unreliable XP machine

[Empty_5oul]

I have had this machine for about 2 years now.
Since yesterday evening it has become unreliable :? - yesterday evening and twice today i have been using my machine as normal and all of a sudden the screen flickers blue (3 or 4 times in a second) then the screen goes black and my monitor switches off.
The only way to resolve this has been holding the power in for 5 secs.

because of the blue screen i assumed it would be a memory fault (e.g a dump report) but i ran a program (memTest86) for 13 hours solid overnight and no reported errors.

[ my machine is running XP Pro SP2 ]

ideas?

[Jeff]

Is there any writing on the blue screen? Perhaps ur gfx card is going out

[Empty_5oul]

i don't get time to see, it flickers blue and black so quickly it could say anything!

[Jeff]

I would try a different graphics card. Ya never know.

[BlackAdder]

A new video card or at least try removing and reinstalling new drivers....did you try Dr. Watson to see if it reports anything??

[BlackAdder]

since you have had it for two years have you formatted and reinstalled windows lately???could be a OS problem....

[Jeff]

Or, you could run Prime95 in stress-testing mode to see if your CPU is throwing any errors.

[Empty_5oul]

graphics card only 2 months old.

Geforce 6800.
I re-seated it and now have put on the new drivers.

I may try prime 95 but so far i havent had another crash!!!!

[Nflight]

TO find the problems sometimes we need to reveiw what happened exactly process by process. To find the errors I will explain using the Event Veiwer.

Click on Start then Contral Panel, goto Administrative Tools, then click on Event Veiwer.
Left click on the "System ", in the right hand column will be a detailed list with information balloons some with White ( there nothing but notations) Others with a Yellow Triangle ( mean something should be looked at) and the problems to deal with immediately are the Red "X"s.

Once you have opened your column to the right and found RED X, then right click the line and left click "properties" a Dialog box will open and you will be able to scroll using the up and down arrows to display each error code individually.

Read the event codes in detail and memorize them as they will become a jibberish kind of speak, which comes in handy when working in a network environment.

What your looking for is lapses in Time, You could have turned your machine off or lost activity in that period also, or there is nothing wrong anywhere in the machine and its doing fine( Really ridiculous statement I just made, nothing wrong running windows, Ha!)

Any Questions so Far?

[Lagu]

Hi

I´dont know the right name on English but XP can be restored to another timepoint if there have been a program downloaded who make the computer instable.

Lagu :)

[Empty_5oul]

This is the only one that appears a few times recently and i dont understand. The only warning ones were that the clock wasn't in sync. And the only other red ones were trying to load servies which couldnt be found (old programs i had deleted)
anyway, whats this:


Event Type: Error
Event Source: ACPI
Event Category: None
Event ID: 10
Date: 15/01/2006
Time: 18:17:41
User: N/A
Computer: THERMALTAKE
Description:
ACPI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to write to an illegal PCI Operation Region (0x4), 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 03 00 52 00 ......R.
0008: 00 00 00 00 0a 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 ........

[Nflight]

Last known good configuration !

Just trying to help there Lagu, :lol:

[Empty_5oul]

thanks lagu.

i would do that - or just reinstall entirely. But i have a few programs installed which i need.

[Jeff]

Ya know, my graphics card turned out to be crashing my system. It too was a 6800 gt by EVGA

[Nflight]

This link will take you to a place to enter your system Info and find the questions about what is being displayed by the Event Veiwer:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/support/ee/ee_advanced.aspx

This may take some tinkering to figure out how to put what there asking in the boxes, the display I have is advanced I suggest trying the basic search, or even HELP for guidance. This is not for the fair at heart!

Instead of overwriting or re-installing you could try a repair of the disk which is causing you troubles.

At the CMD line type this: chkdsk c: /r ( or d or f or what ever your designation is for your disks) then hit enter, if you have multiple disks it may ask you for which one, DO NOT dismount - select N, then it will ask you if you would like to repair the disks on restart and place a Y . Close out of the CMD line by typing exit. Then restart the machine. I have repaired this machine numerous times just by using this method. process will take about 45 minutes to complete.

Here is the Troubleshooting Home Page for Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/support/default.mspx

[Lagu]

Hi

I´m glad to help. I think the fact we can restore the XP is something we often forget. We use this function so seldom.

Lagu ;) :)

[AMDave]

That is a great link from Nflight.
I had forgotten all about that.
I tried punching the data into the fields a couple of ways but kept coming up with nothing found. BaH M$.

Out on a limb here...

From what I can see in the error message, it looks like the BIOS is making a call to the system timer but addressing it incorrectly. The system timer should be address = 0x0040 and the system clock should be at address 0x0070. A system call down at 0x0004 would be in the PCI bus range.

In this case - assuming that you are running BIOS in RAM - I think the value stored in the address may have become corrupted and hence a call to a PCI BUS address and hence the reason that Windows XP has blocked the call.

Obviously I could be quite wrong and I hope there will be many who will tell me so, if I am.

For the address to become fouled in RAM or the register you may be looking at some fluctuation in voltage, overheating etc.

Is that machine O/C'd ?
Has it been running hot ?

I know that Windows XP doesn't have perfect handling of ACPI.
This is an important point.
This problem can be intermittent and it might never happen again.

There are 2 things you can do here before ripping open the case.
1 - check you have the latest BIOS update
2 - check you have all the Windows patches

Note re suggestion #2, this would not necessarily be a recent patch but could be an old one. If you have ever selected "no" to a Windows patch, you can re-enable those for review and download. If you don't they will never come down as they are stored in a "profile".

If it starts happening again, try disabling the ACPI feature and let Windows handle it all. It is quite capable of this. If it is the ACPI handling in Windows XP then the problems will cease immediately if you disable ACPI in BIOS.

If it still happens then you have to start thinking about what's inside the box and should change all your test-settings back to what they were and then start bench testing the hardware by swapping various components in and out.

If your mobo has an onboard D-Cell CMOS battery, I'd spring a couple of bucks for a fresh one.

I guess now we wait and see if it happens again?

[Nflight]

I myself have been dealing with errors upon errors on my XP machine, yes similar to the ones mentioned by Empty_5oul.
Those error messages have been giving me a headache lately. So when I dig real deep I have found that with the new software virus detector from microsoft which most of us run on our machines is at fault. This new program thinks my MJ12 Node is a sdbot Virus and better yet classify's it as a rootkit.
I lose the machine as soon as connectivity is lost even for a moment, ( I beleive my provider has a timer which goes off ever 3:30 to 4:00 hours just to phuck up my machine!).

I have removed my MJ12 node for the time being to see if this eleviates the problems I ahve been having. I have had to reboot my system every 3 or 4 hours for the past week. This morning I slept in and awoke to the system down again. I will remove the program and test the reliability for a duration which should mark the end of the lost up time.

I found the most help using the Event Veiwer (Properties of each Event) and letting the system show me what it has found on other systems as a result of the error codes. On this particular error I found there to be 7 variables to the possible cause, Nothing is ever easy!