Computer Freezes

[durant45]

Ok, here's the deal. I've just set up a new system which keeps freezing and/or pausing for 10-15 second periods. System specs are as follows:

Asus A7V266-E
512 DDR
Athlon XP 1600
A Raid 0 Stripe - WD 30 gb ATA 100 and WD 26 gb ATA 66
Creative 4224 CDRW
Pioneer 10X DVD
Diamond Viper TNT2 Video Card 32 mb
SB Live
Generic Ethernet 10/100

I was running Windows 98 and the computer would basically freeze at random times, and the harddrive light would be on excessively. Other times when it froze, the motherboard would make one long continuous beep (but not always). It would pause sometimes as well. I formatted and installed Windows XP Corp. which was a bit of challenge to get the raid working because until I got the drivers for the onboard promise raid onto a floppy disk XP couldn't find a hard drive. XP runs alot better but the computer still freezes... i think its probably the hard drives though because it does it if I try to defrag or delete large files/folders.

Lastly, the cd and dvd drive have been unreliable under both win 98 and win xp since putting together the system. Sometimes after putting in a cd it will just spin and spin (and in dvd drive make a clicking noise). I had originally put both the dvd and cd drive on the same ide cable 40 pin from the primary main ide slot. When i first realized they didn't work correctly I moved them both to the secondary ide slot (non-promise ide slots) which the mb manual suggested. This appeared to help briefly but still the problems persist. The hard drives each have their own 80 pin cables and each are set to their own promise ide slot as the mb manual suggested. I also changed the necessary jumper and by all appearances the raid seems to be set up correctly.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I can post more info if necessary. Thanks, Daniel.

[Kuasimodem]

OK, I think that the main problem is you're using two different speed hard drives (ATA100 & ATA66), and you may be running into data flow conflicts because of it.

What you need to do is run that floppy disk that came with your WD drive and use the ATA Management Utility to set the speed of the ATA100 drive down to ATA66 (UDMA mode 4). It's a pretty simple procedure, and will not endanger any of the info on your drives.

It's either that or get yourself another ATA100 30Gb WD to create the RAID array.

[Maxx-Power]

I believe RAID arrays (stripe configs anyway) MUST contain identical drives. Durant45 is right...Windows thinks you have one drive and yet obviously you have two very different ones. Get the same exact model number and everything to match the WD 30GB drive.

Use the 26 GB one on another IDE channel for data storage!!

[Pure.]

Hi!! I had a problem with my computer and I finely found something that would fix it..was very simple..I have windows XP Pro and my computer was freezing all the time when I would click on links or when I would maximize a screen or minimize it..Well I finely was able to go in to safe mode as an administrator and then go to the start button then to my computer/control panel/apperence and themes/display..then click on the settings tab and click on advanced button then click on the troubleshoot tab..and there is a slider bar there if u slide it one slot and then test it might fix your prob..try loging back in to your windows out of safe mode and try again..keep sliding the bar one slot over tell it finely works..I had to slide it all the way and it finely worked for me the slider is for hardware acceleration..my computer seemed to work good and fast with the slider all the way to the left ...Hope this helps any of you

[Dj-Icer]

Theres too much about this thread. anyway thanks