I did do a thorough job of cleaning the inside - although I did not do the eraser thing on the contacts. Good idea. Remember, though, that the lines ARE all gone now.
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Need help tracking down why computer keeps hanging - have exhausted every possibility I can think of
This is a friend's computer. Almost 3 years old. Dell Dimension E520. Windows XP SP3. All Window updates up-to-date. 1Gybyte memory. 228GByte disk, 201GB free. Microsoft Office 2003.
Used by two high-school girls who only surf the net, sync their iPods, and use Word and Powerpoint.
SYMPTOM 1: The system hangs sporadically and upredictably. Sometimes one a day, sometimes thee or four. Sometimes when the girls are using Word or Powerpoint, sometimes when they're Internet Explorer, sometimes when they're not even doing anything but have simply walked away from the computer and returned only to find the desktop "frozen".
SYMPTOM 2: The girls also reported that there were "lines all through the display".
Other than the hanging/freezing problem, the system seems to be running fine. That is to say, the performance is good, no problems accessing the internet, etc.
WHAT I'VE DONE:
First the obvious:
Ran adware, spyware and antivirus programs: AVG AntiVirus, MalwareBytes, Spybot Search & Destroy, SpywareBlaster, Adaware (all but MalwareBytes were already on the pc and were kept up-to-date regularly). I ran all scans for each user (i.e., logged in as each user, than ran the scans). The antivirus programs did find and clean a couple of Trojans. I keep rebooting and re-running the scans until they ran clean. I thought cleaning off the Trojans would do the trick, but alas, no.
Checked that they had plenty of free disk space - they do.
Given the problem with "lines on the screen", I updated the video driver (nVidia Driver GeForce 7300 LE 128) - but this had no affect.
All of the above was done remotely using LogMeIn, and let me say this: while I was doing all this work, the computer never once hung on me, EXCEPT for one time when I was downloading the new video driver. The above work represents about 12 hours total of on-the-computer time, broken up into pieces, with some stints as short as an hour and others up to 5 hours.
THE NOT SO OBVIOUS THINGS:
Finally, I had to go on-site. I ran the Dell-supplied diagnostics for troubleshooting "System Hangs" problems. This included intensive memory and disk diagnostics and took about five hours. The computer never hung while these were running, and none of the diagnostics reported any problems.
Ran the video diagnostics: no problems found.
While I was there, however, the Mom reported that just before the system freezes, it's "really loud" and the computer gets really hot. So I asked, "really loud as in a fan is working hard" and she said yes. That's when I discovered that all of the air vents were fully clogged with dust! AHA, I thought - that's the problem. The computer is overheating. I vacuumed the thing out thoroughly (removed side panel and got inside, too).
I noticed the "lines across the screen" and looked into that. They were using an LCD monitor with an analog connection. I switched it to digital (DVI), since they had the cable and the computer had connections for both. Lines were still there. I went into Control Panel > Display > Troubleshoot. Hardware acceleration was "Full". On a hunch, I moved the slider to the middle - that got rid of the lines.
I left after being on-site for eight hours without a hang, confident that I had finally found the problem!
The Mom reported the next day that the computer had hung again that morning. Aaarrrggghhhhh!
SO - I'm looking for suggestions about what to try next!
Possible ideas - driver updates:
Bios: Dell-BIOS (recommended) - dated 7/11/2007 (I didn't install this because I wasn't on-site, and then when I was on-site, I thought sure I had solved the problem; I'm always a bit leery of updating the BIOS unless absolutely necessary).
Dell Driver updates (this is what Dell reported as "recommended" or "urgent" - I have only done the Video driver so far):
Chipset: Intel - Driver (urgent) - dated 6/25/2008 (I didn't install this because I read about it and it didn't sound relevant to the problem)
nVidia Driver (GeForce 7300 LE 128) - recommended - dated 6/11/2007 (I have installed this one)
Sonic Solutions-Patch/Upgrade (CinePlayer 3) - urgent - 1/2/2007 (I didn't install this because they don't use that software)
SATA Drives:
Intel-Application (Matrix Storage Manager) - recommended - 6/12/2007
Intel-Driver (Matrix Storage Manager) - recommended - 1/24/2008
I'm not looking for an answer as simple as "yes, install all the driver updates". If you think I should install a driver update, please tell me why you think it will help. (Thanks)
I'm looking for some constructive help on what you think the problem could be - what have I overlooked?
If you've gotten to here - thanks for reading all of this!
