any advice on tracking down a winXP crash problem?

My machine used to do that. Both cases. When I stopped using logons and deleted the program and reloaded XP everything was ok. Don't know if it was logon or not but I haven't used it since and those problems haven't returned.

feline, I think messenger runs all the time...even if it doesn't show as running if you pull up your ports it's ususlly there listening on port 5000. You can change the registry to prevent it from ever loading if you want to try it:

Registry Settings
User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Messenger\Client]
System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Messenger\Client]
Value Name: PreventAutoRun, PreventRun
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (1 = enable restriction, 0 = default)

feline...I just repaired a computer 2 days ago with the exact same problem.

She was having the same lock-up type problems, hanging etc. It was going on for about two weeks. She had a MMX geforce4 420 that was going bad before it finally failed. Popped in an ATI 64mb with the 7500 gpu and it runs like a champ.

Don't know if this is your problem, but I would start there.

Before you format...If you have an extra video card, PCI or AGP, pull out the nvidia one and install another real quick. Might be the culprit. I don't what kind of MOBO you have...Hopefully it's not on-board video. Good Luck

Im sorry to hear your computer is taking such a major dump feline. I could be wrong but it sounds like your hard drive has seen better days, all the indications of your report make me think bad hard drive. I had one that did that very same thing,it started out subtle, various weird things would happen at the monitor like images shifting on the screen and then it started locking up and making noise,until it finally died ...R.I.P. (poor dead soldier)

There is a simple way to kill windows messenger, if you suspect that the messenger is the source of your trouble ...

Select Start -> Settings -> Control Panels
[For Windows XP users, click on Classic View]
Open (double click) Admin Tools
Open Services
Double click Messenger
Change Startup Type from Auto to Disable
Click on the Stop properties button, let the OS stop the service
Close up everything, you're done!

Im gonna go hang out now ...

see ya

MSN Messenger on my machine only runs if I open it. That means I have to go to MSN internet explorer to open it.

First line of defense...open the box....[turn off the comp]....remove and carefully reseat all cards and ram....particularly the ram...then check again how it 'survives'...

feline...You will probably get several different opinions from everyone having different experiences. Which can be even more frustrating. It's something simple, the odds that it is something as serious as your hard drive are slim to none.

I'm telling you...It has to do with that vid card. Whether it be the drivers or the card itself.

You can read all over the net about similar problems such as yours...mostly all video related.

And of course what Jafo just said about the RAM

Let us know what you come up with
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try turning off agp fastwrites - know to cause a bunch of random crap

Windows Messenger and MSN Messenger are 2 different things.

Disable Window Messenger through Services.

If you want to disable MSN Messenger for good.

Go to your program files and rename the Messenger folder to(messengeroff).

It's a quick easy fix...That thing drives me nuts

feline, I have the same problem once or twice a day. I looks like a mouse driver problem to me. I have a Logitech cordless mouse and keyboard. Sometimes the mouse freezes (but the keyboard keeps working). The dump indicates a mouse driver exception. The driver may be the cause, but it can also be hardware related. Lately I have random reboots instead. If I find a solution then I'll share it.

For some reason it didn't happen the last two days.

/me knocks on wood.

*** POOF ***

Sorry to hear that your system is giving you headaches. A sick computer is never a nice thing.You can check the log files to see if it is software causing the issues, and if so, what software? Right click my computer, left click manage, click the plus sign next to event viwer, and then double click on each of the three categories to see what alerts you have there. This will likely give you an idea of what the cause of your system crashes might be.

If the issue is software related, you have a number of options for fixing it. The tree easiest options to try are the following:

1.) System restore back to a date when all was well with your system. Be warned, if you have any kind of software collection on a second partition or hard drive, system restore just loves stripping the exe files out of those downloads. I recommend turning off system restore on all partitions/drives except your c:\> This is done in system properties. Right click my computer, go to properties, go to system restore, click on the drive that you don't want to monitor with system restore, click on settings, slide the slider to 0 (zero), and check the "Turn off System Restore on this drive".

