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I'm running xp pro, with 1.2 gig Athlon chip, 768 meg of memory. Machine is locking up, and I have to hit the "reset" button to get the computer back. This usually happens at least two or three times a day.
About the time this started happening, I installed "Return to Castle Wolfenstein." I've uninstalled the game, but the problem continues.
I do know that the problem didn't exist after I installed xp, back in January.
Any help would be appreciated.
Try doing this:
Rite clik My Computer and select "Manage". On the left, double clik "Event Viewer". Rite clik on "Application" and select "clear all events". Do the same thing with "Security" and "System". This will clear all the "Events". Restart your machine. Then, after it misbehaves, check the "Events" in the 3 places that you previously cleared. You should find some clues in there as to what happens when the machine locks up. If you rite clik on an event and go to properties, it gives you an explanation as to what happened. At least that's how I recall it works from my memory. Good luck. Let us know how you make out.
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try removing ram sticks and using one at a time and see if one or more don't allow your system to boot. I was having the same problem and found bad stick, recognized by system when in the second slot but not in the primary slot.
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OK, donaldk--
I did what you suggested, or close to it, and got the following error message and three more which are similar but vary in the port address:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: ACPI
Event Category: None
Event ID: 5
Date: 3/26/2002
Time: 6:07:06 AM
User: N/A
Computer: GRIMMER
Description:
AMLI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to write to an illegal IO port address (0xcf8), which lies in the 0xcf8 - 0xcff protected address range. This could lead to system instability. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance.For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 04 00 52 00 ......R.
0008: 00 00 00 00 05 00 05 c0 .......À
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........There was also an initial error message which stated: "Unable to get device object printer for port object."
Is the BIOS screwed up?
Dave
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I'm not an expert in this, but, I'll give it a try. Go into the BIOS and disable anything to do with Power Management. That is, of course, unless you have a real need for those functions. This is the stuff that, I think, has to do with the functions like "standby" or "hibernate" and other power control functions. Try disabling all this stuff, reboot and see if that solves the problems. Also, try doing this: Rite-clik on a blank area of the desktop and go to 'Properties'>go to the 'Screensavers' tab>hit the 'Power' button>in the 4 fields that you see, set EVERYTHING to NEVER. I do this for ALL of the possible computer uses as listed in the drop down menu, under 'Power Schemes'. Just set EVERYTHING to NEVER. Let us know what happens.
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I attempted to disable acpi in my BIOS and I was unable to boot back up, I suspect that has something to do with the following below.
I also have the exact same error as Dave in the System file but this error occurs when I boot up my computer and not when my system freezes. Every single time I boot up I get this error (each occurs twice in a row as well):
AMLI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to write to an illegal IO port address (0x70), which lies in the 0x70 - 0x71 protected address range. This could lead to system instability. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance.
AMLI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to read from an illegal IO port address (0xcfc), which lies in the 0xcf8 - 0xcff protected address range. This could lead to system instability. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance.
UPDATE:
I spoke with my board tech and he said there is a fix out (at least for tyan boards) for this acpi error. There is a beta version just released that is supposed to solve this.In my application error view I did get this error everytime my computer freezes:
Faulting application iexplore.exe, version 6.0.2600.0, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x640011a6.
The strange thing is that I am not running internet explorer at the time it occurs, so why would it hang?
I have noticed the last two times this happened tonight, that this error did not show up???
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By the way I also had already had all the windows XP setting for power management shut off or turned to never, I think as far as I can tell the same is true for bios, except for the acpi function, which is what bombed out when I set it to disabled.
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I haven't gone into the BIOS yet (will do so on the weekend), but I did follow donaldk's recommendation to shut down all power options under "screensaver" - "power." Although it's not perfect, his suggestion has reduced the number of freezes to one since I did it, about twenty hours ago. Before, the system had been freezing at least three times a day. So, something appears to be working.
