View Full Version : XP stability
hi guys,
having a few stability problems with XP.
Wondered if other people are getting the same or whether it might be a sytem config problem.
Occationally it just restarts, seems to be when IE6 is open, just be surfging click a link and system restarts. I know that XP restarts when it crashs to limit damage to itself. Also realise you can switch that off, but would rather stop whats causing it to crash then alter the restart options.
On the whole system is very speedy and applications are stable but just occationally restarts when I have IE open!
Anyone else get this, is it just XP generally or could it be that I need to adjust something?
CHeers
Nick
I would start by disabling the automatic reboots so that the system halts and you can read the error, once u got that copy it down and post it up here:)
If it's just IE6 thats causing you problems try mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org)
master baits
07-12-2002, 16:46
this week i seem to be getting more and more errors as well , since updating ie and xp , so probably is that , if all else fails , try linux
Originally posted by scottie
I would start by disabling the automatic reboots so that the system halts and you can read the error, once u got that copy it down and post it up here:)
Ag ag, ok did that, now have two blue screens of death! Restarted ok, but that doesn't give me much confidence in the health of my system.
I'm I doing something wrong???
The last two times I have built my system its been unstable and prown to crashing! Have I set up things wrong?
What wattage of PSU are you using??
The Pimp
08-12-2002, 19:17
What is the error message on the BSOD????
300w quietPC silent PSU.
not quite sure what error notes you are refering too.
It doesn't generate an error report to send to MS. And the blue screen was pretty standard, just said something about a general error, and if it happened again to disable hardware and reinstall it!
The Pimp
08-12-2002, 20:54
On the BLUE Screen it will tell you what has happened & either list a Error code or a filename. Without these it is nigh on impossible to say exactly what is wrong.
dont know if this is your problem or not, but I had some stability problems running with a 300 watt supply, problems were random crashing, and dissappeared when I installed 480 watt psu, might be this, but I dont know why your crashes should only occur when using ie
well its not only, but predominatley, having said that, I nearly always have it open so, its hard to be precise!
master baits
09-12-2002, 06:52
Try new bios for mobo , try rebuild from ground up , if you say has happened with 2 builds are you using the same parts in any of them , if so then part is to blame , ie ram , cpu , mobo , cables for hd , simple hd cable replacement was enough on a system I diagged for a client alos had leaking drivers , could have fleeced them for whatever I wanted but thats why i get the repeat biz.
I had reliability probs with a ga 7dx c and gf3 ti xp 1600 setup unitl i changed the bios of card and mobo but before that I tried everything incl a 450 w psu , all that was ill....... the bios.
though I loathe to say it certain boards and chipsets do have probs with the radeon , is your pc a 24/7 it is is could be a page file or memory leak.Might even not like your ram if its in on 1 stck or the wrong slot.
This happend to me.... I eventually re-installed and everything is back to its groovey self....
its a bit of a bother but it fixed it fine :D
well previously I had a Abit AT7 Max, which I have now replaced with the asus, which has completley different chipset.
When I built the system for the very first time, back in April, with a cheap soltek board and an XP1700+, 512mb of ram, it was solid as a rock, really the most solid PC i have ever had.
But then I wanted more speed, more power, and started upgrading, and its never been the same since!
Mr_Nemesis
11-12-2002, 00:05
I'd still recommend not using IE though...
master baits
11-12-2002, 01:57
goes without saying , lot better browsers out there , with a littel messing about you can get them to a fifth of the size of ie with oe.
Since I upgraded (when it was stable) I got a new processor (xp2000) and extra ram. I have a feeling it might be a problem with the extra ram I got, so I am going to take it out and put the system back down to 512m and see if that does anything.
Trouble with explorer is its used to folders etc so its very hard not to have explorer windows open!
Mr_Nemesis
11-12-2002, 21:20
Yeah, I despise the way IE and explorer are basically the same thing. I got around this by disabling internet access to explorer in it's entirity (runs on a different subnet). It's especially bad when someone uses a malicious bit of code like this:
<object ID="dosIE-doe"
CLASSID="CLSID:00022613-0000-0000-C000-000000000046"></object>
Which, when loaded in IE, will typically crash IE, explorer and (in extreme cases) reboot the computer instantly. It's an old vuln, but I'm not sure if MS have issued a patch for it yet.
Hmm. I could also chuck that into some script that'll set the users homepage to this page, with the result that whenever IE starts, it'll crash.
Heck, with a bit more fiddling and careless users, I could get that to run as your desktop, crashing windows the second you boot it :)
Anyway. Don't use IE :p
Well all my webdesign friends say that you should use IE5.5 plus as most website are designed for it. Tis the reason that I use it.
(it actually works amazingly well on mac :))
I have taken out the (2x) 256mb ram moduals, and left in the 512mb pc2700 dim. Hasn't crashed since, so maybe it was dodgey ram? But don't wanna speak too soon ;-)
Mr_Nemesis
12-12-2002, 01:37
Originally posted by Nickerz
Well all my webdesign friends say that you should use IE5.5 plus as most website are designed for it.
