Random windows lockups

April 10, 2007 6:52 PM

Windows XP: my wife's computer locks up a few times a day, but there are no other symptoms. What could be wrong?

My wife's computer (Windows XP Pro SP2) has started randomly locking up a few times per day. Nothing has been changed on the system recently. There aren't any other symptoms to give me a hint about what's going wrong. Google and the MS KB aren't much help with such a generic sounding issue.

Any ideas on where to start?

posted by samw to computers & internet (16 comments total)

It probably is a hardware issue. Do you have any extra RAM laying around that you can replace the current RAM with? Also, check to see that your CPU and other devices aren't overheating.
posted by mand0 at 6:57 PM on April 10, 2007

What do you mean "it locks up"? Does it stop responding, or does it bluescreen? Does it stay "stuck" or does it eventually free itself from stuck-itude?

These things matter.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:13 PM on April 10, 2007

Get memtest86, burn it to a CD, boot it and run it overnight. If you see red in the morning, try new RAM.
posted by putril at 7:13 PM on April 10, 2007

You should also probably run Prime95 or some other stress-testing software for a little while to determine if your components can be stressed. Often times, power supply or cooling issues can be caught when stress testing. I had a computer that sat around too long in a closed drawer - Prime95 caught that there was probably some heat related damage. It still works, but it gives random errors at times. Probably not worth it to start replacing components to determine which component was damaged, but it's good to know.
posted by meowzilla at 7:36 PM on April 10, 2007

No extra ram laying around, unfortunately.

By "lock up", I mean, whatever was on the screen stays there, and the machine becomes unresponsive. No blue screen, no recovery. Only a hard restart does the trick.

This seems to happen whether or not the machine is being used, i.e. independent of stress factors. I'll check on core and case temperatures, and I'll run memtest tonight.

More suggestions welcome.
posted by samw at 8:06 PM on April 10, 2007

Bad drivers will do this too. I've noticed that certain wifi drivers or USB video/audio devices will cause system lock-ups.
posted by spiderskull at 8:12 PM on April 10, 2007

Could be any number of things. One way to zero in on the problem is to identify what changed (if anything) before this started happening and reverse it, then see if the problem still occurs. Sounds like that might not be helpful in this case, so my next step would be to unplug the current hard drives and install a freshly formatted drive with a minimal os installed and see if it still occurs. You could also simply boot off a cd or floppy and run a stress-testing app to achieve a similar result, which is to determine if the problem is software or hardware.

Assuming a hardware issue, the most common problems I've encountered are: Heat issues (blow the dust out, add cooling, reapply heat sink paste) or defective components (unplug everything unnecessary and/or swap parts to isolate faulty components). It can also be a combination, flaky parts which fail under hot conditions.

If the problem is software, you can doink around to figure out what is glitched, or start over with a fresh install of the o/s.
posted by Manjusri at 8:38 PM on April 10, 2007

The last three times I've seen machines do this, it's because there's been so much dust wedged into the CPU heatsink that the fan couldn't get any air at all through it. You might want to open up the case and have a look; if it's filthy inside, get somebody who knows what they're about to clean it up.
posted by flabdablet at 9:18 PM on April 10, 2007

Actually there's a quick check you can probably do without even opening the case. Next time it locks up, turn off the power at the mains, then get into the BIOS setup screens by pounding on Delete or Alt-F1 or Alt-Esc or whatever crazy key sequence works for you, and look for something called PC HEALTH. That should show you what your current CPU temperature is. If it's anywhere near 60°C, you're almost certainly looking at an overheating issue, and it's almost certainly dust-related.
posted by flabdablet at 9:21 PM on April 10, 2007

Yeah, I've had the dust problem before, so I already tried cleaning out the dust. There wasn't much, and cleaning it didn't have any affect. Also, an hour of the torture mode in prime95 hasn't induced a lockup.

Of course, like an idiot, I forgot that I did change something in that box recently: a wifi card. I've disabled it, so we'll see if the computer makes it through the night. Status report tomorrow!
posted by samw at 9:59 PM on April 10, 2007

If it's still glitching, yank the card out temporarily to firmly establish it's not the cause. Also, if you moved other cards around, put them back in their original slots.
posted by Manjusri at 11:52 PM on April 10, 2007

"Nothing has changed recently" doesn't sound like XP to me. MikeySoft crams all kinds of updates down your throat constantly. Are you sure nothing has changed?

Boot into safe mode (f8) and let it run long enough (a day or two) to see if it locks up. If it does, work on the hardware angle, not software.

If it doesn't, work on the software angle. A good start would be to backup her work and reinstall windows.

Your question is very open ended, but were it my machine, I'd probably do the registry cleaning, autoruns, virus scan, spyware purge, stuff first and try to minimize the amout of crap running on the machine. In my PC world, less is best. If she has 1000 little programs running there are abundant opporunities for conflicts that make things lock up.

Good luck.
posted by FauxScot at 1:51 AM on April 11, 2007

Might be a longshot, but open the machine and look at the capacitors. The tops of them should be FLAT and shiny. If there's any corrosion, you may have CAPACITOR PLAGUE, which is a problem I had a while back, and resulted in the same problem your wife is having.
posted by sunimplodes at 3:56 AM on April 11, 2007

Well, overnight the machine restarted itself, but didn't lock up. I'll keep an eye on it for a few days, and try the other suggestions. Thanks for the help, all.
posted by samw at 9:19 AM on April 11, 2007

If it's software, you might find a hint if you right-click "my computer" then go manage-->system tools-->event viewer-->system.
posted by juv3nal at 10:31 AM on April 11, 2007

Some good photos of capacitor plague in this article from Silicon Chip magazine.
posted by flabdablet at 10:44 PM on April 11, 2007