Unstable Dimension 9200

One of my Dimension 9200s has become incredibly unstable. It locks up
constantly. What's weird is that it will sometimes lock up for anywhere
from 10 to 90 seconds and then come back. During that time, the
applications still run (videos still run just fine, mail downloads still
run) and the start button on the keyboard works, popping up the start menu.

Explorer, though, seems locked up. If I click on an icon to start an
application, either one the desktop, the start menu, or the quick launch
bar, nothing happens. The icon doesn't 'depress'. Control Tab doesn't
work.

I know I need to give in and reinstall, but it has been stable. I thought
it was a bad hard drive (it had three, an 80Gb boot drive, a 250 Sata and a
250 IDE on a PCI contoller). One of the 250s was 'screaming', so I pulled
off all the data onto an external and physically removed the drives. I
thought it might be my memory upgrade from 1Gb to 3Gb, so I pulled the new
2Gb.

Nothing helps. I suppose it could be the 80Gb drive going bad, but it tests
flawlessly.

I'm going to give in, format and reinstall, but I just don't think that is
going to be the solution.

Calling Dell, of course, is going to be a nightmare. I'll put the original
250Gb in and restore to factory fresh if I have to call Dell, but.....

Any suggestions welcome. The darn thing was fine!

Tom

> One of my Dimension 9200s has become incredibly unstable. It locks up
> constantly. What's weird is that it will sometimes lock up for anywhere
> from 10 to 90 seconds and then come back.

I had similar problems to that just before the capacitors failed on my
old ECS K7S5A motherboard in May last year - but deteriorating rapidly
to the point where it would instantly reboot or just refuse to come
back.

anything showing in the event logs?

You haven't moved to Vista yet have you Tom?

There are known issues with Vista hanging when running RAID on 9200's and
others


"Tom Scales" <tjscales@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:4609a32c$0$10640$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com...
> One of my Dimension 9200s has become incredibly unstable. It locks up
> constantly. What's weird is that it will sometimes lock up for anywhere
> from 10 to 90 seconds and then come back. During that time, the
> applications still run (videos still run just fine, mail downloads still
> run) and the start button on the keyboard works, popping up the start
> menu.
>
> Explorer, though, seems locked up. If I click on an icon to start an
> application, either one the desktop, the start menu, or the quick launch
> bar, nothing happens. The icon doesn't 'depress'. Control Tab doesn't
> work.
>
> I know I need to give in and reinstall, but it has been stable. I thought
> it was a bad hard drive (it had three, an 80Gb boot drive, a 250 Sata and
> a 250 IDE on a PCI contoller). One of the 250s was 'screaming', so I
> pulled off all the data onto an external and physically removed the
> drives. I thought it might be my memory upgrade from 1Gb to 3Gb, so I
> pulled the new 2Gb.
>
> Nothing helps. I suppose it could be the 80Gb drive going bad, but it
> tests flawlessly.
>
> I'm going to give in, format and reinstall, but I just don't think that is
> going to be the solution.
>
> Calling Dell, of course, is going to be a nightmare. I'll put the
> original 250Gb in and restore to factory fresh if I have to call Dell,
> but.....
>
> Any suggestions welcome. The darn thing was fine!
>
> Tom
>

OK, to respond to my own question, it appears to be just XP being XP.

I put in an old hard drive, installed Vista, and it is very stable. I'll
add to that in a new thread.

Tom
"Tom Scales" <tjscales@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:4609a32c$0$10640$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com...
> One of my Dimension 9200s has become incredibly unstable. It locks up
> constantly. What's weird is that it will sometimes lock up for anywhere
> from 10 to 90 seconds and then come back. During that time, the
> applications still run (videos still run just fine, mail downloads still
> run) and the start button on the keyboard works, popping up the start
> menu.
>
> Explorer, though, seems locked up. If I click on an icon to start an
> application, either one the desktop, the start menu, or the quick launch
> bar, nothing happens. The icon doesn't 'depress'. Control Tab doesn't
> work.
>
> I know I need to give in and reinstall, but it has been stable. I thought
> it was a bad hard drive (it had three, an 80Gb boot drive, a 250 Sata and
> a 250 IDE on a PCI contoller). One of the 250s was 'screaming', so I
> pulled off all the data onto an external and physically removed the
> drives. I thought it might be my memory upgrade from 1Gb to 3Gb, so I
> pulled the new 2Gb.
>
> Nothing helps. I suppose it could be the 80Gb drive going bad, but it
> tests flawlessly.
>
> I'm going to give in, format and reinstall, but I just don't think that is
> going to be the solution.
>
> Calling Dell, of course, is going to be a nightmare. I'll put the
> original 250Gb in and restore to factory fresh if I have to call Dell,
> but.....
>
> Any suggestions welcome. The darn thing was fine!
>
> Tom
>