Member Avatar for dulcificum

First, my specs:

ASUS PQ5 Pro
Q6600
2GB Corsair XMS2
Windows XP SP3

Wifi: TP-LINK TL-WN620G latest drivers.
Router: Linksys WRT300N

My PC keeps hard freezing/crashing when using torrenting programmes and connected via my USB wifi dongle. It will only crash when torrenting programmes are running but it does not matter which programme I use. I mainly use uTorrent but I can reproduce the freezes with other programmes too.

Basically if left torrenting it will randomly freeze every 30 mins to 30 hours. The screen locks up, sound repeats, no user input works, HDDs stop too. This happens at all download/upload speeds but can be made to happen within 5/10 minutes without fail by having constant traffic above about 200/300 kB/s. It never happens when a torrent programme isn't running.

I heavily suspect my wifi dongle but am two stories above the router so cannot check with CAT5. It gets very hot when using the internet. This isn't a software issue as it's exactly the same with a fresh install of XP.

Any ideas? Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

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Member Avatar for Stylish

There are a lot of points of failure.

The top on my list:
- WiFi USB dongle
- Bad HD
- Bad RAM

I would really want to eliminate the WiFi portion first. Either take it to a friends house and connect via a wire or grab another USB dongle and run the same tests. If you can determine it is not a network problem, move on to the next paragraph.

I would look for a ram/memory tester (not sure of any off the top of my head - Ubunut LiveCD?). For the hard drive, run the Error Checking utility that comes with Windows XP with the "Check for Bad Sectores" selected.

And post with the results!

Member Avatar for dulcificum

Run MemTest86+ for a day - no errors.
HD is fine too.

Think it must be the wifi though why would it be a problem? How can a wifi dongle not do wifi properly?!

Member Avatar for dulcificum

The bundled drivers are bad but I get the same problem with the latest Aetheros drivers too.

It can handle constant uploads of 400 kB/s but torrents kill it dead.

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