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Answers
In a hanging situation if first like to look at the event viewer to see if there are any particular drivers that may be conflicting/failing with the system. If there are no issues listed in the event viewer, I would then take a look at the temps of the machine and make sure that they are not too high. Having high temps can casue the machine to become unstable/freeze/lockup etc.
Another thing that can casue this is bad memory modules. Now you have said that you have been doing all of the work remotely are you able to look at the machine itself? I would try swaping out the ram modules one at a time, (blow out the dust accumulation) and also try swaping out the video card to make sure that this is not the culprit.
You can use Speed Fan to monitor the temps of yoru computer and memtest to test your ram modules.
Speed Fan - http://www.almico.com/sfdo
Memtest - http://hcidesign.com/memte
My first thought would be an overheating video card since display freezes rather than PC rebooting. From my experience, times between occurrences can vary greatly. Check that fan on card (if one is present) is operable and leave side panel off to improve cooling. The best test is to swap video cards.
I would do the following as a quick and easy test:
Shut down and remove the video card.
Re-connect the display to the onboard video. If it has been disabled, you will still have video. Once booted, go into device manager and re-enable the on-board vide and re-boot.
Sit back and wait and see what happens. I just spent a little over a week troubleshooting the same thing. It ran perfectly fine with the onboard video, but hated a video adapter. There was some issue that I could never resolve. It may be that the card itself is going bad or is borderline.
The other thing I would try is a different keyboard and mouse. The point you made about remoting in and never having trouble would eliminate almost everything except for local interaction.
flubbster: Thanks. Regarding the keyboard and mouse: I DID work at the computer in person for six hours on Saturday without a hiccup.
And are you suggesting that the video card could be the cause of the hanging? Or are you trying to tell me how to fix the "lines in the display" problem? Because the lines in the display problem are already fixed. Would a video diagnostic point to anything to explain the hanging? Because the video diagnostics I ran all came out fine.
Thanks.
1. When it hangs, how do you recover? Can users press ctrl-alt-del and get a Task Manager screen when it hangs? If so, are any processes at high cpu utilization
2. Are all of the adware and anti-virus running? Try disabling as many background programs as you can. If you feel uncomfortable diabling AVG leave it but disable all the others. Disable all the CD and music autoreaders except the ones you actively use. Real music, Roxio, zune rhapsody, etc. Run hikackthis to see what is actually running. I prefer it to the background systems because it isn't running all the time. Google any driver you don't recognize to determine if it is one you are using before deleting. A lot of programs these days have a license checker that is always running in the background. The license checker may be running even though you never use the program. After a few years, computer accumulate a lot of crappy background processes that sap CPU time and can cause memory leaks or conflicts .
3. The one most telling comment you made was that it can hang when no one is near the computer. To me that suggests memory leak or background process stuck. It can also be power glitch/spike. I think it is also significant that it doesn't hang when you are using remotely EXCEPT "one time when I was downloading..." Since it someimte oly hangs once a day, it seems consistent that it will occasionally work for long periods of time, even remotely.
4. You also had a lot of dirt that was causing some problems.
When you vacuumed the dust, did you open the metal power supply box and vacuum in there? A hot, (or old or weak) power supply can be flaky and have spikes.Beyond vacuuming the dust, you could try wipe canned air and/or Q-tips to clean off the the sticky crud from the power transistors. I know it says not to open the box on the sticker. Your life may depend on you unplugging the power cord and not touching any of the cylindrical obbjects (capacitors) in there, or the circuit board. Once you unplug the power cord the risk is to get a shock from the capacitor(s). If you don't understand what I am talking about, it;s best not to take the cover off, just gat canned air and stick the nozzle tube through the fan blades and try to loosen up the dust, then vacuum through the fan to get the dust out. Don't forget the dust mask.
5. Is there a working surge protector on the power line? Surge protectors typically have a surge part that works by destructiive absorption of spike. When it is all used up it stops protecting. More expensive power protection (like a powerr conditioner or UPS) has more passive elements that do not get used up but these are typically not found in low-priced surge protector power strips.
6. Still pressing the power glitch angle, are there any loose cord connections, cords that can get jiggled by passing people/pets. Did you try shaking the keyboard or mouse? Frequently those cables get intermittent because they get janked/jerked/dropped
7. I didn't see your answer about checking the event logs. I don't expect to see much there, but its easy to check. Any message about something "not found" can be related to hanging, although a hung process typically doesn't write a log..
8. Are all of the fans good, especially the ones on the cpu, video and motherboard? These are frequently small and if thhey are spinning slowly they may have worn bearings that may cuase it to stop unexpectedly.