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I am going to try to laod the new BIOS today after my test and see if that helps.
I still get freezes on your previous magnitude.
I am working with an MS rep now on the freezing problem as well. He i having me send in all sorts of files from msinfo and event viewer, will let you all know what he comes up with.
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One other thing to try is copying some of those error messages and pasting them into a search/query in Microsofts Knowledge Base.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;KBINFO or at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/default.asp
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BIOS beta update did indeed get rid of all the ACPI errors. I do not know yet if it did anything for the freezing.
I will update on that issue later.
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Nope it still freezes. I notice that this mostly occurs when I let my system sit and it goes to a screen saver or if it has not already froze if I come out of the screen saver it freezes up pretty quickly.
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I have not yet figured out if this was an issue or not but last night I tried running my system overnight with no email and no internet explorer running and found that the system did not freeze up at all. I always run outlook express so I thought maybe that might be the problem or some combo of outlook express and Norton anitvirus. I have run my system with Norton off and still had freeze ups, but I figured since outlook express is an MS product is should not be causing this problem. I am going to run it again today and see if my system freezes again.
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I am still working on things here. I was looking at my taskmanager to see if there might be some task hogs that were using up my RAM, well I came across a process that popped called rundll32.exe. I did some searching for this and found that a few sites say this is an indication of a problem in my PC, moments after this process did come up my system did freeze so I was just wondering what your thoughts were on that.
The only thing I can find on the Windows XP site is that this command is used in conjunction with other commands to do this:
http://search.microsoft.com/default.asp?IntCat=0&Boolean=ALL&Nq=new&qu=rundll32.exe&ig=1&siteid=us/products/windows/windowsxp
I noticed that one of these uses is to create a shortcut to lock a system which is similar to what is happening to our systems.
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We tried last night to shut down all power management settings in the BIOS. It wouldn't let us. And there is no BIOS update for my chip/motherboard. So I'm back to square one.
Our best guess is that this is a Windows XP issue, one I hope that will be dealt with in an update.
Thank you to all who tried to help.
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The problem may have been solved--hope, hope.
Windows has just issued a big update file supposed to address several program compatability issues.
And my computer hasn't frozen since I installed it about 8 hours ago.
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I have been fighting the same issues for about a month. I think it might be one of the MS Hotfixes (HA). I haved swapped every piece of hardware that I could think of, but the lockups continue. I even reinstalled, just installing the critical updates (same result). I will re-install again, when I get time, and install NO updates or MS drivers (just to see what happens).
Prior to this XP ran flawless for about 6 months.
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Well, it's still locking up. This is ridiculous. I think it's an Athlon problem because the Net would be buzzing with complaints if it were an Intel chip. I haven't seen any reference to the problem in PC World, either. My motherboard is an ECS.
I hate to suggest this, but would re-formatting the hard drive and reinstalling XP help?
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i got the same problems, but here's my story:
I've been running XP since Nov. I've had ZERO problems. I was very happy with XP, I told everyone to buy it. I was running AMD duron 850, 256 ram, GeForce2 mx 100/200, AZ11E MB... i had norton, office 2k, adobe and other programs installed.
but now I just got DSL last week and i downloaded zonealarm, real player, XP updates, and others. i updated everything i needed to update from winmx to winamp. Now i'm getting regular freeze-ups every few hours. I've disabled and uninstalled a lot of those programs and now i'm getting freeze-ups maybe once or twice a day.
My theory is that it's definitely SW related. I've been working fine up until i installed some updates or something. I'm probably going ot have to reformat/reinstall XP and then one-by-one install each program and I'll have to wait and see where I get frozen on...
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I may have found the problem. For some reason my computer hadn't been freezing up for forty-eight hours. I ran Norton Utilities' Win Doctor on it, and Norton found two instances of "Missing or Envalid ActiveX/Com Subkey Entry." It then lists the key--many numbers and letters.