Have you or your friends any idea of what "standards" are and what they were invented for? HTML is not a microsoft invention, they just *******ised the perfectly good HTML standard as laid down by the W3C.
The web was made to be used by everyone, not just those with the most popular browser. Sorry, but your webdesigner friends aren't much of a web designer IMO if they can't be bothered to write cross-browser HTML (commonly known as "proper" HTML, not munged MS/Dreamweaver HTML). I'd like to see some of his sites put through the W3C validator. People just write for IE cos it's designed to make totally crap HTML look passable.
Sorry to bitch and flame, but I'm heartily sick of all these people saying sites should be "optimised" for certain browsers. If I find a site which won't let me use it in Moz or Opera (hell, I've even used Lynx before now), I choose not to visit it any more (and believe me, there are pleny of other like me out there; if someone cares about browsers enough not to use IE, trying to make them use anything else will alienate them). Point and drool programmers make me feel ill sometimes. For all I know, he might write good code, but IME people who say stuff like that don't.
</bad mood>
Besides, IMO the UI is IE is almost totally unusable compared to Moz/Phoenix/Galeon and Opera now (clicking a button to go back? What? Are you kidding?). IE is literally too slow and painful to use, and has more holes that are rarely patched than a, er, boat that's been got at by a meteorite storm. Yeah.
A nice browser-egg nog stick site (http://www.demolicious.org)
Hmm I shall show him your post and see what he says. I has given me reasoning why IE is better but I couldn't say off the top of my head, my knowledge of the finer details of HTML and cross browser compatibilty is fairly limited.
My system seems to be more stable since I removed the other dims of ram. It hasn't crashed in the past few days, so maybe there was a fault with the ram.
I have downloaded mozila, but not installed it yet, will give it ago!
Mr_Nemesis
15-12-2002, 18:59
I'd recommend using Phoenix over Mozilla.
Mozilla is a huge browser, in that it does everything (intergrated email, etc etc), but Phoenix is a stripped down version with just the browser components, and so runs much quicker and uses less RAM.
Get it here (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/phoenix/)
If speed and stability is what you're after though, IMO Opera still rules all, but to get rid of the ads you need to pay for it.
They both kick the stuffing out of IE though, and eventually you'll wonder how you lived without tabs, mouse gestures and a button to block pop-ups :D
But do you get nice skins like in Mozilla lol! ;-)
Unfortunatley the stabilty problems still occur without using IE and removing the ram, although they are less frequent, its really annoying me know :(
I like opera now too! but I kinda switch between IE and opera (to view my favourite 'frame' sites.. :D)
Mr_Nemesis
20-12-2002, 08:39
Frame sites?
I ain't never come across a site that Opera couldn't handle.
If you get some formatting errors, you can often solve these by changing the browser spoofing config. Opera spoofs IE5.0 by default (ie it tells websites that it's IE5.0 instead of Opera), and (quite why I don't know) this sometimes affects the rendering (probably cos the sites are done in crappy MS-HTML or are full of MS-Javascript, and other such annoyances).
Mine is set to identify as Opera by default, although sometimes I switch the identifier to IE to qualm troublesome sites.
Sites say they work in IE4 or above... so they'll always work in Opera :)
***Disclaimer - You're listening to someone who can't live without mouse gestures, tabbed browser windows, skins, pop-up blocking, excellent cookie control, page zoom, keyboard shortcuts for everything, inbuilt google et al searchthe ability to change the look of a page by style sheet manipulation, the ability to turn off images at the click of a button... etc... etc...***
FYI, by default many plugins won't work in Opera simly bacuse they don't know Opera is there. File > Preferences > Multimedia > Find plugins will show all plugins available.
More info as it's remembered... :p
OK restarts still happening here are the error reports:
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 34
Date: 26/12/2002
Time: 18:32:34
User: N/A
Computer: HOME-IAR60G6H9V
Description:
The driver disabled the write cache on device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1.
Data:
0000: 0f 00 04 00 01 00 62 00 ......b.
0008: 00 00 00 00 22 00 04 80 ...."..€
0010: 01 00 00 00 10 00 00 c0 .......À
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0028: 00 00 00 00 ....
Followed by:
Event Type: Information
Event Source: Save Dump
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1001
Date: 26/12/2002
Time: 18:33:02
User: N/A
Computer: HOME-IAR60G6H9V
Description:
The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000000a (0x00000008, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0x804ef815). A dump was saved in: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini122602-02.dmp.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Then when it rebooted:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: System Error
Event Category: (102)
Event ID: 1003
Date: 26/12/2002
Time: 18:33:30
User: N/A
Computer: HOME-IAR60G6H9V
Description:
Error code 0000000a, parameter1 00000004, parameter2 00000002, parameter3 00000000, parameter4 804f1ada.
and that happened 8 times one after the other, but didn't make it reboot just came up with error report message saying it had receovered from serious error!
from the first error I am guessing it might be a problem with the h/d as all the drivers for chipset / hardware are installed, and this problem also occured on another board.
