XP locks up overnight...

[thisisevermore]

I leave my comp up overnight or when I go out but if it's just sitting idle for an hour or two it locks up. The only way to get it running again is to do a hard reboot. I don't know if it's relevant but no viruses, no spyware. Any help - greatly appreciated.

[Miz]

See how things are set up in Control Panel>Appearance and Themes>Display>Screensaver tab>Power button. Set things the way you want them except I recommend you uncheck "Enable Hibernation" on the Hibernate tab. If Hibernate has been enabled, that's the most likely source of the problem. Windows has seemingly always had trouble coming out of hibernation.

[thisisevermore]

Thanks for the help but this was one of the first things I thought to check just in case hibernation somehow got turned on. It was in fact off though so I guess I'm still stuck not knowing what caused this.

Originally Posted by Miz

See how things are set up in Control Panel>Appearance and Themes>Display>Screensaver tab>Power button. Set things the way you want them except I recommend you uncheck "Enable Hibernation" on the Hibernate tab. If Hibernate has been enabled, that's the most likely source of the problem. Windows has seemingly always had trouble coming out of hibernation.

[Miz]

How are things set on the Power Schemes tab? If they're all still on the defaults, disable Standby, see if the problem persists.

If it does, set the monitor to Never, see if the problem persists.

If it does, set the harddisks to Never, see if the problem persists.

Or, if you don't want to spend three days doing that one-by-one elimination, set them all to Never and see if the problem persists.

If that doesn't fix things (or they're already all set to Never), what programs are running in the background? Is the computer connected to the internet through an always-on, high speed connection (cable or DSL)?

[thisisevermore]

I set everything in the power tab to never. Still getting the same issue. The only programs I have running in the background are AVG Anti-Virus. I am connected by DSL at all times though.

[sha]

Originally Posted by thisisevermore

I set everything in the power tab to never. Still getting the same issue. The only programs I have running in the background are AVG Anti-Virus. I am connected by DSL at all times though.

Did you look at event viewer it should give you something to work on.

[thisisevermore]

Event viewer? Sounds familiar but I can't place it. Where is it and what am I supposed to be getting from it?

[thisisevermore]

Deng...i found the event viewer. "accoriding to microsoft" this is all cause by a loose cable somewhere in my system. Go figure. Thanks for the help.

[Breek68]

thisisevermore, could you let me know if the loose cables solves your problem.
My parents computer has been doing this for about 1 month and I just can't figure it out. And was there anything in your event viewer that was specific that let them believe that it was loose cables.
any info would be appreciated
thx

Originally Posted by thisisevermore

Deng...i found the event viewer. "accoriding to microsoft" this is all cause by a loose cable somewhere in my system. Go figure. Thanks for the help.

[thisisevermore]

Hey Breek, checked and re checked all my cables. Nothing really seemed to loose but after I did this check (primarily on the drive cables) everything started running fine - no more lock ups. I went in the event viewer and like I said in my original issue statement - this seemed to happen every night. I went in the event viewer and under the system log this was a reoccuring error happening every night around the same time (I assume my anti-virus program tried to access something on drive with the loose cable and that's what caused the lock up). I clicked on the log details and it basically told me to check my cables. So there you go, just tell me if you need some more help.