Win2k locking up 6+ times a day

[Axel]

Hello all -
My new system is giving me fits and I haven't worked around in win2k enough to know what to look for -

Here are the symptoms - win2kpro SR1 -

the system locks up tight - and I mean mouse stops and ctrl/alt/del doesn't do squat - six or more times a day at a seemingly random basis -

here's the system -
mobo - Giga-byte GA - 8itx3 board w/ intel 850 chipset
hard drive - quantum 20GB partitioned almost in half into two logical drives
Radeon 32MB PCI video card w/ vga & superS video outs - fan on the board
2 sticks of 800mhz RDRAM & 2 continuity sticks installed as recommended in the mobo manual
Processor is a P4 1.6gHz 423 socket chip w/ heat sink & fan - and the thermal paste was correctly applied as a think film

Processor temp is reported in the BIOS as about 42 degrees C.

All power management features have been turned off in the BIOS.

There's plenty of memory and hard drive space and all parts are new.

The lock-ups happen at different times and when different programs are running. As the system is totally frozen when the lock-ups happen - I cannot get to a task list to see what's happening in the process stack when she turns solid.....

The RADEON board is powered with ATI drivers.

There is a Creative DVD 8x drive in the system and a TEAC CD-RW drive as well.

The lock-ups have happened while only running the screen-saver ( seti@home ) or the DVD-Rom while watching a movie - or while playing pinball on the PC - there is no specific time interval - some times the box will run for hours just fine....

Two notable items - when first I built out the system - I tried to use the Creative decoder/vga board that came with the DVD drive - and never got it to work - thus the Radeon board - I verified that it wasn't the monitor or video cable. 8 beeps on start-up when I tried the old board - video BIOS failure - replaced that board and now it's okay until it locks up.

Additionally - and I don't think it's related - the OS sees and uses the Diamond modem just fine - but doesn't / won't load the supplied driver of CD - so it miss-labels the modem - but that works just fine.

There is a new BIOS - but nothing was "fixed" in the new release - there was just an additional feature added - Haven't flashed it yet.

When I was adjusting the BIOS and turned on the heat alarms, the box got downright noisy even though the system never reached a danger zone - typical system temp was a very respectable 32 degrees C. So I don't understand that part of it - I didn't see anything in the BIOS that allowed me to reset a heat threshold - CPU Fan RPM's was between 3050 and 3150 RPM's - fine there -

I plan to add two more fans just in case this is a heat related issue. Flashing the BIOS is a last resort.....

No driver for the old video card was ever loaded - never made it that far - so I don't think this is a driver conflict with the card.

So - I'm pretty sure I'm missing something here - might be video card related - might be heat related - but I'm not sure -

Does anyone have any other suggestions on what I might look at to fix what's happening?

I haven't overclocked the processor - I haven't tweaked the RAM or FSB - I haven't tweaked the registry -

I haven't loaded anti-V yet - so it isn't Norton miss-behaving.

Power supply is a 350Watt - I'm not running lots of drives at the same time so I think I have plenty there....

What am I missing?

[jadison]

2 continuity sticks installed as recommended in the mobo manual
Excuse my lack of knowledge on RDRAM, but what does this mean? I don't understand that part.

Have you tried d/l any and all updates from MSFT's website??

SETI@Home hasn't posed any conflicts in the 3 machines running Win2k, then again, they're new DELL 8100 machines.

No driver for the old video card was ever loaded - never made it that far - so I don't think this is a driver conflict with the card.

D/L the latest drivers/incl DIRECTX 8.1, detonator, etc., and install them (if possible), that might be it.

Also, check to make sure what your settings are for your HD. Is that HD DMA compatible?? If so, make sure that's enabled under the HD properties in My Computer.
If it's not, then make sure it's not checked.

The same goes for your DVD drive, make sure it has the proper DMA settings, (mine is checked).

Let me know what's up.

[Axel]

a friend mentioned the video drivers as well - I downloaded them all - along with all the copies of DX8.x for win2k and win98/me because if I move the card into another machine - I want to have those drivers as well.....

I'm about 80% sure the new ATI video driver and the DX8.1 update will handle this situation and I won't have to mess with the BIOS.....

As far as RDRAM goes - think of the RDRAM bays as if they were a SCSI string - if you don't put a terminator at the end of the string, it no workie - so all slots are filled - 2 * 256 sticks and two continuity sticks( basically blank PCB's with some pass-through wiring in place to complete the memory circuits. )

[Axel]

Well - she's still doing it - not as severe as before - but definitely not a happy camper -

This week-end - I'm going to strip out everything but the video, the CD-RW, and the base board and hard drive - and format the HD down to it's shorts and start over -

I've heard some indications that the system may not like the fact that the original install was attempted with the old Creative decoder in the system - Also - I've lost my NT profile twice now -

So - I'm going to start fresh - wipe out the partition - ( currently I've got a logical D drive partition - and I've never had luck with partitions before ) and rebuild the system fresh in the hopes that having the final video card in there as well as removing the partitions will "fix" things.

