Help with A Squeal

[Guest BobL]

All:Hi. I need help troubleshooting a lockup/squeal issue that I am having. The symptom: On a regular and routine basis, the computer completely freezes with an audible squeal that is reminicient of a feedback through a microphone. The only way out is to pull the power from the wall and re-boot. The lockup is not predictable meaning that there is not a particular thing that I am doing or application running that is identifiable as this occurs everytime when I do this... It's random and affects all applications..Quicken, Microsoft FS, several Sierra games, some of the Jane's stuff, the Star Wars games, MS Office. Manufacturer of the software doesn't seem to matter. And it started when I installed Windows XP Home. I did a clean install coming from WinME.The System: Gateway P1000 with an OEM MOBO and Processor/Chipset. Creative SB Sound card, Prophet GE2 Video. All drivers updated to latest when XP installed. DX 8.1a.Troubleshooting to Date: Replaced both RAM sticks with new, total of 1 GB RAM in two 512 sticks. Temporarily installed a known good ATI Radeon card. Tested varying sound and hardware accelerations from none to full through the DXDIAG applet. Fresh scan and defrag accomplished. Removed all components and gave the MOBO, fans, heatsinks, etc a thorough cleaning with compressed air and vacuum. None of these steps have had any effect and stepping back to WinME (it didn't do this prior to XP) isn't palatable for me. I had a fellow at work tell me that a lock up, no matter what the cause, is the result of a memory issue. So I haven't tried replacing the sound card. I've limited my efforts to those things where memory is involved.Any suggestions? Although I have taken the steps listed above please bear in mind that I don't consider myself computer technically competent so the suggestion(s) will need to include good instructions if it's more than a remove and replace...Thanx in advance,BobL

[wsieffert 0]

Did you install the drivers for your controller chips and disk drive accelerator, i.e., Intel, VIA, SiS, AMD, ALi. If not, I would start at that point. Next I would ensure all the OS updates are installed, i.e. WinXP SP1 and pre-SP2. Third, see if you can find updated drivers for the sound card and if you have a Microphone attached to your computer, make sure it is turned off in your Audio control panel. If you have speech software installed, make sure it is turned off when not using it.Have you tried just using one of the ram sticks, i.e., 512MB to see if the problem is cleared. It may be that your MOBO cannot tolerate both sticks at one time.

[Guest ccgr]

If it freezes giving you feedback I would try pulling the sound card temporarily to see if it freezes with it out of your system. Or another approach would be to updte the drivers on it.Cheryl

[Guest BobL]

> Did you install the drivers for your controller chips and disk drive accelerator, i.e., Intel, VIA, SiS, AMD, ALi. I need a little stick and rudder here....How do I do this?I updated the Sound card drivers, Video Drivers and OS today. The Sound and Video drivers went in without a catch. The OS, well..that's another story.I told Windows to update itself and it brought me this long list of updates, none of which were labeled SP1 or pre-SP2 and all of which had to do with Internet security and compatibility with non-IE browsers. Since the computer that is giving me problems is a stand alone (not normally connected to the internet), I didn't bother. I did see one update about a game hanging during the video played at the beginning. I downloaded that one for good measure but it didn't have any effect.I did have my son play several of the games that freeze on him with sound dis-abled (Q in Flightsim for example) and they (all the one's he tested) performed without freezing. Then I had him turn the sound back on and cycle through each game that froze on him and it did so again. So-o=o=o, I'm reasonably convinced that it is sound related and not memory. And the fact that this started concurrent with the installation of Windows XP leads me to believe it's not hardware. There has to be conflict occurring between XP and the Creative Labs drivers. Any more ideas?BobL

[Guest BobL]

Hi Cheryl:Thanks for the hint. I did something that was essentially the same. I won't re-type it here. If you look at the response to Bill above you'll see what I did.Thanks,BobL

[Guest ccgr]

What version of Direct X are you running? Try going to the latest.

[wsieffert 0]

Some stick and rudder, then! If you know the MOBO's manufacturer, you should be able to find the MOBO's controller chips from the manual provided or their site.Another way is to open device manager, system devices and see if it lists the names, such as, Intel, VIA, SiS, AMD, ALi on any of the lines:VIA CPU to AGP ControllerIntel...SiS...Updating these drivers may or may not be your problem, since it sounds like you have a sound problem.Note: I tried finding your computer on Gateway's site, but wasn't able to find a P1000. If you can provide more info on the exact model or visit Gatway yourself, you can get more info.