Hi, I have a few computer problems. My PC runs Windows XP SP2 (Build 2600.xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158 : Service Pack 2) over a Pentium 4 3 GHz and 512 MB RAM (64 MB shared VRAM). I use an ADSL connection to connect to the internet, and use the RASPPPOE driver set.
1. My computer freezes randomly while I am on the internet. These crashes are often random and out of the blue, however a few activities cause a surefire system freeze, for instance using torrent or P2P clients, or browsing sites with active content like youtube, or using Windows Media Player or Winamp for media playback. During each of the crash, the CPU fan rotation becomes audible, and the system stops showing any response, mouse or keyboard. Also, if I'm playing music when the system has frozen, it gets stuck over a short few-millisecond-long piece that it was playing and repeats it in an irritating buzz. Mostly the downloads active at the moment get wiped off, and sometimes the downloads that had finished successfully before the crash also get deleted. Quite often, a lot of cross links are also reported, which are either fixed or deleted during the startup scan. Very rarely, during such a crash, I get a blue screen of death with the following STOP code:
0x0000008E (OxC0000005, 0x8054A51A, 0xF784BAC8, 0x00000000)
I've tried searching the internet for the relevant STOP code, but to no avail. The pagefile is on a partition other than C:, and thus no memory dump is generated. My other system, a Celeron 500 MHz with 64 MB RAM, which uses the same PPPoE driver, runs Windows 98 and does not show any such problems. Both computers run ZoneAlarm firewall. I cannot install Windows 98 on the faulty PC since the motherboard doesn't support Windows 98 according to my vendor. Help!
2. My computer has a couple of invalid filesystem entries. These entries were formed during one of the crashes I mentioned earlier, and now I can't delete them. They take up around 10 GB of space, which is now virtually unusable. I have tried deleting them from DOS, Windows, used a shredder, all to no avail. The files contain garbled characters which are not allowed as part of file names usually. A directory listing copied from DOS is as under:
07/04/2006 02:03 PM <DIR> .
07/04/2006 02:03 PM <DIR> ..
07/05/2006 01:03 PM 16,384 g
10/04/2030 12:00 AM 2,182,070,272 ╪ vk
10/12/2030 12:03 AM 2,198,994,944 α vk
02/03/2034 12:01 AM 2,123,595,776 ╪ vk
07/05/2006 01:19 PM 16,384 ↑
07/05/2006 01:19 PM 16,384 g
10/03/2035 12:03 AM 2,177,908,736 ╪ vk
02/03/2034 12:00 AM 2,123,595,776 α vk
07/05/2006 01:30 PM 0
07/05/2006 01:30 PM 0
10/12/2014 12:00 AM 578,830,336
01/01/1601 05:30 AM 0 hbin
12 File(s) 11,385,044,992 bytes
2 Dir(s) 814,497,792 bytes free
I am in no inclination to format my drive. Is there any other way to get rid of the files? Every form of help would be totally welcome. Thanks in advance.