2.) System file checker. Insert your Windows XP CD while holding down the left shift key to stop it auto-running, click start, click run, type in (sans quotes "sfc /scannow"), sit back and let system file checker do it's thing.

3.) Check disk with the repair switch. The repair switch has five stages and is the most effective switch to use with check disk. Be warned however that it takes quite a while to complete. Click start, click run, type in "chkdsk /r" (again, sans quotes"), and click OK. You will get a DOS box pop up telling you that CHKDSK can't run at this time, and asking you if you want to run it the next time you restart your system. Press the letter Y and hit enter. Restart your system and go out for a game of pool and a beer. It should be done by the time you get home.

If none of this works, you should start checking hardware, in particular, your memory and video card memory. There are some handy utilities online to do this with, or you can just start swapping out parts or take the system to your local repair shop. I have a very good hardware diags program for checking your hardware that I can e-mail to you if you want, but be warned, the diags will run for anything up to 12 hours in DOS, so while running, your system is unusable. The reason for the long runtime is that everything gets checked, including each and every sector your hard drive. Let me know on that one.

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

This is a link for a memory diagnostic program. It is small. You download it & put it on a floppy then boot off the floppy. It will do a thorough diagnostic check on your memory. My system was having similar symptoms & it was a bad 256MB DDR stick that was only a month old.

Jafo; First line of defense...open the box....[turn off the comp]....remove and carefully reseat all cards and ram....particularly the ram...then check again how it 'survives'...

: Make sure you have unplugged the system from the wall or turned off the Power Supply, not just the Computer if this is an ATX system! ATX systems have a constant feed of power to the mother board and if you just turn off the system then pull something you can fry and/or damage it or something else on the system possibly... :

I would make sure of the following along with what Jafo said above.

Make sure your CMOS settings are set to Default. This will remove any possible timing issues and resource issues such as Shadowing peripheral resources into higher regions and such.

also, if you find the case is full of dust you can blow it out with canned air, just do not hold the tip of the stem closer than 1 inch from the chips and such or hold it over anything for an extended period of time.

Dust is conductive and also a thermal blanket which can cause things to run too hot causing them to loose their required resistance properties, or allow current to travel to all the wrong places

Also make sure your clean your systems Power Supply as much as you can while it is unplugged. Heat can cause it's failure and also cause current issues which can lead to operational issues for the whole system.

/me *sigh*

i have just reset my machine after the second total freeze of the day!!!

this is getting stupid. the machine was never this unstable before. to define before, about 1 month ago the old hard drive failed, and i had to bet a new one put in. so, the current HD is brand new, so hopefully it is ok.

during the first freeze of today my only remaining theory about the lockup's online died. running windows messenger (not MSN messenger) is a serious risk factor for this problem. the theory was it was something about IM programs. however, there were no IM programs running when the machine crashed. i have used a setting in "gpedit.msc" to stop windows messenger from loading. its own "dont run" settings werent up to the job.

there were occasional problems with the machine before the HD crash, but nothing like this, not at all like this.

the only changes i can list apart from the new HD are:
* i updated the BIOS to a more winXP compatible version. i was getting memory errors listed in the event logs in winXP with the old BIOS. the BIOS update fixed that.

* i have moved from the 23.11 drivers to the 40.72 drivers for my video card.

at this point, a hardware problem is starting to look very likely. i recently (say 3 weeks ago) ran a memory scan on my machine's RAM, and it came up clean.

with regard to opening up the case, let me put it this way. when i found that DVD playback stopped working (turned out that the latest nvidia drivers have totally broken it) i took out my video card to see if it was properly in its slot. i put it back in again, and the machine stopped booting. it just beeped at me. i tried 8 times to get the video card into its slot (AGP) correctly, and it never worked.

it turned out i wasn't putting it in correctly, but i have no idea what i was doing wrong. even the man who put it in correctly agreed that i seemed to have it in the slot correctly.

so, after that, i have decided to stop opening up the case. 3 days with no PC simply because i checked the card was in its slot was not a good thing.

hard drive scan here we come. thanks for the info dark_minion. i don't know what to think. should i hope there is a problem with the brand new HD or not? either way i will do that tomorrow.

feline.....who's machine you using (Dell, HP, Compaq,etc) ?

