Windows ME screen lock up Please Help.

[maci]

I am running a AMD 900 on a Asus A7V with 256K 133, 2- 30G hard drives hooked up to Ultra 100, 32 MB 4x Geforce M2.

The computer locks up at least 4-5 times a day...the mouse moves but everything else locks up. I have swapped memory..did nothing...swapped video cards...did nothing and put my hard drive in the standard bay..that did not help either.
Is this a hardware or bios problem? Or is it a Windows ME problem? Any reccomendations on how to fix it?

[kaz101]

Morning
thanks for system specs :)

do you know what your system resources are like at the time of locking up and is there any particular applications you have running that cause it?

you may have already done so but if not throw it through maintenance wizard for a bit of a cleanout/scan/defrag.

btw did you upgrade to ME, has it always done it or has it just come about recently? Pop in and check the drivers, have a poke around for updates etc

[maci]

I did upgrade to ME and I constanly check for updates as well as defrag and the whole bit.
Could it be the system resources? I hardly have anything running...in a matter of fact I log out of programs and my system resources never recover. It has always done this since I upgraded...and sometimes it even locks up when the screen saver is running and no other programs (the power settings have all been disabled in both windows and the bios)

If it is the resources..why doesn't ME recover the memory and why does it constantly drain away? (The memory is only a few months old and I already swapped it and the problem is unchanged)

[kaz101]

sounds like you've done all the right things :)

there's a variety of things that can cause what you're experiencing... overheating (if your crashing after using it for a while), power management is another cause (from what you've said it sounds like you've already disabled Advanced Power Management) and of course problems with system resource management. There's a nifty wee program called MaxMem from AnalogX which you might like to try out. You can grab it HERE (http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/system/maxmem.htm) and it's freeware :D set the min and max to what your happy with, let it run loose for a while and see what it can do for you. Memory leaks are 'usually' caused by software so if you want to find the culprit your best bet is to drop off all running apps (ctrl+alt+del to make sure there isn't any sneaky ones in the background) run rescource meter, open a suspect program, use it briefly, close it and see if it releases the resources... work your way through the applications you normally use until you find out which one (or ones) are causing the problem. Take MemMax off when you're doing this so it doesn't manage the memory for you ;)

[ 29 March 2001: Message edited by: kaz101 ]

[maci]

Thanks...I tried it all. Monitored the resources, installed MemMax and surprisingly my Free resources went to 14%...I pressed optimize and it went up to 56%. (Everything is turned off except windows explorer) After about 15 minutes (with the free mem still at 56%) screen locked up again.

So it isn't free memory problems. I thought it could be heat as well, so I bought the biggest CPU fan and heatsink they sell, added a fan card as well as have the case open with a small additional fan blowing on it. So I am not sure it is heat related.

Any other ideas?

[kaz101]

Hi Maci
what a bother it wasn't resources... but I guess that would have been too simple ;) so lets put a check mark beside system resources unless you syspect it could be faulty ram.

ok... trying to pin this down is going to take a wing and prayer and then some but onwards and upwards so here's the next round...

give your temp folders a really good thumping, uninstall any thing you don't want, empty your recycle bin, clean your registry, run your virus scanner etc then throw on scan disk 'thorough' (to check surface for errors etc judging by size of them it'll take a while so try doing it in safe mode if you run into problems) if it all goes sweet then we can rule out hard disk errors as well. Needless to say backup your registry and everything else first


hop online and try throwing it through windows update to see if you can catch anything, if you use CatchUp (or similar) then give that a shot too. If all that goes aok then we can put a check beside updates and patches.

next... how about conflicts? Give Device manager a really good going over, look for the green question marks, red X and yellow exclamation points. ME gets toey with some applications and doesn't always play nicely with drivers etc so think back to when it first started happening. If it started playing up as soon as you upgraded then it'd pay to pull together a list of what you had installed previously and work your way through them. If it happened a while after you upgraded then you can start looking at what you've installed, updated since. You could also be looking for a corrupt driver... which leads us to your mouse? The little blighters are known to cause such problems. Do you just want to check your hardware etc against ME's compatibilty list available HERE (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsME/upgrade/compat/default.asp)

that being said and should keep you busy for a few hours... if you have some spare time and you know you can force the error or that it'll happen after a set period of time then throw it in safe mode and try and force it either by launching some programs etc or leaving it till the error occurs naturally.

good luck :)

[badger5]

My friend has a similar problem with running Windows ME (dangerously low on resouces) after he installed MSN Version 9.0. He also gets messages saying that his desktop needs to be restored. His computer locks up and he has to reboot. He tried deinstalling and re-installing MSN 9 but still get into the same problems. I offered to try and help him, but I'm not sure what I should be looking for.

Thanks for any advice

[Strider]

Hi Maci & Badger,
My system is nearly identical to Maci's except the CPU is a Duron 800. My system resources start out at ~80% and drop, especially if I use Word a lot, to ~50% but the system is stable. You shouldn't be getting crashes with 56% free resources. When you upgraded to ME, did you do a clean install, or install ME over the previous OS?
I'm also curious why your resources are so low to start (if I'm interpreting the thread correctly). I'm thinking it might be a good idea to download and run HiJack This and post the results of its log back here. I don't have much experience interpreting the logs, but maybe Kaz, who's been helping you, or someone else can see something in the log.
LOL,