On Windows and Locking Up

an_alt

My htpc is suddenly giving me grief after threeish years of trouble free operation. It's an AMD 2500+ with XP Pro SP2 and all the Windows and driver updates I can have.

It started locking towards the end of running all the startup apps. Just a complete freeze with no reaction to the mouse or keyboard. It works fine in safe mode. To solve the issue, I ran Spybot, Ad Aware, Windows Defender, and an AVG virus scan without seeing anything but a few cookies. Next I started disabling the startup apps about five at a time until it would boot all the way into XP without locking. Then I started reenabling the apps I had first disabled and all was well. Well, up until 5-25 minutes in. Now it just locks up (no reaction to the keyboard or mouse) at some random point after loading normally whether it's doing something or not. Safe mode is still fine. I'm running out of ideas. The event log isn't showing anything too interesting.

I'm assuming this is a DLL issue. Any comments if I'm right on this? I'd really hate to have to reload XP on this machine as some of the software on it was a bitch to install and tweak (I both love and hate Beyond TV). Could anyone give me some tips on how to diagnose and fix this issue?

I would really like to have my PVR and pr0n back. Thanks in advance for any help.

FirstComradeStalin

Maybe try using system restore to go back to a previous point where it does work?

Sarcastro

Are you using USB mouse/keyboard? Sounds like everything is ticking along fine with generic drivers and default interrupts until something comes along and kicks in an alternative driver/hardware call. I'd hunt down the manufacturer specific drivers for your keyboard and mouse (or the quickfix- k/m driver nuke and reboot) and make sure they're up to date.

The keyboard gets a pretty high-end interrupt call, right down at the base hardware level (y'know that 'keyboard not found' thing at POST? That's some foundation level comm shit right there) For this to fuck up, something else with equal priority has to be commandeering that interrupt. Pretty common (relatively) for USB devices, could be one of your other USB's is taking over the hardware call; trim them all and then reboot, plugging in one at a time until you have the issue.

Also, for some truly weirdass weirdness, try reinstalling/updating your video card- most these days come with hardware acceleration, and work pretty intimately with mice to provide smooth cursur movement in heavy 3-D. The high-end of the video driver is one of the last things to load (generally they start with 256color and then kick in the 3-d accelration stuff post app load, the acceleration being a type of postboot app) so one or two fingers point there if it's not a USB issue.

an_alt

I tried a last known good configuration, but that just led to the same result.

The keyboard is USB and uses the drivers that came with it. The mouse is PS2. I'll try swapping the keyboard to see if that changes anything, along with reloading the ati drivers. I was thinking of uninstalling SP2 and reloading that as well, just in case the problem is a corrupt Windows DLL.

Thanks for the advice so far. Any other help is appreciated.

Sarcastro

Sounds like a good start anyway. Reinstalling SP2 is a good idea as well. Also, check if maybbe you don't have a USB scanner/printer or something. sometimes those can get messy.

Ruckus

FirstComradeStalin wrote: »

Maybe try using system restore to go back to a previous point where it does work?

Man, the first thing anybody who knows Windows and wants performance does is disable System Restore on all drives.

Doing a Repair install of Windows might do it, it's usually not as destructive as a complete format/reinstall of windows, but it can still wreck stuff, so backup what data you can before you do it.

Additionally, if you actually want to troubleshoot the issue, you can check your system log for errors around the time of the crash.

Right Click on My Computer, choose "Manage".

Expand the Event Viewer area and click the "System" log, and it should list events in chronological order.

You may want to check Application logs too.

Iroh

If you're disabling apps five at a time from msconfig's startup tab, you have got way too much shit going on. Your processor isn't exactly a speed demon, and I'm guessing you don't have a whole lot of memory in that machine either. If that's true, you're probably loading it down with more than it can handle.

Can you give us a list of what applications you think need to run at startup? It's pretty clear that you need to check this out, given that the problem went away when you stopped cramming the startup phase full of programs, if for nothing other than eliminating it as a factor.