Did you download and install the latest chipset drivers for your motherboard after you installed Windows on the new hard drive?

yrag - who's machine you using (Dell, HP, Compaq,etc) ?

none of those, the machine was put together by a local computer man.
before the HD crash it was nothing like this bad. something is wrong somewhere. oh yes, i have just had total lock number 4 for tonight.

/me tries to turn off biting sarchasm, but it doesnt work
lets hope i wasnt trying to have a conversation with anyone, or write an email

this is driving me up the ****** wall.

jebland - Did you download and install the latest chipset drivers for your motherboard after you installed Windows on the new hard drive?

yep, and they fixed one problem for me. via chipset motherboard. before installing the latest 4in1 drivers DVD playback was slow to unwatchably slow. installing those fixed that at least.

feline, do me a favor and do a reboot, hit DEL when it asks to load the CMOS setup, then hit the F-(key) that will be on the screen for loading system defaults.

This way you know that nothing is being messed with in the CMOS settings as far as caching peripheral card resources. This can and will cause exactly what is happening with your system at times...

just something to try...

IPlural, thanks, added to my todo list for tommorow. 1 am local time now, to late to try doing it now.

feline..hopefully you went to sleep, but you can read this tomorrow...I went back and read the thread you had a couple of weeks ago, along with this one and tried to find a common denominator. The in and out of the graphics card to no avail and then your computer guy does it and it works leads to me to believe it's some other piece of hardware. Since it would have be something that works all the time because the different things you're doing when it crashes it narrows it down to really only two items...your mouse or your keyboard. You can test the keyboard by changing (in the bios) 'Stop on all errors,except keyboard' to 'Stop on all errors'. If it's you keyboard, it will not boot. If the system has never stopped during a reboot or cold start Post then that makes me lean to wards the mouse. If you have one, switch it out, if not see if when it does crash if you just used the mouse. (that's easier said then done )
/me hopes you didn't have computer dreams



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ah..........there is one other thing (it's the reason I asked you what machine you were using). On some 'pre-loaded' Xp computers you can't change the bios. You can change anything else you want but not that. It's the price paid for never having to 're-acivate' Windows when you change the hardware config. This might not even apply to you...just more food to throw up

I was having the same kind of problems last year. So I replaced my MB, when I started pulling the RAM from the old MB I found that 1 chips end clip was loose - therefore the RAM wasn't seated properly. I used that MB in a machine for my granddaughter and haven't had any problems with it since.

Check the RAM, my (Jafo's #2) suggestion.

Cards, including ram can 'fret' loose through constant heat cycling [on and off].....a permanently 'on' comp won't suffer this as the temp level remains constant [ish].

Ram is 'locked' inplace for that reason, and AGP cards have a hooked insert, likewise, but may still loose contact, depending on the MoBo.

There are so many reasons for infrequent lockups....my most recent was a dying harddrive...where one particular area of it when accessed through defrag or virus-scan would lock the comp to cold-boot level.

Modern drives are pretty hassle-free [apart from IBM]....so I'd be looking more closely at physical connections and possible processor/video over-heating [fan/s stalling], or just good old peripherals and their drivers, eg meeses..

For the not correctly put in graphics card : I have a friend whose pc-cover was so wobbly (I chose all other components for him, but he wanted to spare on the cover), that it dragged the cards from the slots when You moved it a little, not to speak of carrying it...

I am in the good position to have a very good pc dealer who looks into such things without saying 'Buy this or that new at once', I don't know if that is an option for You and You have someone there You can trust... Sometimes there are things You can't see or detect that cause huge problems like small cracks at the mobo for example.



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