Hey Hey guys, im a member of the new TS clan on the site and im having some computer issues. just wondering if any of you could help me out. anyways, i built my computer about 6 months ago and ever since ive had it it would freeze about once a week and i never really thought about it. i just didnt think it was a big deal since it was the first computer i had built and all. but for the past three weeks it freezes like crazy. it just locks up whenever it feels like it and the cursor is frozen on the screen. i have to push the button on the case to restart it. i thought maybe it was overheating so as soon as it locked up once, i took off my CPU fan and touched the processor- it was cold. i replaced the motherboard- and got a sound problem with steam. so i took that back and put the old one in and reformatted but this time i never installed the drivers for my AC 97 integrated sound and it never froze but of course i didnt have any sound. i tried to disable the AC 97 in the BIOS and install a new sound card but it would freeze. so here i am today, i reinstalled the AC 97 and it started freezing again. but today it has only frozen in steam which makes me think when the CPU usage in XP task manager is high, it freezes. does anyone know what is going on?
setup:
ECS L4VXA2 motherboard
Intel P4 2.66 processor
AC 97 integrated audio
Xp professional
1.0 Gig of RAM
FX5200 128MB vidcard
ATX case w/ 350W power
3 case fans
1 heat sink CPU fan
and the power supply fan
tell me what else you need to know
Anyone got some ideas for my friend Joe?
could be a virus\a program\could be bad drivers\sound card,video card..it can be alot of things
Uninstall and delete all references to steam. Only then may I look at your without laughing...
Seriously, it can be a cominbation of many things. Check the log files that are in Steam, check the Event logs on XP, and see if you can get it into a reproducable set of steps...
if you are gettin sound probs with steam..it can be a bad driver
Or just steam itself. eg, my laptop won't run steam (which was the only machine I'd let it near as it was the most recent) and that's now not able to run anything but software mode. And despite what they say on the STEAM forums, it has the latest drivers and it's not like I can just swap the video card over with a spare or anything.
Steam is forever fixing things and introducing new bugs. I'm wondering if they've been hiring ex-microsoft programmers....
Number one...check your log files in the Event Viewer. Right click My Computer and select Manage.
Then expand the Event Viewer section. Click the System link and look on the right frame for messages and times.
Look for Yellow or red alerts. Log files are EVERYTHING for diagnostics. As good as the plug-and-pray is in XP, you
could have an IRQ conflict and during certain access times, one hardware could be stepping on another's IRQ assignment,
in effect, rendering them useless and causing problems. If it was me and this kept on occuring, I'd just wipe the hard drive
and reinstall XP again.
You also have to think, what have I done different to my system that this just started up. Did I do an update, install a new driver,
new mouse, new USB device?? Overheating is one thing that can get worse over time and degrade but untouched PC's will
rarely just break unless you give them a reason to. Hard drives asside on that though. They are constantly spinning and will wear out
If you can get it up and going, copy paste your Event logs here...
PS....have you ran Windows update in awhile?
I know that he has reformatted like hmm 5 times in the past week or so..;)
ok here is the system log files on which i found a few yellow and red alerts but i dont know what the hell they mean. before when it did the same thing, i did have windows up to date but after the last reformat i just havent bothered since it never made a difference before. to me it seems like a driver issue or overheating since it only freezes when i run programs such as steam games and BF1942 that jack my CPU usage to 40-80%. im probably takin it in tommorrow to ahve it checked out and see what the guys at frys can do for me. thanks for all the help
P.S. i dont know how to get the system log into the forum but all the ERRORS say "The IP address lease 192.168.1.100 for the Network Card with network address 000AE6926FB1 has been denied by the DHCP server 192.168.1.1 (The DHCP Server sent a DHCPNACK message)." and the source is Dhcp.
wow now im thinking its the integrated network card on my mobo. it only freezes when i play multiplayer games. hmmmmm.... so what does that mean?
Hmm. Maybe, disable it in the System control panel (devices). Also, WHY is your DHCP server (probably your router) not renewing your license, or even giving your machine a license to use that IP in the first place.
That is worth looking at before you go disabling stuff.
ok well if i disable it, then i dont have internet, which i need to play the games that it caues the problem with. w/e im gonna take it in tommorrow and see what they can do.
so you have a router giving out internal IP addresses via DHCP?
what happens if you assign a static one like 192.168.1.50
with a subnet mask 255.255.255.0
and a gateway of 192.168.1.1
can you ping the gateway once you make these changes?
Your assuming his DHCP is defaulting to 192.168.1.x, whereas one of the new UPnP Firewall/DHCP servers tend to get out a 169 address, as does XP.:)
I would also like to post again to reiterate my STEAM statement... try it with WON, if you are getting zero issues, that identifies your problem. Only thing is, you can't join the steam servers... catch 22.
That 169.254.x.x address is part of windows APIPA addressing scheme (automatic private IP addressing). It works in 2000 and XP and
is what you get when you can't get a lease from a DHCP server.
To get around this behavior..you can disable APIPA on a per interface basis by editing the registry.
I always wondered why they didn't both to put that in a tick box ?! They put pretty much everything else on these days.