This has happened randomly a couple of times over the last few months but this weekend it has happened more often and once on just turning it on.
Nothing works (ctr,Alt delete) and the only thing to do is switch it off at the tower. If I wait a couple of minutes it switches back on fine and may do it again in an hour or two minutes.
One thing which happens consistently is when it freezes there is a low sounding dong dong, which is the sound I hear if I plug something into a USB port and the PC recognises it.
This sound happens twice each time.
Any ideas please.
I still have a broken S3 screen (thanks to Mark for advice) but it's been a disastrous two weeks here and this is the last straw at the moment.
Briefly we paid two local handymen to remove some 6' high conifer bushes and roots and lay two 8'x10' bases for a new bigger greenhouse and shed. They removed the conifers and also took away the two small sheds but it was obvious the bases were not level to the naked eye.
We paid them for what they had done and found two more, who re-laid the bases and made a fine job and offered to erect the greenhouse and shed.
Friday afternoon they gave up on both. They realised on finishing the glazing that it wasn't square and the shed windows proved 'too much of a problem'.
They didn't RTFM at all, apparently one can't read anyway, so yesterday saw Ian & I take all the glass out, dismantle the frame, unscrew the base and start again. Today we hope to get it glazed.
The annoying thing is we could have done this work ourselves but it seemed sensible to pay someone else to do it while Ian was at work as our weekends are usually from around 8pm on a Friday night to a 1.30am Monday alarm call, and that's after a week of not being at home in daylight at all.
All my work stuff is synched with BT Cloud as a precaution.
Pat
|
One bitterly cold winter morning a guy gets a text from his wife - "Windows frozen, what shall I do?"
He texts back - "Pour some warm water over it and it should be ok"
Ten minutes later she texts back - "Computer completely knackered now"
Sorry Pat.
|
Thanks R O'R:)
Having just realised the only way to get the greenhouse square is to take it all to bits and start again....next weekend, forgive me if I have lost my sense of humour.
Pat
|
What happens if you just leave it frozen? Does it move again eventually?
When it is frozen, will the mouse pointer still move or is even that frozen?
What USB devices do you have plugged in?
Last edited by: No FM2R on Sun 26 Oct 14 at 15:10
|
Could be a faulty power supply, causing freezing when USB device are plugged in. There can be many reasons though some of the most common:-
1) Faulty hard drive
2) Faulty RAM
3) Faulty power supply
4) Leaking capacitors or faulty motherboard.
5) Driver issue
The trick to tell if the PC is really frozen is to see if the caps lock LED responds on the keyboard. These days I find faulty RAM to be rare, as are faulty motherboards, but PSU and hard drive faults are very common.
Is there anything in the event viewer which could give a clue to what is going on?
|
|
Just a long shot. Try clearing the web cache in your browser.
|
>> One thing which happens consistently is when it freezes there is a low sounding dong dong,
My old PC did that if it got overheated. Basically if the CPU went over the temperature preset in the BIOS settings, it made beeping noise.
Now is the noise you're hearing coming from the PC speakers, or from another part of the PC?
|
It stays frozen no matter how long I leave it.
The mouse pointer won't move neither will the keyboard work.
The keyboard has no caps lock or number lock light on it to check that.
Have downloaded a heat test thingy and that is fine.
This morning it froze as soon as it was switched on but I noticed the small photo display I have on the desktop was still scrolling through photo's so I swapped the wireless mouse with the laptop one and also used a different USB port and it unfroze.
The noise is coming from the PC speakers and is the same noise as is made when swapping any USB device around ports.
It is working at the moment and I will look in the event viewer after a coffee or two....that's a bit technical for this early yet.
Pat
|
|
Are the keyboard and mouse wireless? Is there a bluetooth connector plugged into a USB port?
|
|
Might be worth whipping the cover off and giving it a bit of a hoover inside anyway.
Last edited by: Fursty Ferret on Mon 27 Oct 14 at 10:05
|
Yes wireless mouse and keyboard and hovered inside yesterday to remove cat hairs!
Pat
|
|
Its not going to be heat related if it freezes on start up now is it. Lets put that cat fur to bed.
|
Depends whether it is fully cold when it starts up. I've had it before when a warm CPU is started and overheats within a very short time of start up. Try disconnecting your CPU fan, let it hang then reboot. I bet it doesn't stay up long!!
But I reckon NoFM2R is about right in the USB area.
Last edited by: smokie on Mon 27 Oct 14 at 12:07
|
>> Depends whether it is fully cold when it starts up. I've had it before when
>> a warm CPU is started and overheats within a very short time of start up.
>> Try disconnecting your CPU fan, let it hang then reboot. I bet it doesn't stay
>> up long!!
Done it loads of times, intentionally and by accident. How many "warm" cpus do you start? They cool down pretty damn quickly, We are talking really hot before it freezes 90c plus, you need to take the heat sink OFF to get it to freeze at boot up.
The heat thing is a red herring.
|
>> We are talking really hot before it freezes
>> 90c plus, you need to take the heat sink OFF to get it to freeze
>> at boot up.
I can confirm through bitter experience that PC running a P4 with a burnt out fan won't actually complete booting before the CPU overheats and thermal throttling effectively shuts it down.
Not as spectacular as sleeve bearing in the fan collapsing and the fan smashing into the heatsink at 3000 RPM though. During the scary bit of a film..... ;-)
|
>> I can confirm through bitter experience that PC running a P4
But the Pentium 4 was a poor design. The ALU ran at double clock speed for starters. Top end P4's never ran at their rated speed for long before throttling happened - and that was with the supplied fan/cooler working fine!
If this PC is a P4 I'd be surprised. They stopped selling those ages ago.
|
>> >> We are talking really hot before it freezes
>> >> 90c plus, you need to take the heat sink OFF to get it to
>> freeze
>> >> at boot up.
>>
>> I can confirm through bitter experience that PC running a P4 with a burnt out
>> fan won't actually complete booting before the CPU overheats and thermal throttling effectively shuts it
>> down.
P4s burnt out even with the fan running.
|
>> P4s burnt out even with the fan running.
>>
That PC is still going today. My dad uses it.
|
The fact the photos were updating when it was 'frozen' shows it's likely to be the input devices (keyboard and mouse) that are not responding. The other clue is when the wireless mouse and keyboard were replaced the computer was working.
Two pretty strong clues I would say that this is USB wireless mouse and keyboard related.
|
Well it's been on all day today after the USB swap around and hasn't frozen once.....but it has gone for a couple of weeks without doing it before now.
At least it prompted me to do a back up!
It had been off for at least 8 hours when it did it on start up.
Thanks for the advice so far.
Pat
|
|
I did it a number of times when I hadn't realised that the cooling fan wasn't properly seated. Hang, reboot, hang, reboot, hang, whip off the lid, all looks well, reboot... and so on. Slow learner, me :-)
|
PC freezing completely - Robin O'Reliant
