XP SP2 Machine Freezing Woes....

seamus

Right,
XP Pro SP2, and the machine keeps freezing. The install of service pack 2 is probably unrelated. Has been bugging me now for about 3 weeks.

Brief synopsis:
Install SP2.

Install Azureus (Bittorrent client).

Machine starts freezing while Azureus is on (like, actually stopping, no KB response, no mouse response, if music is playing, the speakers emit the same tone as was playing when the machine froze)

Try different bittorrent clients, same deal.

Check Event viewer, resolve any errors that were occuring close to the time of the crash, one was a service failing to start - deleted service, the second one was the TCPIP "Too many connections errors". Got the hack for that.
Seemed to work for a while. No dice, started happening again.

Stumped, I stopped using Bittorrent temporarily.

Crashes start occuring again. Randomly, with different apps open, with the machine having been on for any amount of time. Machine could be on for 6 hours with no problem, or could crash after being on for just 6 minutes.

Decide XP could do with a reinstall. Do that, crashes after first boot. 30 minutes of my Saturday wasted . (I know it's not a SP2 problem because the install is only SP1)

Check event viewer again. Take a closer look at a list of disk errors that were occuring every time I booted after a crash - I assumed they were just errors caused by the disk being left in a certain state after the crash.

List of errors (some of these occure twice/three times in succession - probably just windows retrying the action)

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 11
Date: 12/09/2004
Time: 14:57:04
Description:
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk0\D

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Ftdisk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 31
Date: 12/09/2004
Time: 14:57:06
Description:
The fault tolerant driver could not read the on disk structures from disk 0

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 11
Date: 12/09/2004
Time: 14:57:06
Description:
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk1\D

Event Type: Error
Event Source: atapi
Event Category: None
Event ID: 5
Date: 12/09/2004
Time: 14:57:09
Description:
A parity error was detected on \Device\Ide\IdePort1

Event Type: Error
Event Source: atapi
Event Category: None
Event ID: 5
Date: 12/09/2004
Time: 14:57:10
Description:
A parity error was detected on \Device\Ide\IdePort0

Windows help recommended replacing the IDE cable, which I will do, but I'm a bit worried that it says parity errors on both IDE ports - how unlikely is it that both IDE ports would die together, or is numbered so that there are IdePort0-3, denoting the four possible Hard Disks? The latter would seem to suggest that Windows is right and the IDE cable is bust, or even worse, the IDE controller is ****ed.

Can anyone add anything more to this? The Drives are arranged so that IDE 0 has one HDD and a CDRW and IDE 1 has one HDD (Linux formatted, not used by windows) and a CD-ROM.
Do the errors above suggest that both IDE ports are screwed, and does this point to an IDE controller failure?

The crashes are getting more frequent now, and today sometimes when it boots, it detects the bootable disk on IDE 0, then says "Disk read error, press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to reboot".



(Probably about time I got a new motherboard and processor, but still....:()

airetam_storm

The latest hotfixes in the past week or so have been for problems that SP2 creats itself
But anyways what are u using XP for? 2000 is the best out for the moment

Stark

I've the same problem with XP SP2 and Azureus.

MazdaMan

You mention that one is Linux formatted, if linux is installed do you get similar issues in linux, this might point to a physical Hard disk problem.
The other reason would possibly be a windows or chipset (e.g Via, intel etc) IDE driver issue.
Try reinstalling the chipset driver. failing that try re-installing Windows Ide drivers in Device manager.

The Muppet

I hear the new windows XP SP2 can only handle a certain number of symontanoius tcp/ip connections and that could explain your torrent problems.

Have a look here for a patch.

seamus

MazdaMan wrote:

You mention that one is Linux formatted, if linux is installed do you get similar issues in linux, this might point to a physical Hard disk problem.
The other reason would possibly be a windows or chipset (e.g Via, intel etc) IDE driver issue.
Try reinstalling the chipset driver. failing that try re-installing Windows Ide drivers in Device manager.

Haven't really got access to it. I made a half-hearted attempt of a bootloader, but got bored cos I couldn't find drivers for my Wireless card .

I stuck in a new IDE card, and didn't have any problems, but I haven't given it a proper run yet

unkel

It's unlikely your IDE connections cause problems. They either work or they don't. Check a different IDE cable first. Update your motherboard drivers

It could be very well be your hard disk on IDE0 is on the way out. Make sure you back up everything and then maybe stick your other harddisk on this bus and install xp, seeing as you're not really planning on using it

Try running scandisk / defrag first on your current windows HDD and see if there are any errors / bad sectors

Let us know how it goes...

seamus

unkel wrote:

It's unlikely your IDE connections cause problems. They either work or they don't. Check a different IDE cable first. Update your motherboard drivers

It could be very well be your hard disk on IDE0 is on the way out. Make sure you back up everything and then maybe stick your other harddisk on this bus and install xp, seeing as you're not really planning on using it

Try running scandisk / defrag first on your current windows HDD and see if there are any errors / bad sectors

Let us know how it goes...

Yeah, I ran a full test on it with the Maxtor diagnostic OS (It's a Maxtor drive), including two sweeps with a burn-in test, and it came out as passed, no errors.
Motherboard drivers are up to date, but it's a fairly old motherboard at this stage - discontinued by the manufacturer, and rolled off the production line mid 2001.

It's weird, because I've seen HDD failures before, and it doesn't seem like one - it's taken 3 full installs of WinXP (long story) over the last few days, with no problem. I changed out the IDE cable, and all seemed OK, but then last night, I got the same "Cannot read from boot device" error, although Windows hasn't frozen on me at all.

I'm going to order a new motherboard anyway (and case and CPU Fan \o/), so I might just throw a new HDD in there with it and be done with it. I'll run chkdsk and the maxtor diags again and see if anything new crops up