

As it happens, the MX700 (a few years old now) started to have charging problems and I bought a replacement - Logitech Cordless Mini. Result: zero freezes in 4 days.