system freezes

[Guest]

system : Thunderbird 800Mhz on aopen mk33 motherboard
Hd 15.3Maxtor. I can run 3dmark2000 up to 24 hours
without any problems. (tested no longer) but after ten minutes of defragmenting in win98 my system hangs.
Sometimes when being in internet explorer my system freezes also. Could it be the harddisk? whats DMA mode, has it to be checked or not. I hate system freezes.

 

[pastorjay]

When you defrag, make sure that you have your antivirus software,your task scheduler and your screensaver turned off. These sometimes interfere with defrag. AS far as your freezes during IE, make sure you have the latest video drivers for your video card. It could be alot of other reasons though.

 

[mjdunn]

If you can get your hands on another drive. Get a program such as ghost that allows you to copy your entire drive to the new harddrive. If the problems go away it was your drive. If that doesn't work re-install 98 on the new drive, you may be having OS problems. If this doesn't work then format the new drive and load 98 from scratch. If it works then you probably have something installed that is messing you up. I had a "Gator" Installed on a machine that reaked havoc with it. "Gator" gone no problems. Please let me know if I can be of any more assistance or to let me know if it is fixed.

 

[Guest]

Only my screensaver was active during the defragmenting process so I turned it of but it seems that it doesn't help.
I have also the latest drivers for my tnt2 card (detonator 3). Think your last sentence is true, it could be anything.

 

[Guest]

Think your purpose is a good solution but I have to wait to test it because with my case open, I havent had any problems so far. Could it be a hot-problem?? My harddisk has a lot of free space around so I would find it strange. I also formatted my HD twice and reinstalled everything but that didn't help.
Anyway thanks for your replay.

 

[Unolocogringo]

is it possible to monitor your system temperatures? heat build up in the case could be the problem,ie not enough case fans to cirrculate cool air through case,and something overheats.

 

[Guest]

Perhaps but strange thing is that it happens also 5 minutes after startup. Don't think ive got a heat problem then. MBM 5 indicates no troubles so i don't know it anymore

 

[Guest]

And I can run 3dmark2000 for a whole day
So don't think heat is the problem

 

[Guest]

do you have all of the current VIA drivers (AGP/4in1,etc) for your board? i've also found that MS defrag is vastly inferior to norton's defrag- try giving that a whirl, as for IE.... well.. update and patch it if its not already, or perhaps it was an installation problem- did you reboot every time it asked or did you install everything and then reboot just once or twice?

 

[Nethawk]

You could try this too - boot to MS-DOS prompt (NOT open command prompt in Win, you must boot to a prompt), go to c:\windows\temp and delete all of the files and folders. Sometimes if your system crashes reference to files in the temp directory can cause unstable results.

Not sure if it will help, but its worth a try.