So weird...

[hoffman-log.livejournal.com]

So here's my problem. I've never had to post one to this place before, because between several Microsoft and CompTIA certifications, one would assume i know my (stuff). But this is driving me nuts.

Problem: The computer will suddenly freeze up, nothing will work. This means mouse and keyboard fail, and the sound suddenly quits. It simply LOCKS. Only solution is to shut off the power and restart.

For a while i thought it was thermal related, but this couldn't be it, because when i reboot (a whole three seconds later) it works fine. Oh, as far as suggestions go, "Take it back to the manufacturer" isn't really an option, i techincally AM the manufacturer (built everything myself from scratch. go me!)

Specs: This should be helpful, maybe... ABIT KR7A-RAID 266MHz FSB, AMD Athlon 1800+, 256MB PC2300 (i think) DDR ECC RAM, Windows XP Pro, and if there's anything else you would like to know, let me know.

All right. Problem submitted to the think-tank. Let's see what it generates...

_MaH

Comments

Re:

[hoffman-log.livejournal.com]

Actually the water cooling system did explode back in September, but since then all exposed circuitry (motherboard, chip, PCI cards, etc) have been replaced. It appears to happen randomly, sometimes within a day, sometimes within a matter of hours, but one thing i AM noticing, is that it takes an event to trigger it. Most (if not all) of the time, it's been as simple as moving the mouse. Cursor moves, computer goes to hell. I'm seriously betting it's something with the software.

_MaH

"Unless it's on fire, it's a software problem."

[diji.livejournal.com]

You might try booting into Safe Mode and then just operating the system as close to normally as you can in those conditions... if it works fine after it would have normally failed, then its an extended driver or piece of software.

Alternately, you could zap everything out of your start up folder, as well as all the stuff in the run part of the registry (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Windows\Current Version\Run) and see if the problem occurs. :)

Happy hunting.

[alacrity.livejournal.com]

Generally water cooling systems are only necessary if one is overclocking. Are you presently, or have you in the past, overclocked? That can cause a very small amount of damage to hardware that could result in a slightly higher incidence of fuzzy bits (bits in memory, or in computations that come out in the grey area and are interpreted incorrectly, yes, I just made up the term "fuzzy bits" as I'm not actually sure what the real word for this is.)

Also, if you are presently overclocking, it is quite likely you've simply pushed it too far and it is not at a stable speed. In which case, slow down! ;-)

Re:

[hoffman-log.livejournal.com]

Nah, like i said, had to replace (almost) everything inside. Never really had the desire to overclock the second processor...

_MaH