Posted: 7/18/2005 7:02:06 AM EDT
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This is occurring on a workstation here in the office that's fairly new. About twice a week, the computer will totally freeze up. This ONLY occurs when dragging a window around the desktop. A hard reboot is needed to fix this. Until today, I thought this might be caused by a faulty video card, so I bought a replacement (which hasn't been installed). Over the weekend, it locked up again. But after reboot it was found to not be able to pull an internet signal. The router and modem are good. I'm positive about that. The cable is good. I cannot ipconfig /renew my IP. It fails every time. There aren't any problems in the system devices tree. I've even tried System Restore. The network card is built onto the motherboard (A chaintech VNF4 Ultra). So now I'm thinking that the video problems may really be motherboard problems. Thoughts? |
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1. I think your IP problems are unrelated. 2. Hard lockups are commonly due to (in order, in my experience): a) Heat (check CPU fan) b) Faulty power supply (check supply voltage, should be +-5% rated voltage) c) Defective memory d) Defective video card e) Defective motherboard. Letters "a" and "b" are easy to diagnose, the others require parts substitution, for the most part. |
| You could look to see if a BIOS upgrade is available. I have had some success with solving miscellaneous driver-related malfunctions like this through BIOS upgrades. I guess the thing to do is press F8 (or maybe F2) while the thing is first booting, and look to find the BIOS make and rev that's currently on the machine (AWARD, PHOENIX, whatever). Then Google for BIOS updates, download, BACKUP and install the update. |
Concur 100%. -Troy |
For "c" download and burn the "Ultimate Boot CD". It's a collection of vendor utilities that are invaluable to any technication. It has two utilities for testing RAM. I have yet to have it fail me and it even finds errors that the stand alone DIMM tester misses. |
We bought a NIC and the internet problems are gone. Which tells me that the built in board went bad, most likely. Heat and memory are definitely not a problem. I'm leaning towards "d" and "e".
No spyware. The task manager looks fine. The lockups occur ONLY when a window is being dragged. And since it's an instant lock up, no errors are reported and I can't get to the task manager after it occurs. I'm forced to hard-reboot. After finding the built-in NIC had gone bad, I'm leaning towards "Bad motherboard". |
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download a copy of knoppix make the cd, boot off of it . its a operating system on a cd. if you still have lock up problems its a very good chance its a hardware problem. what operating sytem are you running by theway |
c is easy. memtest86 it. |
Did you try messing with the NIC settings? Like lowring it down to 10 mb speed. Might even be a problem on your network. The lockups could be something you have installed trying to update or comunicate over the network and failing. |