browsing and crashing

[cityman]

for some strange reason when on the net, my win 98 se standalone, laptop freezes. there is no rhyme or reason.
i have clean re-installed 4-5 times in the past 2-3 weeks.

i was using ie 6.0 and outlook express 6 also. but during the different reinstalls, i have reinstalled ie service pack 1 twice.

and now i have stopped using outlook express 6 and downgraded to version 5.


when the clean reinstalling did not solve the problem, my friend figured it was zone alarm (both the 3.1 and 2.5 versions) that did the freezing. (although in the past the 2.5 version never gave me a problem.)

then after congratulating ourselves, a day later, my computer started freezing again. this time i unenable norton internet security 2003 and again things froze.

then i tried to use Opera as a starting point since it never caused the freezing before. but now this time it froze. so then i figured/deducted in was my invasion software was the problem. so i did a remove and reinstall of the software.

that worked for a few days and now this morning i froze again. the only thing left to do is to - i was trying to think what else is different from before. i had a new invasion software program. so i plan to go back to the old version invasion program. hopefully that will work.

can anyone offer a remedy??? this is crazy.

[Conan]

My advice is to clean install once again but don't use IE 6, I would stick to IE 5.5. I know that Win 98 had a lot of stability problems with IE 6. It would be a better idea though to use Windows 2000 on that laptop, provided that you search for hardware drivers beforehand. 98 is just too buggy for my taste.

[egghead]

check to make sure the fan is spinning on the side or back of your laptop

its possible your cpu is overheating and eventually freezes

also next time you format
install windows with the bare minimum programs

only essentials really

see if it freezes and uninstall something and wait till the next freeze

if nothing freezes install something else

ive read reports of norton and certain programs causing freezes so try everything

[cityman]

what i did do already was-

i did a minimal clean re-install already. using ie 5.0 (which came with toshiba config disk for re-installing back to manufacturer's configuration.

i constantly hear the fan on my laptop. also the computer does not freeze if i am not on line. it only freezes when i am on line- but less frequently than before ( i had found my invasion/win poET software program was also corrupted) . and i have not tried if if i am using a different browser (Opera).

another difference is i now have been using an upgraded win poET software. perhaps i will go back to the older version where i never crashed at all.

i hope i have time to do this in the next couple of weeks.

[Conan]

If Winpoet is giving you problems try RASPPPOE, it's free and in my opinion better than most PPPOE programs.

http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~normanb/

[efc]

Try Mozilla. It is the most stable browser that I have used.

[cityman]

i found the problem via egghead solution.

the freezing was done due to a faulty display driver. i would have NEVER thought of that in a million megabit extrasolar years.

[egghead]

glad to see tou got it sorted out
display drivers cause alot of headaches for so many people yet they dont know it

at the moment the safest choice for video if you have a desktop is to go with nvidia

ati causes many programs to freeze and also see the dreaded "blue screen of death"

soundcards can also mess with your system

thanks for the update cityman

cheers
egghead

[cityman]

egghead you wrote: at the moment the safest choice for video if you have a desktop is to go with nvidia

too bad-- i have a laptop.

again thanks

cm

[egghead]

Originally posted by cityman
egghead you wrote: at the moment the safest choice for video if you have a desktop is to go with nvidia

too bad-- i have a laptop.

again thanks

cm

anyone buying any type of computer in the future should stay within the working guidlines at the present time :)

hehe
cheers
egghead

[Toronto]

I have been experiencing increasingly frequent, spontaneous, system freezes with ZoneAlarm 2.6.362. Sounds similar to what you've been experiencing.

I'm running NT Workstation 4.0 w/ SP5 with all MS security patches. I also use Norton AV NT 5.0 - with virus signatures of 12FEB03, Spyblocker 4.75. I've disabled Diskeeper. I've installed the latest cumulative security fix for IE 5.5. ZA Local security is set to low; internet security is high. I've disable ZA Mailsafe and I've disabled ZA automatic internet lock. I minimized the functions that ZA has to execute, thinking that might solve the problem. It hasn't.