9. Beyond that, an intermittent hangup is very hard to trouble shoot. If you have access to spares, start swapping out components starting with the power supply, ram sticks, mobo, video. Reinstall your Windows and all the programs, preferably onto a freshly-formatted disk. Short of a complete reinstall you can try to recover your system to a previous state before it started to hang.
Turn off your System Restore. Right click My Computer....Properties....
Do the Bios Update. Just make sure you back the current one up first. Also turn off any unnecessary hardware that may be consuming resources. ie pararlell ports, serial ports, etc. The less system resources in use the better. Just make sure you know and understand what you are disabling first. Also do you have the correct video adapter selected in the Bios??
You may want to rethink doing the chipset update as well.
I have tested memory and it has passed but yet some systems would still act strange. As cheap as memory is swap it out and see. Could be your problem all along.
lewko2: Thanks for your ideas. I used to service computers so I know all about working inside one. I've had a few shocks from capacitors in my day! ;-)
ALL: I can't get back to that computer until at least this weekend, so right now I'm studying all of your suggestions, but can't actually try anything yet. Thank you all.
You could also check the motherboard capacitors for damage, particularly those adjacent to the CPU.
You may well know that on many mobos there was premature failure of certain brands of electrolytic capacitors >
http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
also ..
http://www.thegeekpub.com/
As well as clearing out the dust (after the overheating!), you could also check the cpu/heatsink thermal paste junction, replacing the paste if necessary.
If the computer still hangs, see if there's a minidump, it's normally located in
c:\windows\minidump\
or %systemroot%\minidump\
If there is, can you paste the latest dump(s) in the "Attach Code Snippet" box and i'll take a look. You'll need to rename single minidump files first with a .txt extension, (do not rename the contents of the file). Alternatively zip them before attaching, and rename the .zip to .txt for the attaching (the upload).
You may need to disable auto restart:
Right click My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Startup and Recovery Settings and uncheck Automatically Restart.
If the final results are inconclusive, why not take another look at the original infection issue by running Combofix.
Download ComboFix and save to your Desktop >
http://download.bleepingco
Before using ComboFix please disable any realtime Anti-virus, Anti-spyware, Shields, etc. that you may have running.
Also it may be necessary to rename ComboFix.exe to Combo-Fix.exe or ComboFix5.exe (for examples), before saving it to your desktop. If you have difficulties downloading it, try downloading to another machine, then into a USB memory stick (or equivalent). Rename it and connect to the infected machine.
Double click "combofix.exe" and follow the prompts.
When it's finished it will have produced a Logfile, probably at C:\ComboFix.txt.
You could post that log together with a HijackThis log, in a reply for us.
Although you're probably familiar with ComboFix, please do not mouseclick Combofix's window while it is running, because it may stall.
It is absolutely normal for you to see a blue screen with flashing cursor, and this can last for up to 30 mins.
Ideally ComboFix should be run in normal mode.
I wanted to report back on this. My friend continued to have the hanging problems. I went over and checked all the heat-related things mentioned above but nothing solved the problem. Convinced that it had to be the video card or memory, I call Dell support. They told me how to circumvent the video card and use the on-board video instead, which I did. System still continued to hang.
Dell said that I should restore the computer back to its original state (two years ago!). They said most likely there was a software conflict somewhere. I put this off for as long as I could, hoping that it really was a hardware problem.
In the end, I restored back to factory-shipped state and restored all of the user's files (and the girls' iTunes!). Luckily it wasn't as much work as I had feared. Voila! It's been two weeks and the computer has not hung a single time, whereas before it was hanging at least once a day and often more.
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by: hatheharikenPosted on 2009-09-21 at 06:28:36ID: 25382590
you have overlooked the main reason for computers sputtering up and dying on you:-
Dust and Heat - with capital letters and all that!
i would like you open up the case, remove ALL the components, and clean up ALL the dust.
use a soft camel brush and a vacuum on the PCBs
clean the contacts (the golden edge of the PCI / AGP / PCI-e cards and RAM sticks) using a hard rubber eraser.
clean the processor heat sink of all dust and gunk
if necessary, wash the PCBs with Kerosene - no, it doesnt hurt the computer or you. just do this outdoors.
let dry for at least a day before assembling.
then if the lines are still there, try running a liveCD (like Ubuntu or Knoppix) for a few hours.
if there are no lines when running a liveCD, then you have no option other than a complete reinstall.
if there are lines when running a liveCD, then you may have to put in a new graphics card.
hathehariken.