locking up

[Steven Hill]

I have WinXP on an hp pavilion ze1115 with an AMD Duron
1.1 Ghz chip and 256 MB Ram. I have been having a problem
with this computer just locking up. When it does, nothing
happens. The mouse does not respond, and no keys respond.
I can not CTL-ALT-DEL and have to end up powering down. I
use this computer for application development and I
thought that it mightbe the IDE that I use and have been
working the problem from that approach, but today it
locked up with just the Windows Explorer and MSOE open. I
was trying to start a third app and had double clicked
the shortcut on the desktop when it locked up. This only
started a couple of weeks ago. At first, I thought it
might have been a power source issue. I was at a
different location and thought that there might be a
power issue. Then it happened at home where I had never
had the problem before. I had recently added a USB
device, so I uninstalled it, thinking that it might have
caused problems. But, it started happening more often,
and I noticed that it was always while working in the IDE
that I use, so I started looking into that. It is a 16bit
application, so I set compatibility to Win95, and I also
checked the box for it to run in its own memory space.
Nothing seemed to work. Then, it happened when that app
was not running, so here I am. This computer has always
been updated with the auto update feature. I always
install the latest updates. It also has Norton Antivirus
running on it, and I always accept the live updates for
that as well. This computer has been running for close to
a year without any problems and it has always been used
the same way.

Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

Steven Hill
Martin GA, USA

[Ian A.]

"Steven Hill" > wrote in message
...
> I have WinXP on an hp pavilion ze1115 with an AMD Duron
> 1.1 Ghz chip and 256 MB Ram. I have been having a problem
> with this computer just locking up. When it does, nothing
> happens. The mouse does not respond, and no keys respond.
> I can not CTL-ALT-DEL and have to end up powering down. I
> use this computer for application development and I
> thought that it mightbe the IDE that I use and have been
> working the problem from that approach, but today it
> locked up with just the Windows Explorer and MSOE open. I
> was trying to start a third app and had double clicked
> the shortcut on the desktop when it locked up. This only
> started a couple of weeks ago. At first, I thought it
> might have been a power source issue. I was at a
> different location and thought that there might be a
> power issue. Then it happened at home where I had never
> had the problem before. I had recently added a USB
> device, so I uninstalled it, thinking that it might have
> caused problems. But, it started happening more often,
> and I noticed that it was always while working in the IDE
> that I use, so I started looking into that. It is a 16bit
> application, so I set compatibility to Win95, and I also
> checked the box for it to run in its own memory space.
> Nothing seemed to work. Then, it happened when that app
> was not running, so here I am. This computer has always
> been updated with the auto update feature. I always
> install the latest updates. It also has Norton Antivirus
> running on it, and I always accept the live updates for
> that as well. This computer has been running for close to
> a year without any problems and it has always been used
> the same way.
>
> Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated.
>
> Steven Hill
> Martin GA, USA
>


A couple of times I have seen systems act in exactly the same way. Both
times it turned out to be a poor power connection to the hard drive. It
seems as if the hard drive momentarily loses power the system will lockup in
this manner. Try switching the hard drive to a different power connector.

Ian