Originally posted here by foxyloxley

No, but you haven't said how you get out of the freeze ?

-> Cold reboot. CTRL+ALT+Del doens't work. Gotta either press reset button or hold power switch till it turns off

Can you restart straight away ?

-> Yes if I follow the above

Do BOTH M/C's exhibit identical faults ?

-> Yes, they both hang constantly, and I can cause them both to hang at identical spots.

At identical spot ?

-> I can make them hang at the same spot. For instance, when I open up add remove programs before it even loads the full screen it's insta-hang

have the M/C's ran OK prior to this ?

-> Yes both machines were okay till about the weekend. One started to act screwy on friday, and the other on Monday. The machines are totally unuseable atm.

If so, when did this fault raise its ugly head ?

-> I believe they started to act up over the weekend. On Friday I would have 0 problems with hangs and crashes. Now it seems to happen every few minutes. My mem checker even hangs and that uses freeDos.


Also on overheating, check that there isn't a build up of dust, P3 900's are kinda old ?

-> There is some dust there. I'll bust out the dustbuster and attempt to clean it out.

check the air isn't restricted in its flow through the case.
check that the fans ARE running [if they have failed; DO NOT lube, replace]
-> Short on time today but do these two tomorrow

Remove and reseat your RAM.
-> Done, I've replaced the RAM with RAM I know 100% to be working. I can recreate the freeze at the same spot.

remove and reseat the CPU heatsink and fan.
-> will try that tomorrow

post results back soon.
enough for now

Thanks for the advice. ATM my main concern was the SQL server. I've got multiples of boxes with the same hardware specs so I'll just change the HD's and see if I can get that back up and running.