So in the last two weeks of internetless computer use at home, my computer has developed a nasty habit of randomly and completely locking up. I can't find any pattern. Sometimes it happens during startup, sometimes its during my screen saver if its been idle for an hour, or my computer will be fine running for 2 days straight then all of the sudden lock up for no apparent reason. It will happen in the middle of a war i'm trying to wage against the Mayans in Civ 4. Really annoying. Now that I'm back in wow land, its still happening, which is REALLY pissing me off. Can't figure out why. I added no software, changed no configurations. The only difference is that I was not connected to my LAN. Now that I'm back connected, still the freezing. With no apparent consistency in its cause. Please someone give me an idea short of wipe/reinstall the OS.

If you haven't already, I would suggest running an immediate memory test, Microsoft has a decent memory tester you can download and burn to CD or copy to Floppy and run on boot.

It looks like you're really oposed to a fresh install... but I gotta say... nothing keeps a computer healthy like wiping it clean and starting fresh.

I install mine from a ghost cd every couple months.

I did what Jam said and ran the microsoft memory test from a boot cd:

FAILED
FAILED
FAILED
FAILED
FAILED
FAILED
FAILED
FAILED
...

etc.

I would think that if it were REALLY that bad, my computer wouldn't function at all, which it does just fine except for these random freezes. I'm going to have to dig deeper into this test program to see if I'm running it right.

I think you might be right though fox, I usually do a clean wipe every six months or so, but its such a pain in the ass.

This is a good one also. http://www.memtest86.com/
There is a free download on there.

Bren, a good memory test will really stress the hell out of the memory. I once set a machine on fire with a test I had written. You might also look into your power supply. If the voltage is off just enough, it wil cause flakey memory. The bottom line is that things could be off just enough to randomly lock up.... but the failed memory test is probably a good indicator. If you have multiple dimms, you could try pulling them all out, put one back in, run the mem test and see if it passes. Repeat this with all the dimms to see if only one is bad. Replace that one with a matching dimm, run the tests again.. etc. Chasing down intermittent problems is no fun...
Good luck.

*Note to self* Do not run any tests Slowman has writen.

Ah, but if it passes my tests, you know it's good.....

SM

It may very well be the voltage problem, because I've had those before (being in Europe, everything is 220). Running it through a transformer was causing me lots of problems, but i eventually went out and bought a 220 power supply and havent really had problems like that until now.

Also, since I've been back online, its been happening a lot less. Maybe my computer was just going through its WoW-addiction withdrawl?

So weird.

Being able to have a PC spontaneously burst into flames is an admirable

talent, Slow. The best that I can claim is a puff of smoke out of a speaker.

This wasn't a pc, it was a REDACTED1600 Mini-comp that drove a sub simulator. It was about a 400K$ machine at the time. REDACTED sold it to the Navy as a turn-key system, with no diagnostic or test software. My boss asked me to write a memory test, which I did in machine language. I, among other things, caused all of the memory locations to go high (draw voltage) at one time. REDACTED (the cheap bastards) had assumed that no more than 30% of the memory locations would be high at any given time. They undersized the busses on the memory cards. When I hit the memory with the last step of the test (all high) the damn things burst into flames.
The Navy made REDACTED redesign and replace all of the memory boards in about 500 of these machines. REDACTED did not offer me a job when I retired.
Go figure.

Slowman

PS, I redacted the company name because I'm only 80% sure of which company it was. I am 100% sure the machine was crap.

What percentage of a standard desktop can go high at the same time?
I mean, if you ran that test on my Dell, would it blow up too?

One way to find out.

Any decent quality dimm will handle all memory locations going high at the same time.
Slowman