Lockup PC
 

Hi,

When the screensaver starts, after a few minutes it locks up my pc?
I got a CompaqArmade E500, running W2k, 256 MB Ram.
Any hints?

Possibly a conflict with another program.

Please check to make sure you have installed the display driver(s) here:

http://www.compaq.com/support/files/...e/20_1006.html

The default display drivers that come with Windows 2000 & XP are always a fiasco.

I know, i updatted / installed all the new drivers from compaq 1 week ago.

Installed DirectX 8.1?

Yep, I did all off that.

Installed Windows 2k.
Installed Service Pack 2.
Installed All newest drivers
Installed Service Pack2 again. (didn't know if I had 2)
Installed Hotfixes/DirectX8.1 thru windows update
Installed my programms
Installed ScreenSaver

Maybe it's conflicting with a programm I have installed I dunno.

Video card has to be overheating or something.

Check the event log and see what errors are showing up. That may help narrow things down.

this is called system resources very easy to solve.

1. put mouse on start button, programs, start menu "delete everything there, reboot, should solve problem.

Windows 2000 doesn't have resources the way 98/ME does.

Neener :p :p

Thx for the eventlog tip.
Never looked into that, and with NT 4.0 first thing I do is look into that one.

But it's a problem with my sound.
So I turned the sound off and now it runs smoothly.

Never use sound anyways so it's the easiest sollution.
Maybe later I will look into the driver thing.

Thx for helping me out :D :D :D

Sure it does (not trying to be rude) Each OS (98se, W2K, XP) are all affected by system recources W2k, XP just handle it a bit better. All OS take into account the processor type, MB, video card, sound card, earthnet card and total memory. This is refereed to as "bandwidth" within the system. Another simple way to slove this would be to add more memory.

There is a MAJOR difference in the way the NT based OSes use resources compared to Win 95/95/Me. The latter OSes resources are limited to the amount of memory available in the original 640k of RAM.

I don't really understand why there is this limit, except it is built in to the older systems. In windows 9x based systems, when you are running low on system resources, you have used up too much of that 640k block of RAM. You can see this happen very quickly by opening as many programs as you can. MS Word is a big resource hog. Also, all those little icons next to the clock in the System Tray use up system resources. If you are having strange problems, like icons all look a like in every folder, or some windows seem to have invisible parts, or a closed window leaves a shadow of itself, that is a sign of low resources.

My experience has been ANYTIME resources have been lower than 70% problems would begin. Lower than 40%, and many programs have sevre display problems, lower than 25%, and the system is so unstable it is useless to try to continue.

After switching to XP, I have NEVER had a problem with resources being low. There is not even a meter to measure it by. I have had 20 word docs open, Photoshop, Powerpoint, IE, downloading files on the internet, Winamp, Nero Burning ROM burning a CD, watching a DVD, ALL AT THE SAME TIME (just to see if I could) and still had no problems other than slow response when switching tasks. Doing about 1/3rd of that on a Win9x system would have caused a crash.

Well said...try holding the ctrl-shift-esc keys at the same time. Windows task manager will come up look under preformace tab for resources.

Another item that reduces system resources is the start up menu deleting everything there including the MS office logo will free up lots of resources.

I don't see any mention of resources on Windows 2000 in the Task Manager.

Sorry, don't see it

This is it...if you look at "processes tab" you will see which programs are running with the amount of memory being used.

PS: my cpu usage is 2% XP likes lots of memory.

What does memory have to do with resources?

Even if you have 256MB of RAM on Windows 98, after you open a dozen windows of Internet Explorer and a few programs, the OS gets unstable.

No such situation on Windows 2000.

thought i'd take a stab at clearing up the issue of resources. i really don't know what spycatcher is trying to get at exactly; i'm just trying to clear up the confusion that seems to be apparent about what resources are and what they're for.

all ms windows os's use system resources. system resources are simply data structures that the system creates/manages on behalf of apps as a way to get the system to do some work on a system object. ex: when an app opens a file the system will create a file resource and then hand the app a file handle, which is nothing more than a unique identifier for that particular resource. the app then uses the file handle to reference the file resource when it requests the system to do something with the file (read, write, close, ...) same thing applies to window drawing, bitmap usage, ...

9x os's use a 64KB block of dedicated os memory for global system resource use. that's why you start to run into probs when your "resources" got too low. nt kernel-based os's use a completely diff mechanism for allocating/managing system resources, thus it's not an issue. you can still view the system resources used per app on nt kernel-based os's by going to the processes tab of task manager, select view->select columns from the menu, check the USER Objects and GDI Objects boxes, and then select OK. you should then see 2 new columns with values for each currently running process.

another reason for resource usage problems with 9x os's is that the os did not clean up after badly written apps that did not properly release the system resources that were allocated on their behalf by the system. again, nt kernel-based os's do.

resource is also used in a generic sense meaning anything system managed. so lots of people mean memory, file space, network communications, etc., when they use the term resource.

That's the thing I love about Windows 2000.

You can open a bazillion programs, like a dozen copies of Internet Explorer, and then close them all down and the system is pretty much at the state it was when you switched the machine on.

I typically run Windows 2000 for weeks without a reboot.

I'm gonna have to get rid of this Linksys ethernet card though. It blue screens occasionally when an e-mail comes in.

I'd like to take the time to thank (unintended alliteration there :)) Flipper for a post that cleared up a whole lot in this thread. – Nicely put!

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