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Old 03-21-2006, 11:25 AM   #1
Undertoad
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Anatomy of a hang

It's another one of those thread titles that sounds dirty but isn't.

Like every PC ever known, my current desktop PC is going through a painful period. It's experiencing intermittent hangs. Freezes.

I'm an experienced problem-solver; I did it for a living for a while. But I have no idea why mine is having this problem, so I figured I'd list what I did, and what I do, to try to figure this one out.

The symptom: well, usually it happens in Firefox. I'm opening up tabs, or scrolling, or doing something, when the system stops being responsive. The cursor may go to an hourglass in the Firefox window. For about 10 seconds the system may be able to do other things; I may be able to hit ctrl-alt-del to get to the windows task manager, or I may be able to switch windows, or I may be able to highlight a desktop icon. Or I may be able to do none of this.

I think I may usually be doing memory-intensive operations when it happens. I don't think it will happen right now, for example; all I'm doing is typing into the edit box, so I'm thinking it'll stay stable during this period.

Just in case, I'll save this post It's the "symptoms" part, and next I'll say what I think so far.
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Old 03-21-2006, 11:36 AM   #2
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The hang, as far as I know, has only happened when Firefox has been active. But it has happened when Firefox was open and Thunderbird was executed - T-bird being a hugely memory-intensive thing, moreso than Firefox.

As a problem solver, my first thought is: what has *changed*? Is there anything I can point to in the last few days that might make a difference?

Hardware: a big yes. In fact, I moved my entire room around last week. At that point, a day later, my sound card failed. Coincidence? Who can say, but a failing speaker system might have led to a shorted output, blowing a channel, so I had to replace the whole thing. These days it is hard to get a mid-priced sound card in stores, so I wound up getting an external: a Creative USB solution.

But the system had been running correctly with this in place for a week, and was rebooted several times during that period.

Software: yes. Two days previously, I had run a "startup cleaner" and turned several things off during startup. This was partly because I was annoyed that Real wanted to remind me to upgrade, those fuckers. Partly because I had been cleaning Jacquelita's system of malware, and I was getting paranoid.

I was able to reboot cleanly and run well after that. But shortly thereafter I started to get errors with a hardware monitoring program that watches my motherboard's temperature, fan, and voltages. It would not run at startup, although when I ran it after startup it seemed to run fine.
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Old 03-21-2006, 11:47 AM   #3
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OK, so does the motherboard monitoring software say anything interesting? It says my CPU is so cool I could touch it, my fans are running fine, and the power supply is producing good voltages -- while the monitor is watching it -- except for maybe a few little hitches on the 12V rail. I write that off to disk usage.

Although I should say, when the system hangs, the disk activity light seems to be at 100%.

Is this problem hardware or software? Of course, it only seems to happen when software is running; the system has remained stable overnight, when it's relatively inactive. So my first thought was that it must be Firefox. The problem started to really get aggravating yesterday, and only appeared in Firefox; Unreal Tournament 2004 worked for an hour, and that'll tax your memory and your whole system harder than Firefox.

But was that just chance?

I disabled smooth scrolling, since it seemed to happen during scrolling. No effect.

I disabled a few extensions that I didn't need, and uninstalled a few that I never used. Often Firefox extensions will make it seem like Firefox itself is unstable. But this had no effect on the problem.
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Old 03-21-2006, 11:55 AM   #4
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OK, seems like a memory problem then. So I've taken the 1GB out of my other system, and replaced the 768MB currently in this one. A complete memory upgrade: more memory, faster memory, and identical sticks.

The problem still happens.

And that's where it stands now. Next, I'll do the IotD, which will take a few memory-intensive, system-intensive things (maybe even Photoshop), and if this morning has been any example, the whole thing will just freeze up at some point in the middle of all that.

It just seems more hardware-ish. The motherboard is an Asus, whatever the most common Socket A AMD-supporting board was a year and a half ago. The capacitors are not bulging.

Your thoughts, anyone?
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Old 03-21-2006, 12:02 PM   #5
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yeah right
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Old 03-21-2006, 12:17 PM   #6
dar512
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Have you done a complete disk check?
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Old 03-21-2006, 01:12 PM   #7
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Is the problem that you're using a PC?
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Old 03-21-2006, 01:22 PM   #8
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Disk check = OK

PC = yes, but if this problem is figured out I can fix it myself for as little as $50, or reuse components to build another for $200, so the point is moot.
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Old 03-21-2006, 01:24 PM   #9
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I don't know much about hardware or software but I have some guesses:

1. Firefox has a memory leak; and/or
2. Firefox inadvertently creates multiple references to the same memory address; and/or
3. Firefox creates partially overlapping references to the same memory block ; and/or
4. Firefox has some unmapped cases in its algorithms.

I've installed and uninstalled Firefox quite a number of times on several computers and have decided that while I like the program a lot, it needs a few more minutes in the oven.

Clarification on point #1. I don't necessarily think its a true memory leak because the task list does not reflect excessive memory allocation to Firefox. But the way it starts behaving makes me wonder if somehow, Firefox thinks all the memory is tied up and therefore unavailable leading it to freeze which somehow cascades into a general PC lockup. I dunno but I'm past tired of trying to get that program to act right.
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Old 03-21-2006, 01:28 PM   #10
dar512
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If you're not having problems in any other program, then I'd have to suspect Firefox also.
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Old 03-21-2006, 01:44 PM   #11
Undertoad
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I've used Firefox since 0.7. And, somehow someway, I've been using it for the last two hours without a problem. I've opened and closed 50 tabs; my IotD search method involves opening 25 tabs simultaneously.

I think it shows up in Firefox because Firefox is 90% of what I do. When I can get to the task manager during the hang, it reports Firefox as taking about 100,000 k when the problem seems to happen.

There was one odd thing, though... during that disk check, the D: drive seemed to have a moment where it was louder and grindy-er. It got through the check OK, but I'm gonna back that up now and check it harder. There is space allocated on that drive for swap... or whatever Windows calls it...
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Old 03-21-2006, 03:25 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertoad
or whatever Windows calls it...
Yeah, you might want to fiddle around with the virtual memory settings.
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Old 03-21-2006, 03:43 PM   #13
Undertoad
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Yes, I've moved all virtual memory off that drive, and I'm now moving all the data off that drive. Because of various incorrect business decisions, I happen to have about 6 80GB drives, so upgrading the drive anyway is not a bad idea.

(If anyone wants one of these Seagate Barracude 80GB drives, let me know. Unused. $50 plus shipping. PM me.)
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Old 03-21-2006, 03:48 PM   #14
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I had the same problem, but could never tell if it was memory, disk, or motherboard. Does your HDD access light go solid when you freeze up as well?

Because it was so infrequent and never resulted in a OS or App dump, I could never diagnose it. Troubleshooting it by swapping hardware would have proven too expensive.
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Old 03-21-2006, 03:53 PM   #15
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Yes, it goes solid... where I have the system, under the desk, I don't notice the light so much. But every time I've checked, during the hang, that light is 100% on.
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