Noise before crashing...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Brad
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Brad

Brad

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I really like WinXP - I like the look and the feel - but I haven't been able to keep it stable yet. I think I have updated all drivers, everything I have should work according to the various manufacturers. But I still have frequent crashes - one of the obvious ones is when the screen saver kicks in - immediate crash 80% of the time. Now, the simple solution is to turn off the screen saver (I normally just select the 'blank' option - but that even kills it) but someone told me this is a video card driver issue. I am using a third party beta driver that is reccommended by the manufacturer for use with XP. So I guess that would solve that problem... but here is another problem.

On a few occasions, after I have had a loop of wav files going over and over, I hear a noise from the computer - I have the case open, so maybe that is why I hear it more loudly than normal - but it sort of sounds like something is grinding to a halt and then BAM - auto restart.

Anybody know what this is? I have never heard this noise associated with a crash before on other computers.

I am really close to going back to Win98 for stability *HA* I never thought I would say that!

Brad
 
Sorry, I forgot my specs:


Asus A7S333 with SiS 745 chipset
AMD Athlon XP1800 1.53Ghz
512mb DDR ram
Quantum 40gig 7200rpm system drive
IBM 120gig 7200rpm media drive
Radeon VE 32mb AGP dual head video card
M-Audio Delta TDIF sound card
Unk. brand cheap firewire PCI
Unk. brand cheap 56k PCI modem
MOTU Micro Express USB MIDI interface (still can't get the console software working, but the interface seems to work)
 
I dont think its XP. Did you do a clean install ? Reformat disk and start fresh ? Could be a conflict between audio & video card. Are they sharing IRQ's ? You may have to dig deep for this problem. You can try removing cards one at a time for isolation. You could go back to 98' and see if its ok. Too many possibilities.

XP has been the most stable for me by far !!
No crashes since install 8 months ago.
 
Your hard disk is dying.

Doesn't sound like anything else to me.
 
No dude, do not tell me that.

The system drive is (gulp) fine, I think.

And the media drive is brand spanking new. IBM fer chrissakes.

C'mon man, tell me something else. Make it be something else.
 
Lets see, which are the moving parts in the system. Sounds like sound from a moving part, not? Something like got stuck or something, like a noisy crankshaft, yes?

Fans: Yes, your CPU fan could be the culprit. Nothing else will cause this kind of restart: At least not PSU fans, etc. You could check the fan on the video card, that might be it if your lucky

If your system is new you'll be under warranty, so no worries on that front. Right?

The only other moving parts I can count in that system are the HDD and the CDROM. Doesn't sound like a CDROM.

And IBM's have a notorious problem of crashing, and making funny sounds before dying. You might wanna google 'IBM hard drive crash' before believing me, there are entire forums dedicated to this problem. And IBM has decided to exit the desktop drive business, last I heard but I could be wrong.

Sang
 
Well, I really hoped you were wrong Sangram, and maybe you are not. Could still be the hard drive, but...

When I explained the problem to a few other people, I got differing responses - some said it could be anything, but they mostly hedged their bets on one of three things: the power supply, the video card or one of the hard drives. All of them told me to stick my grape inside the computer and try to make it crash with the noise so I could pinpoint where it was coming from.

One of the guys was asking me about every instance of crashing - what I was doing, etc. He really thought it sounded like the video card. After further research, I found that my video card (Radeon VE) and WinXP have had issues, but new ATI drivers have supposedly cleared up the problem. I checked and I do have the latest drivers. So, I reinstalled them and went about my business. I did all of the things that would normally crash the system. Did everything I could think of to crash the sucker and nothing.

YES!!
Hopefully, I can now enjoy the same stability that I have heard about from most XP users...

Thanks guys,

Brad
 
Here's hoping for the best

Well if your problem is solved then that's great!

I've experienced so many grinding to a halt noises from IBM drives in the last year that's what I think of first. If that wasn't your porblem then cheerio!

Sang
 
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