Also - I'm going to upgrade and load win2kSP2 on as well - right now - I'm still on SP1 -

While I'm at it - I'll probably also flash the BIOS to make that as current as possible.

[crystaldragon]

Just a thought here Axel.
W2k has some issiues with some of the ATI cards. There is a fix on the windows update site. Mine tried the same thing (not as bad) till I applied that and found a bad stick of ram.
JD

[Axel]

well - still no solution yet -
I updated the video driver to the one listed as most current on the ATI web site for win2k - no luck there -

What I've noticed is the minidump site that houses log files of crashes - in the vast majority of them - I find that seti@home is the offending executible, but the reboots happen in other things as well - I think it may simply be what's running at the time.

Additionally - I found two seperate copies of Seti on the system - not totally sure how that happened - so I finished the work unit I'm on and plan to wipe out SETI completely and re-install it. Barring that - I'm planning to tear down the system to it's shorts and rebuild it again from the ground up - hate to do it - but need a stable system first.

[Axel]

Over the week-end - I stripped the system down to it's shorts and started over - I formatted the drive without partitions - one 20 GB drive -
reloaded win2kpro -
reloaded the board chipset drivers and the wheelmouse drivers off their install CD's - everything else, video, modem, NIC, etc. etc. I did not use the install discs, but downloaded the bare bones win2k drivers off the manu web sites clean - no frills or additional features - and reloaded the drivers through the device manager. Every app I loaded went in through add/remove programs this time.

AND - I downloaded and installed win2k SP2 off the web and installed it.

So far, smooth sailing - haven't noticed any strange shutdowns in the last 36 hours so I may have this thing licked.

I have 3 prime suspects to what the problem was before - 1) two concurrent installs of Seti 2) the ATI video "package" and all the extra junk they throw in and 3) the lack of service pack 2 for the OS -

The unpartitioning of the drive - for some reason, partions on drives have always been bad luck for me - whether I use the NT setup to partition the drive, a restore CD on a custom partition size, or partition magic, if I build a system with a logical partitioning of the hard drive - I have problems...... curious that....

[BFlurie]

ATI video "package" and all the extra junk they throw in

For ATI W9X driver package, about 3 of the 50 files they put in the system folder are actually used on my box. Fortunately, they don't try that monkeyshining w/NT4 drivers. Logitech mouse drivers are even worse.

[Axel]

ok - here's an update -
took SETI off the system completely - and the box only rebooted and cored once in two days of intense use -
win2k creates a "minidump" file and puts it into a folder under winnt - but when you open it there are all sorts of control characters on the page - it's hard to read - you can just barely make out what looks a little like a task list with a lot of *.sys files listed - mostly system drivers and video drivers - but it doesn't come right out and tell you what caused the box to crater -

Anyone know anything about reading win2k minidump files?

Is this something you send to MS for support and analysis, or is there an MS tool to read these things and make sense of them?

[Axel]

Another update and another call for information -

I took out - and unloaded and reloaded the NIC so I now no longer have any shared IRQ's at all and the system is more stable - but still reboots 2 or 3 times a day.

Here is another mystery I've found.

In the process stack, there are two running copies of svchost.exe

this is a microsoft windows file that in some way handles the services. The two copies have close PID numbers in the task list - but the second copy is using almost twice the CPU time and memory as the first. I don't know why two identical copies are running and launch - I haven't even been able to track down whether or not this is normal. Any thoughts?

[jadison]

Pertaining to svchost.exe: READ this thread by NDC==Click Here (http://www.xtremepccentral.com/vbforums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=596&highlight=svchost.exe)

Also, check this out==Description of Svchost.exe (Q250320) (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q250320)

Pertaining to Win2k "Minidump" files, Read THIS (http://www.labmice.net/troubleshooting/memorydumps.htm)

I'm still looking, but hope the links above help. :)

[Axel]

one issue removed as a suspect -

thanks for the link - I'm downloading the 2000 diag tool and advanced symbol support to CD - the minidump reader might be next - we'll see.

Axel

[Axel]

or rather I should say - it made itself real obvious when the whole system finally shut down and everything but the HDD and reset lights went totally dead....

I paid $25 extra to the case manufacturer to upgrade to a 350 Watt power supply -

That's what died horribly -

It used to be an "AHEAD Model SH-350 V2.03" - I'm not going to bother with turning it in - for $25, the grief isn't worth it.....

So I opened this baby up - and found puddles of hot-melt glue in several different places holding nothing in particular. I got ambitious and removed all the hot glue - then reseated everything, and I do mean everything, in the entire case and on the motherboard - no joy - the Mobo was getting some juice, but none of the drives were polled and none of the drives had power - so it looks like I lost the entire 5 volt bus in the PS -

I replaced the power supply with a Powmax LP-6100D switched dual fan model - 400Watt - it has an extra 12 volt fan power connector, a power cooling fan speed monitor connector and claims to have endorsements from both AMD and Intel - It also has the power outlet in the back that I like that you can plug in your monitor and control the entire system from your PC's power functionality or from the power button on the face of the case.

So I really suspect the root of all my problems was the original 350 watt PS - We'll see -

[Pshawn5]

good detective work axel.