Have downloaded a diag application from seagate website going to run that later, just waiting to borrow my dads ps2 keyboard cause the app boots from floppy and doesnt recognise the usb!
If thats it will be a weight off my mind, least it doesn't mean that i have goofed it up building it :) And should be able RMA it for a replacement!
You may of read in my other thread about heat in here, that I have put my Zalman on full speed, and added case fans to bring down temp and that hasn't changed the situation!
Originally posted by Mr_Nemesis
Frame sites?
I ain't never come across a site that Opera couldn't handle.
If you get some formatting errors, you can often solve these by changing the browser spoofing config. Opera spoofs IE5.0 by default (ie it tells websites that it's IE5.0 instead of Opera), and (quite why I don't know) this sometimes affects the rendering (probably cos the sites are done in crappy MS-HTML or are full of MS-Javascript, and other such annoyances).
Mine is set to identify as Opera by default, although sometimes I switch the identifier to IE to qualm troublesome sites.
Sites say they work in IE4 or above... so they'll always work in Opera :)
***Disclaimer - You're listening to someone who can't live without mouse gestures, tabbed browser windows, skins, pop-up blocking, excellent cookie control, page zoom, keyboard shortcuts for everything, inbuilt google et al searchthe ability to change the look of a page by style sheet manipulation, the ability to turn off images at the click of a button... etc... etc...***
FYI, by default many plugins won't work in Opera simly bacuse they don't know Opera is there. File > Preferences > Multimedia > Find plugins will show all plugins available.
More info as it's remembered... :p
I have.. i come across a lot of frame sites which opera screws on, not frames on their own, but frame sites with lots of useless javascript which opera hates when its used the same time as frames (inline frames.. not sure about any others)
Sorry to be off-topic :D
RimBlock
06-01-2003, 17:57
What's your drive connected to (motherboard raid controller / ide controller / other pci controller).
What IDE chipset is on the board (Via ??). Latest drivers installed for the IDE controllers ?
People program web sites using MS HTML and for IE because the tools are there and easy to use. IE is by far the most used browser just because it is packaged with Windows (which is not to say it is the best).
By enabling cheap website building software onto the market and with some of it generally bundled with new machines Microsoft have allowed people (the average Joe in the street) to build a presence on the internet with very little knowledge.
Sitting my parents infront of a copy of Frontpage or similar or giving them the spec for HTML and notepad (or tell them to find a website builder that sticks rigidly to those specs) I know which is most likely to produce results.
Microsoft are in the business of making money which they do very well. How they do it is by partly taking control of whatever they can.
Pro choice is great but IE has never caused me any problems and a website loading 0.5 seconds quicker isn't going to make a vast difference to my life. IE seems to be quick enough for me. Personally I use NetCaptor which add's the tab and (with the latest version I believe) also has gestures etc.
cheers
RB
Craig McD
26-01-2003, 00:48
Internet Explorer is actually tied into Windows so if it is causing any problems which I doubt, then it's going to do it whether you use Mozilla/Opera or not.
When I used Opera it couldn't handle my site which IS standards compliant where as IE could. I even e-mailed the Opera developers and they couldn't give me a reason as to why it didn't render my site correctly.
For those of you that followed this thread and tried to help me out, thought you might want to hear what the actual problem was in the end.
I replaced loads of bits, and in the end it turned out to be the ZIP drive.
There is bug (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B304776) in WinXP that doesn't like internal ZIPS during the instalation process. Several times when I hve installed windows its assigned the ZIP C: which obviously causes problems. But generally it can cause problems to have one attached when installing win xp.
But I installed XP fresh without it the other day (on a brand new hard-drive) and it was fine, then I connected the zip drive and started rebooting again! Turned off the autoboot, and got BSOD!
Taken it off again, and now its completley stable (FINALLY) and just when I am coming to the end of my dissertation, which was the reason I built the darn thing in the first place LOL!
But its nice to get to the bottom of the problem, I thought I was cursed with computers there for a little while! :D
master baits
06-02-2003, 00:56
Well done , absolutely nowt us expertz said , good
But you're still zip-less?
Anybody got an IDE zip working in Win XP???
Fireblade
06-02-2003, 10:42
I'd like to know too... coz I bought an internal Zip Drive in these forums recently :eek:
I ain't fitted it yet (it's goin' in me new rig), so I've got plenty of time before I encounter the same problem, but I'd like t' hear/read any advice on how t' overcome this XP/Internal Zip drive conflict ;)
Mind you... if Microsoft themselves can only advise us t' leave it disconnected until after XP is installed, I won't be holdin' me breath :D
lol - I'm approaching it from the other end of the tunnel! Had an internal Zip for a while and XP's about to be installed :D
Where there's a will there's a way! :)
Would love to hear a success story though, please somebody....
Yeah I got internal zip drive working in XP No problems was in when I installed xp and has worked flawlessly :D even if it shouldn't. Glad to here you have cured your problem though
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