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General discussion

Troubleshooting hanging

by wanness May 17, 2005 11:52PM PDT

I am running a PIII-500, 256 ram,two HD's, (approximately 50% utilized), 56k modem, win XP Pro. I have been having problems recently with what I think is (hanging). I use AVG, ZA, Spybot, Adware personal, and Microsoft Anti spyware. In researching this problem, I decided to look into event viewer, and I got quite a surprise. I see many, many errors, (event 7, "source", disk). In the middle of a long line of errors will be an entry, "Remote access info" number 20158. I see so much of this, but I don't understand how to interpret this information, or even if it is applicable. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Discussion is locked

13 Posts
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Have you tried the usual cleanup?
by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator May 18, 2005 12:17AM PDT

Such as removing the cover and compressed air on the heatsinks? Many don't do the yearly maintenance.

Bob

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Usual cleanup
by wanness May 19, 2005 1:27AM PDT

Bob, yes, I usually do that maintenance twice a year. I went to PCPitstop, ran their program, installed the PC booster, and the system is worse than ever. thanks, Bill

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Have you gone back to before the Booster?
by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator May 19, 2005 1:34AM PDT
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Hanging
by wanness May 19, 2005 3:16AM PDT

Bob, I use those tools on a regular basis. This morning my unit was so bad that I finally got it to boot into safe mode. In attempting to run all of these programs in safe mode, the Spybot came up clean, Lavasoft scans 41,532 files and stops responding, I have tried it three times with the same result. I will keep trying the rest of your suggestions. Bill

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So far it starting to sound like aging parts.
by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator May 19, 2005 3:22AM PDT

Since you have two hard disks and maybe 2 CDROM drives and more, how old is that power supply and what's it's rating?

Can you lighten the load?

Can you rip the heatsink off, put a small dab of compound on and reassemble it just to make sure?

Are the motherboard capacitors without bulges or leaks?

Bob

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Troubleshooting
by wanness May 19, 2005 7:26AM PDT

Bob, the power supply is about a year old, I replaced the old one with a 500 dual fan. I will try your other suggestions. Thanks, Bill

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Troubleshooting hanging
by wanness May 21, 2005 1:46AM PDT

Bob; I went ahead and completely disassembled the computer in order to search for any resistors, capacitors, diodes, or anything else that looked suspicious. After rebooting, I received a message that one of more of my drives my have errors. In an attempt to, once again, defrag my C drive, (three months old). As it was attempting to defrag, I heard it knocking. At this point in time, my suspicion is that my C drive is going bad. I have never used anything but WD hard drives. When I get the new one back and installed, I will report back. Thanks to everyone that posted and helped. Bill

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Hanging
by wanness Jun 3, 2005 1:11AM PDT

Bob; I have the new HD installed and everything is working properly. The shop told me that it took two days to clone that old drive to the new one. Thanks to everyone for all of their input. Bill

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(NT) (NT) And thank you for the report back.
by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator Jun 3, 2005 1:18AM PDT
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What about that new account?
by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator May 19, 2005 3:23AM PDT

It's a test.

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Troubleshooting
by wanness May 19, 2005 6:57AM PDT

Bob, I added a new user and if anything, it got worse. (Maybe my imagination). I reverted back to before PC booster and stil have the same problems. I think the 30.00 was wasted. Bill

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Bill dropped a note about events.
by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator May 19, 2005 7:10AM PDT

But given the age and what's been written, my suspect is some piece of hardware. Just about every damaged OS still performs a nice Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) and hard lockups always lead me to hardware issues.

If it was my machine, I'd shutdown, unplug the CD/DVD drives IDE cable and power for yet another test run. This lightens the power load and could help sniff out a new direction.

Bob

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Events -> some study
by Cursorcowboy May 19, 2005 3:41AM PDT

1. The article [Q308427] states that an event is any significant occurrence in the system or in a program that requires users to be notified or an entry be added to one of three logs described below. The Event Log Service records application, security, and system events in Event Viewer. With the event logs in Event Viewer, users can obtain information about hardware, software, and system components, and monitor security events on a local or remote computer. Event logs can help identify and diagnose the source of current system problems, or help predict potential system problems.

a. Application log - contains events logged by programs. For example, a database program may record a file error in the application log. Events that are written to the application log are determined by the developers of the software program.

b. Security log - contains events such as valid and invalid logon attempts as well as events related to resource use, such as the creating, opening, or deleting of files. For example, when logon auditing is enabled, an event is recorded in the security log each time a user attempts to log on to the computer. You must be logged on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group in order to turn on, use, and specify which events are recorded.

c. System log - contains events logged by Windows XP system components. For example, if a driver fails to load during startup, an event is recorded in the system log. Windows XP predetermines the events that are logged by system components.

2. The article [Q307973] suggest that a user configure the action as follows that Windows should take when a severe error (also called a fatal system or Stop error) occurs:

a. Write an event to the System log

b. Alert administrators

c. Dump system memory to a file that advanced users can use for debugging

d. Automatically restart the computer

Note: Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server records events that occur during its operation in Event Viewer and provides information about ISA Server events which including the following, and the four severity levels for individual event messages:

e. ID number - the number that identifies the event type.

f. Event message - a description of the event that also appears on the property page for the event.

? Success

? Informational

? Warning

? Error

g. Explanation - a description of the possible cause of the event.

h. User action - a description of the actions you can take to solve or prevent the problem.

2. The MSDN article "System Error Messages" contains the text of Microsoft

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