One-Year-Old Build "Crashing" for Unknown Reason

[jillsy]

I built the following system for my husband about a year ago:

Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P Mobo
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 CPU
PC Power & Cooling S610EPS
Kingston KHX8500D2K2/2GN (2 x 1GB) Memory
BFG Tech BFGE86512GTOC2FE GeForce 8600GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express
Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST3250310NS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
LITE-ON Combo Black IDE Model DH-52C2P-08 (DVD-ROM/CD Burner)
LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model LH-20A1L-06
Rosewill RCR-FD200 All-in-one USB 2.0 Black 3.5" Card Reader with 1.44MB Floppy Drive
Windows XP Pro 32-Bit
Thermaltake M9 Case

Once a couple of weeks ago and about 3 times over the past few days the system has entered some sort of weird sleep-type state. There is no BSOD, no shut-down, no restart. The screen goes black, but all lights on the box indicate the computer is still on; the HDD activity light even flashes periodically. At first, I thought maybe the video card died. However, my husband's computer is networked with mine and I can normally access his shared folders from my PC. When this problem occurs, I cannot do that; it acts as if his computer is off or disconnected. His computer is set to NEVER go to sleep, hibernate, etc. The only option when this problem happens appears to be to shut down the PC with the power button and then turn it back on.

The first time this happened, my husband was working on his PC. The most recent incidents occurred when he left the PC for a few minutes. He typically has various windows open (Outlook Express, IE, Word, etc.). I looked at System under the Computer Management Event Viewer and saw no error events for these incidents.

Does anyone have any idea where I should begin to look for the cause of this problem?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Jill

[shadowpr]

Did you make any changes around the time thins started? Updated any drivers?

If so, try to do a system restore to before you had problems.

If not, then try updatng windows, and checking for driver updates.

After that, I would run memtest, and then hard drive diagnostics.

That will eliminate those as problems.

EDIT: can you write down the stop code from the bsod if you can see it. (I know you said the screen was black, but if you happen to catch that, it would help.)

[glc]

Have you cleaned the dust out since you built it? It might be overheating.

[jillsy]

Thanks for the suggestions. There wasn't a lot of dust, but I did blow/vacuum out what was there. I updated the graphics card driver and ran Windows Memory Diagnostic for several hours (no errors). I also uninstalled AIM 6 since I noticed after these episodes, AIM would state a plugin problem and not sign in automatically upon restart. Nothing has solved the freezing problem, though. It is slightly different now. Instead of the black screen, the screen does show up as it was when the computer was left. The mouse cursor can be moved, but there is no response to clicks or keyboard input. The clock has stopped and the network connectivity tray icon has stopped flashing. The computer still has to be shut down via the power button. This only occurs when the computer is left idle for about 10-15 minutes. Otherwise, my husband can work all day with no problems. There has to be constant user activity, though. I can't even start a virus scan and walk away; the system will freeze after 10-15 minutes of no user activity.

Not every time, but a couple of times I did find errors/warnings in the System Event Viewer:

- The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period. (Event ID 9)
- An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation. (Event ID 51)

So I'm thinking the hard drive is on its way out. Another clue along that line is that last night I tried to run Check Disk. It got about 71% of the way through the file checking stage and stalled. The hard drive light had been steady, but then changed to short periodic flashes like it does when these freezes happen. Then today I ran Windows Memory Diagnostic and it went for several hours with no problems; I figured that's because it doesn't involve the hard drive. I tried to run a longer SeaTools test today and the computer apparently crashed and restarted while I was out of the room. I couldn't find any related error events, though.

So I bought a new hard drive and plan to install it tomorrow. If the problem goes away, I guess I won't know for certain if it's the new hard drive or just starting with a fresh Windows install. I will probably update the BIOS and any other motherboard drivers while I'm at it.

Thanks again for the responses. I'll try to post back if this issue is resolved.

Jill

[shadowpr]

Try running seatools from dos, not windows.

See what that says.

[jdeb]

you might want to pull the hard drive and hot plug it and run malwarebytes and/or run the ultimate boot cd and use the hard drive diagnostics on the cd. you could also run a linux live cd distribution to try and duplicate the problem i nthe event you feel it might be a hardware issue.

1. run ultimate boot cd hd diagnostics
2. hot plug and run malwarebytes
3. live cd linux