Computer freezes and requires hard restart

[Metawhore]

After looking all over Google and different forums I have yet to find a solution, so I decided I might try posting here, hopefully you guys can help me.

Minidump << Click to DL
The restart doesn't occur anytime in particular, the screen just freezes, everything on the screen remains as I last saw it, and computer becomes unresponsive. It occurs sometimes even if they computer is idle. Sometimes in the past computer would just reboot on its own, but mostly I have to press the power button down.

The problem didn't seem to begin after any hardware/software change, it just happened randomly during routine use of computer.

EDIT: I just found a way to force the freeze to happen and that is by stretching the windows task manager window (making WTM screen bigger). For some reason it causes it to happen, but the freeze isn't limited to that occasion.

Things to note would include:
Broken memory slot on my mobo (missing pins) so I only have one memory stick of 2GB instead of two.
I've tried replacing the PSU and the graphics card, no luck.
I reinstalled windows, formatting the hard drive.
All drivers should be up to date.
I've tried resetting the bios by removing the battery.
Temperatures for CPU are around 30-50 and GPU 35-60.
The freezes happen during safe mode as well.

Things I suspect:
Faulty motherboard, or the memory slot on the motherboard. I've ran memtest for about 8 hours, no errors found.
Faulty CPU.
Faulty HDD. I've done chkdsk, no problems.
Problematic BIOS.

Operating System
Windows 7 Home Premium 32bit

Hardware
Manufacturer Compaq-Presario
Family 103C_53316J
Product Name NC696AA-ABA SR5710Y

Motherboard
Manufacturer ECS
Model Iris8
Version 1.0

CPU
AMD Athlon(tm) Dual Core Processor 4450e 2.30 GHz
Cpu Socket Socket AM2 (940)
Max CPU Speed 3000 MHz

Memory
Memory Type DDR2
Installed Memory 2048 MBytes
Available Memory 2047 MBytes
Channels 1
Maximum Capacity 4096 MBytes

GPU
EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GT520 2GB

BIOS
BIOS Vendor Phoenix Technologies, LTD
Serial Number MXX9070JSN
BIOS Version V5.36

Let me know if there is anything you want to know, I'd love to get some help on the issue!

Thanks ahead.

 

[RussK1]

Same computer as my mother... take out the GT520 and see if the problem goes away. The 250w power supplies HP puts in the machines simply aren't very good. I tried to put a 9400GT in her computer and it was a no go...

Anyway, this where I'd start troubleshooting.

 

[Metawhore]

This is in my original post:

I've tried replacing the PSU and the graphics card, no luck.

Thanks for the reply tho.

 

[jdamon113]

the obvious issue is the MB but if you can change your cables. IE the hard drive cable and remove your cd drive , that is a long shot but I have seen it casue issues.
if that fails to correct. simple the MB is bad.

Good Luck

 

[RussK1]

This is in my original post:

I've tried replacing the PSU and the graphics card, no luck.

Thanks for the reply tho.

This is also in your original post:

Sometimes in the past computer would just reboot on its own, but mostly I have to press the power button down.

...this is indicative of a faulty power supply or simply lacks power needed. Typically if there is no blue screen that indicates the issue and the machine "randomly" reboots I would be certain of a bad PSU. It may be on the cusp having enough/not enough thus "random".

HWmonitor to give voltage readings~ ftp://ftp.cpuid.com/hwmonitor/hwmonitor_1.19-setup.exe

Compare~

Edit: but if you want to replace the board, I wouldn't blame you... the broken socket would drive me nuts.

 

[rdzona]

+1 on the MB

 

[Metawhore]

I've already replaced the PSU... I think I can rule that one out, russwood.
I just got a BSOD recently, how can I use that to make sense out of my problem?

As for replacing the motherboard, I can't afford that now.

 

[RussK1]

I've already replaced the PSU... I think I can rule that one out, russwood.
I just got a BSOD recently, how can I use that to make sense out of my problem?

As for replacing the motherboard, I can't afford that now.

What make and model?

Download "Whocrashed"~

http://www.resplendence.com/download/whocrashedSetup.exe

It'll read the memorydumps and give you a likely cause...

 

[mikeyp333]

hey, i had the exact problem as you for a whole year, when it freezes all your fans are still on right? and you can open and close the CD/DVD drive? and sometimes the sound make a horrendous noise if it freezes when playing music or games!

anyway fingers crossed it the hard drive, as when it crashes you might notice the HDD light will either freeze on or off. so replace it!

i spent a year trying different video cards, PSU, ram timmings, memtest, ect!

use a tool from samsung called HUTIL it was the only HDD tool i used that found the error, seagate tools and other showed it was fine!

let me know how you get on!

 

[wr6133]

My money would be on the mobo as you seem to have tested most everything else and with the PSU out the window the symptoms point to that.

If you trawl the online PC stores hard you can sometimes see old AM2 boards pop up for less than £35 ($50-ish) or Ebay (even cheaper).

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ASRock-N68C-S-UCC-Motherboard-AMD-Socket-AM2-AM2-/300656293635?pt=UK_Motherboards_CPUs&hash=item460082f703
Brand new

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MSI-K9N-NEO-V3-Socket-AM2-AMD-Motherboard-/251038500539?pt=UK_Motherboards_CPUs&hash=item3a730f86bb
Used

You get the idea just bang "AM2 motherboard" in ebay some go for a matter of a few £

 

[Metawhore]

Yea that sounds like my issue mikey. So you replaced your HDD?

and heres my voltages and some temps if people wanna take a look.

