Out of the blue, XP decides to crash

[rrcn]

For some reason, windows xp has been crashing. Crashing: where I cant use the mouse, keyboard and all the applications stop. I dont remember installing anything recently. Though I have, about 2 weeks ago, installed 2 X 256MB PC2700. But I dont think that this would cause the system to crash. This has happened twice yesterday and once again this morning. The one that happened this morning, I had signed on to AOL and I had clicked on the mail button to read my e-mail, and then XP crashed The last application I installed was a demo of Battle Field 1942 off of nVidia website.

Specs:

P4 2.4ghz 533fsb
ecs p4vxasd2+ v5.0
windows xp w/ sp1
512mb pc2700
maxtor 120gb

I have run Norton antivirus, an online antivirus scan, tried norton win doctor, and also scandisk.

[jmichna]

Any error messages/BSODs? Or, does it just freeze, or does it just reboot spontaneously? Have you gone into Event Viewer to see what, if any, error messages are present?

[rrcn]

There are no error messages. It just freezes, so I have to turn the computer off from the tower. I cannot go into the event viewer, everything freezes.

[jmichna]

Boot into Safe mode, and see if you can get into Event Viewer.

[Martoch]

Originally posted by jmichna
Boot into Safe mode, and see if you can get into Event Viewer.

Ahh...beat me to the punch!

Have you tried stripping your system down to the basic hardware to ensure that there isn't a conflict somewhere?

[rrcn]

I went into event viewer and found a warning that took place at the time of the crash: "1 inconsistencies were detected in PropertyStore during recovery of catalog e:\system volume information\catalog.wci."

There were also two errors at the same time:
"Content index on e:\system volume information\catalog.wci is corrupt. Please shutdown and restart the Indexing Service (cisvc)."
"Cleaning up corrupt content index metadata on e:\system volume information\catalog.wci. Index will be automatically restored by refiltering all documents."

Both errors and the warning had the source of "Ci" and category of "CI Service"

My system has never crashed before, until a couple days ago. I dont think its a hardware conflict. It hasn't crashed until two weeks after I installed the ram. If it is a hardware conflict, why wouldnt it have crashed the day or couple days after I installed it?

Thanks all. Your input is greatly appreciated.

[jmichna]

Did a google.com search on "catalog.wci is corrupt" and got:
http://search.support.microsoft.com/...ontent%20index
This link implies you could try deleting the content of catalog.wci and re-index:
http://www.tek-tips.com/gviewthread..../41/qid/420341
There isn't a whole heck of a lot of info there from Google, but the MS Knowledgebase has dozens of articles.

My wild-a**ed guess is a corrupted file or possibly a hard drive defect just beginning in the region the catalog.wci is located. Try D/L a HD diagnostic utility from your HD manufacturer's website (use one that creates a boot disk or boot CD) and test your HD for errors.

[rrcn]

I downloaded PowerMax from Maxtor, and did the full test. The result said the hard drive passed. I also had done a scandisk scan before, and also no bad sectors were found. I havent done what jmichna had found on google though. I'm open for more suggestions.

All suggestions are much appreciated.

[originel]

another thought...you could disable system restore for now and see if that makes a difference. ifi remember right "System Volume Info" is where system restore stores all of it's files and such, so that might help.

[pinipig523]

whenever xp freezes on me like how you describe... it usually is due to heat.