Help me?

[stevo1210]

The computer in my room which I frequently use to do homework and assignments with has recently decided to be retarded in some strange way. Every so often it does this random freeze which lasts for half a second and does it in random 10 or 15 second intervals. A restart usually solves the problem.
When I say freeze, I mean complete freeze meaning I cannot move the mouse or use t keyboard and the sound or music that I am playing also freezes for a minuscule amount of time. It's annoying the crap out of me. But nonetheless, I can still use my computer, even so I am typing this with it now.
I recently reformatted it and reinstalled Windows XP SP2 on it as well. I just ran disk defragmeter (didn't defragment, just analyzed the hard disc) and about 40% of my drive is fragmented.... dunno if that's the problem to what happening, but I think it would explain why it's so slow.... probably due to a largely fragmented hard drive.

My computer has the following specs.

* Intel Pentium 4 HT 530J CPU (3.00 GHz)
* Intel DP965LT motherboard
* 2x G-Skill DDRII 667MHz 512MB RAM sticks
* Abit ATi Radeon X600XT 128MB graphics card
* Pioneer DVR-215D SATA DVDRW
* IBM Deskstar 40GB 7200RPM IDE Hard drisk drive (connected to motherboard IDE channel)
* Dell/ Newton (Delta electronics) 300W 20 pin ATX PSU
* Some generic wireless USB keyboard and mouse combo.
* Sampo 70FA2 15" LCD monitor.

I dunno if hardware plays a factor in the issues that are being caused at the moment, but I guess theres a slim chance.

Anyway, it would be nice if I could solve this issue with the annoying random freezes. So any input would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[kikkoman]

Re: Help me?

does it have a wifi card? i've seen quite a few bad wifi drivers causing freezes like that, especially with Ti chipsets.

[stevo1210]

Re: Help me?

does it have a wifi card? i've seen quite a few bad wifi drivers causing freezes like that, especially with Ti chipsets.

Yes it does and my wifi card also uses a TI chipset. So that could be the problem? How do I solve it?

Thanks.

[Wizard]

Re: Help me?

Interesting.

How can I tell a wireless have Ti chipset? And, what one that is considered GOOD?

Also P4 can make your PC skip and freeze, pauses if the CPU is not cooled enough due to thermal underclocking protection to protect CPU.

Cheers, Wizard

[kikkoman]

Re: Help me?

@stevo:
a good tool to trace down these dropouts is this DPC latency checker:
http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml
they have a good description how to do that.
if the wifi really turns out to be the cause, you can try a different IRQ (either by changing the PCI slot or by reserving the current one in the BIOS).
this often helps.
next step would be different drivers. check latest drivers and beta releases first.
quite often drivers from different mfr's (same chipset) work as well.
i remember one particular Ti card from DLink that would only work properly with USRobotics drivers for a year or so until DLink released good ones.

@wizard:
you usually can tell by looking at the card unless the chipset is shielded.
you can also look in the .inf driver.
what do you mean by 'good'? generally?
i've had really good experiences with Atheros cards.
if it's just normal use (54mbit, no funny stuff like wifi cracking or these proprietary booster things) any cheap card will do fine, i'd just avoid TI chipsets.

[zandrax]

Re: Help me?

@ Stevo: there are some badly written drivers which blocks the cpu with their interrupts for 1000s or 10000s of microseconds (millionth of second: a very very long wait for the cpu, since it executes instructions every fraction of billionth of second [GHz]): the computer seems behaving erratically, with a lot of small pauses. DPC Latency Checker or Microsoft's xperf can mesaure how long the cpu is blocked from these drivers: DPC L.C. is straightforward to use but detects only the global time for all drivers, so you have to run it multiple times disabling a driver each time in order to detect the culprit; xperf is way more precise and detailed (queries directly the kernel and is capable of identifying the single misbeheaving driver calling that damned function) but is a command-line tool, harder to use and requiring an external viewer for analyzing its log (a Vista-only MS program bundled with it or any spreasheet application for reading CSV tables).

Anyway DPC pauses usually last a fraction of a second and makes the computer jerky but not completely irresponsive, yours last for 10-15 seconds and lock everything: your hard disk is an IBM Deskstar with a suspicious capacity, I fear it's dying. Backup everything, check it with Hitachi/IBM Drive Fitness tool and look for SMART warning or lots of bad sectors.

Zandrax

[kikkoman]

Re: Help me?

oh yeah. didn't notice that deathstar. it's a ticking bomb. wasn't there a firmware fix for these?

nevertheless my bet's still on the wifi card.

[i4004]

Re: Help me?

fragmentation is never really a problem.

"Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 41 %
File fragmentation = 83 %"

fragmented disk? sure
slow? not at all....

another one(system disk):

"Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 18 %
File fragmentation = 37 %"

slow?
nope...
same as it ever was...

[stevo1210]

Re: Help me?

oh yeah. didn't notice that deathstar. it's a ticking bomb. wasn't there a firmware fix for these?

My Deskstar isn't a 75GXP-series drive. It's a something else and I've had it since 2001 and so far it's still fine. But I will run the utilities to confirm that point.
As for the CPU, I don't think it's overheating. It idles at about 47-50c and around 60c under full load. CPU heatsink is correctly mounted and the fan is running as it should. However, I will use the utilities to check for latency problems.

Thanks.

[jpdoe]

Re: Help me?

You have a GB of RAM, so I guess this is not the cause... but whenever I'm in front of a sluggish system, the first thing I look at is the memory usage on the windows task manager. Constant swapping can be a reason of such pauses.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Help me?

I had a Realtek card a few months ago that made my PC do something really similar (it would freeze for a minute or two at a time, then come back, then do it again a few minutes later, etc. etc.). Different versions of the drivers changed the intervals at which it froze. I returned the card and got an Atheros, and it's been smooth sailing ever since. I agree with Kikkoman, it sounds like the WiFi card.

I've found Atheros and Broadcom make extremely good chipsets, everything else I've ever tried pales in comparison. If you live near a Fry's, they often have an "Airlink101 108Mbps" WiFi card. It's a rebadged Atheros card, and can be had for $15 (they regularly go on sale, at least one weekend a month). Cheapest way to get a rock solid Atheros-based card. I've got two in my desktop and my brother's desktop, and they have performed exceedingly well.