I chose to repair the problem. The computer then began to freeze again. So I reverted the drive to 11:30 last night. The freezing has stopped, but Norton says I have the missing subkey entries again.
What gives?
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hey guys. Looks like I'm a new member of your community because I have the same exact problems...I have an Athlon xp 1.6 and it'd been doing this for about 3 months.
I've noticed that even though it freezes at some random times, the majority of the time is when I'm working in Adobe Photoshop 6.0 or any other graphic/processor intensive program. I mean if i open photoshop and start making selections or drawing, it's almost a sure thing that it freezes. everytime. I beleive athlon just has poor architecture...
by the way, does anyone else get a black square over their mouse when it freezes? could it possibly be a USB mouse issue? Hel i dont know, worth a try.
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just thought i'd add myself to the pool. i've got an 850mhz duron, 512mb ram. everything up-to-date except possibly for my BIOS, because i don't know how to update that.
when i first installed XP it seemed to crash/reboot on a scheldule, and only while the computer was idle. i disabled all power management, etc., and the problem continued. i checked my event logs and noticed that some norton utils services (unerase protection and speed disk service) were starting up and apparently also attempting to start the "volume shadow copy" service, which i had disabled. i disabled the norton utils services (the software still runs fine), and my crashing seemed to stop for a few weeks.
unfortunately, the problem has worsened since then. the computer now completely freezes after it's idled for awhile, and i have to hit reset to reboot. nothing is written to the event log, and i consequently have no idea what's causing the problem.
one "warning" that i see consistently and randomly in the event viewer is:
SOURCE: atapi
The driver has detected that device \Device\Ide\IdePort0 has old or out-of-date firmware. Reduced performance may result.i've run windows update and there are no useful updates available. does anyone know what this warning means?
also, i have my power scheme set as "always on." do power schemes even do anything?
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I have XP Pro and a Compaq 5000us with 320mb ram and a 30gb hd. I ran XP Pro for about 4 months with absolutely no trouble until about a week ago and it has locked up consistently -- I have tried every viable means of repair -- I have reformatted and reinstalled, bought a new HD and installed it again -- same problem -- bought new video, network cards. Checked each piece of ram separately. Absolutely everything - the only thing I noticed is when I run the computer without getting on the internet (via Bellsouth dsl) it runs fine, but when I get on, after about 30min to 10hrs it freezes -- even if I disconnect it will freeze. Also when I boot the computer up and click on start --> connect to --> and then I have to wait for like 2 minutes for it to open the menu for Fastaccess DSL. It just hangs there, but it did this previously to the computer locking up consistently. Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated -- I have tried everything I can think of other then buying a new motherboard and processor.
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I feel two things...one it is an MS update that seems to greatly affect AMD chips, the 2nd is it seems a scanjet scanner might be the problem as well...
I went back to 2000 and did not have a problem for quite awhile, then I reinstalled my scanner after several months of no freeze ups and bam....freeze ups again....
however that being said, as previously mentioned long ago, I used windows 2000 for over a year and a half with scanner installed and no problem, installed XP (clean) with scanner, no problems for three months, then random freezing begins to occur after (stupidly) installing many windows updates at once, so problem appears for me at least to be some SW issue that comes from an update and also pertains to the HP scanner...(who knows)
If you scan the web you will find everyone and their grandma has a "solution" for this freeze problem but many never work or pertain to specific things someone had done wrong during install...for the rest of us, I imagine that only a new MS fix will help eventually, more likely from a BIOS upgrade from our motherboard makers, since it seems unlikely that MS knows what it did or if they even care about non intel users....
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Go into your BIOS settings, goto CPU settings, and change the frequency from 100 to 133 or from whatever frequency it's set on to the highest one available. The AMD XP processors are sometimes set at default to run at a lower speed, so a Athlon XP 1600 chip might be running at 1050 MGZ instead of around 1400 like it should. Change the frequency and it'll speed up, and for me so far it has fixed the freezing problem.
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