 

[Metawhore]

This was probably caused by the following module: ntkrpamp.exe (nt+0xBFA00)
Bugcheck code: 0x1A (0x3452, 0x5CD64000, 0xFFFFFFFFC0934B48, 0x6A74DC46)
Error: MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
Bug check description: This indicates that a severe memory management error occurred.
This might be a case of memory corruption. More often memory corruption happens because of software errors in buggy drivers, not because of faulty RAM modules.
A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: ntkrpamp.exe .
Google query: ntkrpamp.exe MEMORY_MANAGEMENT

 

[RussK1]

Yea that sounds like my issue mikey. So you replaced your HDD?

and heres my voltages and some temps if people wanna take a look.

[url]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/darkminddragoon/th_ScreenShot220.png[/URL]

I don't think it's the board, and Mikey's right... the HDD was going to be the next thing I was going to mention. Did you run who crashed?

The voltage screenshot showed a 3.3v rail maybe a bad reading? Do you know how to get into your bios? Check HW monitor...

SeaTools for Windows~ http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/downloads/seatools/SeaToolsforWindowsSetup-1206.exe

Pick the long test...

 

[Metawhore]

Yes I know how to get to my bios, what do you mean by HW monitor?

Thanks for the quick replies.

And yes I just copy pasted what I got from the whocrashed

 

[mikeyp333]

yeah i replaced everything part from the cpu, but yeah seatool might work but for me it said it was fine;

if you have a spare hard drive just wack that in for a few days and see if it works out! but dont use the old one to copy files to it or have it as a 2nd hard drive, it will still crash!

But yeah when i was testing a year back i used seatools and windows chck disk and ittsaid it was fine so i spent time, money and major stress replacing every part and changing bios, firmware, was a right ball ache!

atm i running a old laptop hard drive while my faulty HDD is being sent back!

in short just use an old or new hdd and painfully install everything again!
(remember not to connect the old one at the same time!)

good luck!

 

[Metawhore]

I've put a link to my minidump files for anyone willing to help and take a look.

 

[RussK1]

Yes I know how to get to my bios, what do you mean by HW monitor?

There should be a section in your bios that gives readings; ie- voltages and temps. Short of actually using a DMM the bios tends to give more accurate readings than software.

You can run SeaTools and see what it tells you, but according to the dumps, it's looking as though faulty RAM.

You can run "Windows Memory Diagnostic" or download an .iso of Memtest86 and boot from it.

Burn this to disk:
http://www.memtest.org/download/4.20/memtest86+-4.20.iso.gz

 

[Metawhore]

Yes I know how to get to my bios, what do you mean by HW monitor?

There should be a section in your bios that gives readings; ie- voltages and temps. Short of actually using a DMM the bios tends to give more accurate readings than software.

You can run SeaTools and see what it tells you, but according to the dumps, it's looking as though faulty RAM.

You can run "Windows Memory Diagnostic" or download an .iso of Memtest86 and boot from it.

Burn this to disk:
http://www.memtest.org/download/4.20/memtest86+-4.20.iso.gz

I've already burned a disk and ran for hours.

 

[RussK1]

Looks like the Win32k.sys file may be corrupted so,

Navigate to C:\WINDOWS\System32 and rename the Win32k.sys file to Win32k.old and then
close the window. Now navigate back to Win32k and you should have a nice clean Win32k.sys file.

 

[mikeyp333]

http://www.qfpost.com/file/d?g=wu2iPnoe8

 

[Metawhore]

I don't have permission to rename the file.

 

[RussK1]

I don't have permission to rename the file.

Move it to the recycle bin but don't delete it... can restore it later if you need to. Or, you can navigate to the file and right click and go into properties and change permissions.

 

[Metawhore]

Yea.. won't even let me change permissions or put it in recycle bin.

 

[RussK1]

Yea.. won't even let me change permissions or put it in recycle bin.

1-st Step : activate the administrator account. From command prompt (opened / ran as administrator ) type : NET USER ADMINISTRATOR /ACTIVE:YES
Log off and at restart log on again as administrator. If this is the first time, be patient because the OS will "arrange" your desktop.

2-nd Step : open Windows Explorer, go to the system folder and point to the file you want to rename. Click PROPERTIES, then SECURITY TAB, then ADVANCED.
Here you click on OWNER TAB, then EDIT , then under "change Owner to : " click on OTHER USERS OR GROUPS. Here click on ADVANCED, after on FIND NOW and here select the administrator and final OK and after APPLY. Pay attention : select administrator NOT administratorS ! You'll see a pop-up window saying you just taken ownersip of this object (the file) and you need to close the object properties. Click OK.

3-rd Step : reopen the file PROPERTIES tab and then SECURITY TAB whereafter EDIT and choose Administrator and here set FULL CONTROL at permissions. Finally click OK. Now you can rename the file.

If there is a driver (Microsoft one) you must delete also the file existing in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERSTORE\FILEREPOSITORY\...kind of device...\file.sys, using the above method. Also , look for other copies of the system file (for example on C:\WINDOWS\LASTGOOD\.... ) using FIND function.

Also, do not forget to deactivate the administrator account. You do not need it for your daily purposes.

...all of this can prove to be futile and be a bad driver (video) or failing HDD. Did you run SeaTools?

 

[Metawhore]

Seatools doesnt seem to detect anything

After restarting and messing with a few things in the device manager, it now shows, so I will do the generic long test.

Nothing in the test.