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screenshot of gsmartcontrol "Attributes". What does it mean? The 2 minute test and the 5 minute conveyance test showed no errors. The HDTune error scan showed no bad sectors (all green). The HDtune general health window showed this: Speccy 1.30 showed all temps OK, low to mid 30s C. So far, none of the tests have found a (serious) hardware problem afaik. Am I missing something? Edit: Thanks, Dennis, a great tutorial.

Not sure if a hard drive error could be the problem here. If so, it might be the same on the newer computer because HP shipped it with a faulty HDD, and when the tech fixed it under warranty he didn't replace it, probably just ran chkdsk Just ran gsmartcontrol 2 minute test. Not sure I like that stuff about Old_age, and Pre-fail. Results: === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: Western Digital Caviar Blue EIDE Device Model: WDC WD2500AAJB-00J3A0 Serial Number: LU WWN Device Id: Firmware Version: 01.03E01 User Capacity: 250,059,350,016 bytes [250 GB] Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show] ATA Version is: 8 ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated Local Time is: SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 1 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 144 136 021 Pre-fail Always - 3758 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 091 091 000 Old_age Always - 9328 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 076 076 000 Old_age Always - 18033 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 091 091 000 Old_age Always - 9266 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 237 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 197 197 000 Old_age Always - 9329 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 109 099 000 Old_age Always - 34 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0 SMART Error Log Version: 1 No Errors Logged SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 18033 - # 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 14822 - SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1 SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS 1 0 0 Not_testing 2 0 0 Not_testing 3 0 0 Not_testing 4 0 0 Not_testing 5 0 0 Not_testing Selective self-test flags (0x0): After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk. If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

I'm about to post some results from gsmartcontrol over in my hardware topic. Do me a favor, go see if it is as dire as I read it to be. here: https://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=47316

For my part, I wish you Merry Christmas and may God bless. Whatever holidays you celebrate, may you find peace and happiness.

Thanks, Dennis. I have always let Avast update the program whenever it wanted to. But you're right about the bells & whistles, and I still have the old installers. Andavari, the avast site says right now that it is compatible with xp but I'm gonna keep checking. What about a firewall, Andavari?

Thanks for the Panda recommendation. For a firewall, free would be better. I used ZoneAlarm free a long time ago, it was good but not easily configured in those days. Am also considering Jetico firewall, now offered free. It is well recommended. Sure would be nice to find a firewall with the "auto-learn" feature that was so handy in Outpost. I haven't kept up, they may all have that now. Fwiw, windows updates were turned off long before this issue started. "BOOM, thank you very much MS." Could be, it is after all windows, but that is low on the probability scale, imho, because the old computer ran for 10+ years without this lockup issue, and the new-ish computer for a few years. That's why I guess something important has changed.

A new clue. Windows xp locked up on my newer computer, the one set up to dual boot wxp and w7 from 2 separate HDDs. Happened after the OS had been on standby for several hours, was awakened and connectied to the net to update the AV. It has a much faster processor, more RAM, is of course newer, and has never locked up before. The active softwares common to both xp computers are Avast, Spywareblaster, Outpost Firewall, Sandboxie, and Powershadow. I'm beginning to suspect a conflict with Avast since it is the only one of those that has changes regularly. I will check over on the Avast forums, see what they have to say. It could also be something with Outpost, but i have one of the old versions, a firewall only, never needs to update. It does have a feature called Feedback. Since Agnitum sold to Yandex, the update servers for Outpost apparently don't work, and that may have some negative effect on that "Feedback" function. Well, Mta, it's a needle in a haystack for sure. I'll continue to post up anything that seems relevant or until you guys tell me to hush up about it. In the meantime, can anyone please suggest a good firewall and antivirus for xp? I'll probably replace both. Edit: Andavari, I still haven't run Linux for any length of time on the old computer, to check for lockup, but I will as soon as I can.

:lol:

As the dinosaur sang as he sat down in the La Brea tar pit: ... wait for it ... wait ... "What kind of fuel am I?"

I do that also, on this old win xp computer. Seems to me that it uses a little less horsepower, and when I need to I can turn it on and use all the bells and whistles. Edit: Also, fwiw, MBAM paid has never conflicted with Avast that I could tell.

Me too, now. Thanks.

Thanks, nikki605. I guess win 10 is making them a bit crazy. I have a lot of faith in those MBAM guys, even more in info from Hazelnut.

Hazelnut, that link won't open here with Palemoon or Firefox. It did earlier today, now won't. I found it on a couple of other forums, same thing. Nogo.

V2 worked fine here on win xp, and win 7. Will wait a bit for V3, seems they're still tuning it. Thanks for the info, Hazelnut.

Heres mine. C'mon, Corona, put a hat on that cat.

Not sure of that. Windows will run for a day or two, then at some point it will lock up as described earlier. Often but not always when resuming from standby. I don't run Puppy for that long for two reasons. One, because the computer won't go completely to standby and shut down. Plus, I don't entirely trust the firewall capabilitires in Linux. Mostly because I haven't read up on them.

Yep. Gotta love the pare pair pear. And thanks for the palemoon suggestion, it really is better. Come to think of it, that might have been Hazelnut's suggestion. ?? duhhh . . . Anyways it's a good'un. Of course, we locked up about an hour after that post. I knew better than to gloat. One thing did change at about the same time the lockups started. I ran Puppy 528 from a live CD and allowed it to put the 2 permanent files onto this computer C: partition. - there is a folder called l5281204.053 with a file called lupu_528.sfs in it, size = 290 mb, - and also a file called lupusave-20161022_2.2fs, size = 512 mb 23 of the 45 gb on that partiton is free space, so still plenty of room on C. Just thinking aloud.

Just a quick update and thank you to everybody who has helped. I haven't said much about this job simply because i don't have much time just now to work on it. One thing i did is switch over to the last version of Palemoon for xp, and that seems to have helped. Much quicker and lighter on resources. Am monitoring the temps and processes to see if anything spikes just before a lock up. No patterns observed yet. More later.

Same here. Just checked.

Admin Brad over at Sandboxie forums says the problem is fixed. Have not tried it yet here.

Nice one, Hazelnut.

I'm sure they will, they have a sterling reputation. There's more talk about it here and there but no fix yet I can see. Seems to be a recent development. I edited a typo in that first post. Doesn't matter how many times I check, I won't see all the typos until it's posted.

Got a popup notification to renew license. Activation failed on 2 machines. Its a lifetime license, never failed before. Apparently others are having the same problem. Tried to reinstall over the top, tried to uninstall and reinstall, no go. Their forum says an offline activation will solve it, haven't tried that yet. http://forums.sandboxie.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=23680

What could possibly go wrong when replacing a mother board, eh? A flowchart, it's a PDF: http://www.fonerbooks.com/poster.pdf

Ran chkdsk and sfc /scannow. All OK. Ran an avast boot scan. All OK. Manually deleted the recycle bins in safe mode. All OK. This was all a couple of days ago. edit: Temps remain normal, as in the screenshot below. I guess the next step is a hardware checkup. Have located a replacement motherboard but don't want to go that way unless absolutely necessary.