XP freezes solid but not Linux on A31

[seanr]

I have an A31 that freezes frequently in Win2K and XP with no error messages or anything (never seen either OS do that before!). Even a fresh installation on a newly formatted drive still did it. However, I made a second partition on the drive and installed Linux and that has no problems whatsoever. I can use that for hours without any freezong or crashing of any kind. XP will sometimes crash after only a few minutes, or it may go for an hour or two before it does it - totally random, but quite frequent. The HD tests out fine (old drive was bad but got a brand new one and it still freezes). Memeory tests out perfectly fine as well. Bios drivers were updated, as was the embedded controler, to no avail.

One thing I notice is that all the PCI interrupts are set to 11 - is that normal? If I were to change those, what would be the best settings for them (8 PCI IRQs labeled A - H, plus a USB IRQ on a different screen set to 5, IIRC). Could an IRQ conflict be responsible for this?

If not that, then what else?

[jdhurst]

I am fairly certain it is not the PCI interrupts and I would not change them. All my recent laptops ran PCI via IRQ 11. No issues.

What then?
1. Are your power management drivers up-to-date? PM, Battery Maximizer, BIOS, Embedded Controller all play here.
2. Set Startup and Recovery (in System Properties) NOT to restart automatically to see if you can catch an event. May not work for this issue.
3. Is it locking with one application? I had a problem like this on PC300PL with Windows 2000 and that started to recur on my NetVista A30 with Windows XP. The common denominator was Office. and the other common denominator (I think) was BlackICE. I did an Office Repair on the NetVista and the problem has never occurred again.
4. Something I (kind of) recommended somewhere else. When all else fails, consider buying, downloading, installing and running Registry First Aid from RoseCity Software. This Registry cleaner fixed a startup problem on my T41 that was caused by my experimentation and constant changing of Access Connections and Wireless NIC's. No guarantee it will work.
5. Do you frequent a web site or sites that send out excessive spyware? Run Ad-Aware to be sure.
6. Are you building your XP machine behind a hardware firewall? You need to ensure you are not getting corrupted while building and securing your installation.

Food for thought. I would suggest hardware, but the Linux success suggests your hardware is OK. .... JD Hurst

[Volker]

Sounds like a memory issue. Since different OS'es use the available ram differentily, one OS might hit the defective cell immediately while the other does not use it in the kernel space.

Run memtest86 for a few days...

Best way to use IRQ's is to spread them out. Kind of strange that the bios default puts everything at 11. But then, the OS need not honor what the BIOS did. In any case, this is not the reason for your crashes.

[seanr]

No spyware. The machine was plugged into a corporate network behind a checkpoint firewall. Nothing had even been installed on it yet, it locked up within a minute of the first boot after I wiped it and resintalled XP. It has also locked up when not online at all. No single program is related to the lockup It has done it even with only a command prompt window open and with only Windows Explorer open. It is already set not to reboot, bu it isn't een getting to that point. It's just freezing solid - no errors or anything whateosever.