[RESOLVED] Odd, annoying problem.

[Mrdyg]

I'm a frequent reader of the cases on this message board, but this be my first time making a post, as my last resort. I have absolutely no leads as to the cause of the problem, so it's almost impossible to determine a solution. Perhaps you all can give me some ideas.

A Compaq computer I received in 1999 was shipped with Windows 98 and some preinstalled software. I could care less for what was on the disk, so I formatted and installed my own Windows 98 second edition, and have since kept it fairly up to date with downloads from windowsupdate. Never experienced a problem I couldn't handle, blue screens were rare because I know how to tame the OS.

Around fall of 2000, over a year of pleasant usage, I trashed Win98SE for Windows 2000. As always, I stayed current with updates from windowsupdate, and even did some high level hacking and experimenting with the OS... and never experienced any real issues.

Summer of 2001, this year, I planned to purchase a new computer so I sold this one to a client of mine in its current state. Here's where the problems begin. ;-) A week or so after her usage, the computer is now experiencing odd and frequent freezing for a temporary interval each time. In some cases, it happens randomly, but there are a few instances where I can definitely reproduce this freezing behavior every time. One, it happens when I click the submit button on the google.com front page, whether a query has been typed or not. This happens on a lot of web pages, but on some pages it happens when I click a form field for text or button. In the other, seemingly random cases, it happens when loading an application or closing a dialogue box. In other cases, an app will just close out completely, without any freezing, blue screen or other message - a definite case I can reproduce this is randomly while playing Ziggurat's Chess (by a developer from MS), for example, or The Sims. Yes, I understand that Win2k wasn't built for games, but this is what she uses the computer for; and at any rate, switching OS's would not fix the problem, as I'll introduce in a moment.

The freezing doesn't disable the whole computer, just the active application. And it only lasts for about three minutes (more or less 150-200 seconds). But wait, there's more. I figured that over the years, perhaps I've put too much pressure on my Win2k installation, so I installed Win98SE for her as an alternative OS in a dual boot environment. Win98SE now experiences the same symptoms, both with and without downloads from windowsupdate, except that now instead of freezing for a short period, it actually blue screens and forces the originated app to close, or a restart, which is not a real suprise since Win98 is less robust than Win2k. You'd think, as I did, it must be that Win98SE is weak and feeble. But, for Win98SE to run well for over a year, then an entirely fresh install to blue screen every other double-click, you will wonder.

So, I installed a FRESH new installation of Win2000 SP2 as well in the dual-boot environment. Guess what? Same problems. Both with and without downloads from windowsupdate. This leads me to believe there is a problem with the computer's hardware, which by the way, has been the same configuration since I received the machine in 1999, except for the addition of a second IDE HDD:

54MB of DIMM. 4G original, and 3G additional disk, the makes of which I forget at the moment. Creative Modem Blaster 56k. SiS 530 for graphics. ESS Solo PCI for sound. (If you might attribute this problem to IE, think again... since it occurs with IE 5.0, 5.5, and 6.0 on either Win2k or Win98.) A generic CDROM I don't even know the speed of. Generic floppy. Etc etc etc. Basically, the common config of a Presario computer (model 5300).

At best, someone has experienced such a case and can give me a hint on how to solve it. But, I would appreciate any push in the right direction. 6 years hacking at Windows computers and I've never encountered a problem as such that I could not hurdle. Tommorow when I go over there, I plan to begin removing hardware pieces one by one, and intermittently fiddling with the OS to see if I can identify if any particular piece is causing a problem. And a surface scan with scandisk of both disks (FAT32, uncompressed) has already been performed with no errors reported.

Thanks


------------------
"suck" - me.

[shamus]

My first thought is when you formatted the HD you toasted the Compaq partition. Most of those babies have a 8 meg (give or take) partition.And they get really pissy if you get rid of it.Go to the Compaq site and try and find the service pack that will hopefully allow you to reinstall that partition....or if you have the restore disk, run it.You'll probably have to reintall the OS also.

------------------
"Those people that dance are considered insane by those people that can't hear the music."
George Carlin

[Vette2000]

Did she, possibly, install software for a printer or other device where the software is not Win2000 compatable? If she's going to play games, like shamus said, you may be better off to run the restore disk and put it back on Win98 SE. If she has anything critical you can back it up and restore it after you run the restore disk.

------------------
If walking is so good for you, then why does my mailman look like Jabba The Hut?

[Milenko]

My memory is failing me at the moment, but I DO remember a post like this several months ago. I don't, however, remember the reolution. I'll do some looking through the archives if I get time.

------------------
Me invent wheel.
Me discover fire.
Me build server.
NT = Neaderthal Technology

[GHSTECH]

I would try a new hard drive. It sounds like it is having trouble reading so it will likely soon fail completly. Most of these systems shipped with quantum "bigfoot" harddrives which are very slow and prone to sudden failure. A new drive would also get you about a 20% increase in speed...

[KaptainKillgore]

<font face="Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Geneva" size="2">Originally posted by GHSTECH:
I would try a new hard drive. It sounds like it is having trouble reading so it will likely soon fail completly. Most of these systems shipped with quantum "bigfoot" harddrives which are very slow and prone to sudden failure. A new drive would also get you about a 20% increase in speed...</font>

I agree....my first guess would be replace the harddrive....ESPECIALLY if its a bigfoot hard drive....


------------------

1997 RS
[email protected]
AIM SN "KaptainKillgore"

[Mrdyg]

In response to Vette, I did forget to mention this, but such a new printer was installed. Well, it's not new, it's actually very old. Doubtful that a 'compaq partition' has anything to do with this, since after I formatted and installed Win98SE clean it worked very well for over a year. Though I'm inclined to agree that one of the HD's are experiencing signs of failure. Especially since, when I installed Win98 and Win2k in a dual boot environment, Win98 was on the second (3gig) disk, and I don't even remember where I got this disk from... :P Yes, I am a hardware junk collector. We will see when I go over there later today. First task is to is nix the printer.

------------------
"suck" - me.

[Mrdyg]

Problem solved.

For the record, in case anyone else has a similar problem and looks at this post. You all were right in inferring that the HDD is experiencing signs of pending failure. Though it seems to work fine, it (the original 4G disk) randomly pause on read access even in DOS. So using MSKB article Q249694 I ported Win2k installation to a different disk and all is fine now. Thanks peeps

------------------
"suck" - me.