Intermittently, but frequently, the system freezes so solidly it won't respond to anything - not mouse, not keyboard, not even the on/off switch on the front of the computer. I have to toggle the on/off switch at the back of the computer to get it to turn off.

To try to diagnose the problem I've been using IE with all other applications shut down. The problem correlates with IE use. It happens when I'm looking at CNN, using Google, and on Microsoft.com - where I went to see if they had any KB articles that mentioned "system freeze" or "system crash". Amusingly, they don't! MS systems don't freeze or crash, don't you know!!

In tracking possible hacker related sources of the problem, using Google, I followed links to www.nssolution.com which opened http://www22.brinkster.com/nssitech/index.html That URL froze my system. I rebooted and tried it again and my system again froze. Doing research with Sam Spade I found it may well be a hacker forum. Hmmm ….

Sometimes I get a record in the event log "IAMDB.RDB.was.improperly.shut.down", as described in a previous post, sometimes I don't. Once I got a True Vector Process error:

"OpenProcessError.5:.on.process.ID.28,.named.CONIN$."

I'm wondering what's going on? If you have had success in resolving your problem I'd appreciate learning what worked for you. Any and all help will be appreciated.

[Conan]

Remove Zone Alarm and instead use Sygate Personall Firewall:

http://soho.sygate.com/products/shield_ov.htm

[Toronto]

Connan,

My situation got a bit more interesting after I posted.

I decided to try browsing without the firewall - and my system froze! So the problem may not be the ZA firewall after all.

I did a Google on: freeze "Windows NT" "Zone Alarm" and followed a link that came up.

The system froze when loading www.virutaldr.com/?virtualdr.com

Any ideas as to why that might have happend?

Toronto

[cityman]

all i can say- is check your display drivers. anything else is truly a hit and miss situation. it could be a virus, corrupt file, check to see if your memory is sufficient (you might want to try memturbo- to re-activate the memory cache that is not being used)

it could be... just check your display drivers by deleting and re-installing it with the latest driver. That is exactly what worked for me. let us know what happens.

[egghead]

hi toronto and welcome to techzonez,

the link you supplies is invalid


you may want to create a new thread as this one is older and you will get more views in a new thread.
\

[Toronto]

I did additional scans with Housecall and Adaware as Egghead suggested - nothing material turned up, so my system was clean (I use NAV & SpyBlocker, so I would have been surprised if the new scans had turned up anything serious, but the extra check is reassuring).

I found that my display driver was almost three years behind current so I downloaded and installed the most recent version.

My troubles went away!

I had three URLs that gave me trouble. Here are they are together with the results when I accessed them with the new display driver in place:

http://discussions.virtualdr.com/showthread.php?threadid=130428 exact same problem as mine on virtualdr.com - found testing virtualdr.com link which previously froze system.

http://www.virtualdr.com/?virtualdr.com did not freeze - but did produce blank screen.

http://www22.brinkster.com/nssitech/index.html did not freeze - screen had scrolling news ticker which may have challenged the old display driver. Internet Explorer News button on the Links bar shows hour glass when cursor is put over it. At bottom of page indication is that 7 items remain to be loaded.

Business and ecommerce search results for "detect spy software" ... the third problem URL did not freeze - but produced a blank screen.

Spyblocker detected bugs on these screens.

Something interesting about the two URLs that produced the blank screens; after I've copied either one onto the clipboard for use in the browser, when I close WORD, a pop-up message says I've placed a large amount of text on the clipboard and asks if I want to save it for use in other applications! These URLs aren't a lot of text - so there is something strange about them.

All seems to be well in terms of stability of the browser. Appears that Zone Alarm is exonerated!

Many thanks to Egghead and the clue in this thread pointing me to the display driver solution.

Toronto

[egghead]

glad to see you back up and running!

cheers
egghead