I’ve got a dual boot system, with both W2000 Pro, SP whatever, and XP Pro, SP3. I’m using XP Pro all the time now. Last time I tried booting to 2000 it told me that so many things needed updating, so I just quit. I think I’ll eventually just delete the W2000 partition.<\/p>\n
Anyway,,XP has been very stable, with no memorable “events”, since I figured setting the BIOS for “optimal” or “best performance” (I forget which one I chose) cleared up some freezing and unable to boot problems, over a year ago.<\/p>\n
However, lately (in the past year) I’ve had a new addition, a PCI card for USB 2.0. It has 4 available ports to the outside and one inside the case. I’ve noticed that when I begin doing things with a thumb drive, using the interior port, or even the external ones, the system becomes unstable and won’t boot, won’t shut down, etc.<\/p>\n
I got through that, and it seemed it was gone, but recently I did something with the internal USB port (on the card) that crashed the system again, and this time, it seems as if it isn’t done screwing with me. Now, whenever I go away from the computer for a length of time (haven’t fully defined exactly WHAT “length of time” yet, though it seems to happen after a relatively short period, say, 15 minutes or so), I come back to find it frozen where I left it. If it was re-booting (automatic Windows updates, for example), it froze in reboot, and I’m looking at a blank screen. If it froze where I left it, the cursor and keyboard are simply not responding, and Ctrl-Alt-Delete doesn’t work either, so in any case, I have to simply do a hard shut-down and start, or push the restart button, and it comes up ready to rock.<\/p>\n
But it seems to freeze almost any time I leave it. Sometimes I’ll come back and turn on the monitor, and get no response from the mouse (black screen, or Windows XP screen).<\/p>\n
I’ve disabled Power Management in BIOS, disabled any screen saving (“none”).<\/p>\n
Well,,I was surprised that this time, I came back to the computer and it was responding. Nothing was left open. But last time I did the same thing, I found it locked up, cursor unresponsive.<\/p>\n
I’m just scratching my head trying to decide what to do next.<\/p>\n
Worst case, I’ll save a bunch of stuff on a spare HDD and re-boot to the XP disc and do a re-install, this time without the W2000 partition. (Though I have no idea whether the problem will still remain or not.)<\/p>\n
I’m wondering about the CMOS battery. What is the lowest voltage it should read, in “SIW” without affecting the performance of the computer?<\/p>\n
Anyway,,anyone out there got any ideas? Memory seems to check out okay.<\/p>\n
Maybe I’ll unplug it, take it downstairs and blow out the dust, remove cards and connectors and re-connect everything, just to make sure it isn’t dust or connector corrosion related.<\/p>\n
Oh,,I’m also hearing something new, like a “mosquito” quickly buzzing and then stopping, in the area of the hard drives, sometimes, when it’s accessing something I guess. It seems to be a new sound, though just yesterday I re-checked the two hard drives with a Seatools diagnostic ISO CD I made. Both drives passed the long test with no problems.<\/p>\n
If I had a million bucks, I’d just buy some new hardware and build again, but I don’t, so I’m trying to make this circa 2000 computer last.<\/p>\n
I’ve also tried diddling with BIOS defaults, for instance “F6” and “F7”, which, respectively, put the BIOS into “optimal” performance or “best” performance mode. This is what I did back when it was messing up before, and wouldn’t shut down or boot, and it worked that time. It’s been smooth sailing up ’til now, since then.<\/p>\n
I think it worked that time because something about the memory timing was off, and the default setting worked to fix that.<\/p>\n
Haaaalp!!!<\/p>\n
edit: Just re-booted and it froze in the “windows is shutting down” screen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"iawp_total_views":7},"question-category":[76],"question_tags":[],"class_list":["post-7254","question","type-question","status-publish","hentry","question-category-windows-xp"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/computing.net\/answers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/question\/7254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/computing.net\/answers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/question"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/computing.net\/answers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/question"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/computing.net\/answers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/computing.net\/answers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/computing.net\/answers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"question-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/computing.net\/answers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/question-category?post=7254"},{"taxonomy":"question_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/computing.net\/answers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/question_tags?post=7254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}