1

I have:

  • Windows XP Pro SP3 with latest updates, drivers, .NET, etc.
  • Pentium 4 2.8GHz
  • 2GB RAM
  • 150GB HD
  • ATI Radeon HD 3400

Recently (as early as a week ago) Visual C++ (both 2005 Pro and 2008 Express) started hanging up my computer. Whenever they are run, after 5-20 minutes of work the computer freezes. Everything becomes unresponsive, including the mouse cursor. No combination of keys does anything. What's strange, is that Winamp/Firefox continues to play whatever it was playing at the time (internet radio, mp3 playlist, etc). The only thing I can do is a hard reboot.

I've run CCleaner and a full AVG antivirus scan, both of which found nothing suspicious.

Does anyone know of a solution to this problem?

EDIT

Turns out, this was a problem with the latest graphics card drivers. The card kept overheating and for some reason Visual Studio pushed it over the edge. I installed an older version of the drivers and the problem went away.


Same Problem - by DaveMorton

I have exactly the same problem, with a nearly identical computer/configuration (see Below). Disabling the ATI Hotkey Poller didn't work for me, unfortunately, and after some investigation, I've determined that it's not an overheating issue with my video card (it never gets over 100°F). The lockup problem occurs randomly, time-wise, but never takes longer than 15 minutes from the time that I start VS 2008 until it freezes the entire computer. So far, I see nothing in the event logs, but I haven't done a whole lot of snooping in that direction, so I'm going to clear my logs, then give it another go, and see if anything pops up.

System Specs:

  • AMD Athlon2 2.8GHz dual core
  • 4GB DDR2 RAM
  • 1.3TB Total drive space
  • ATI HD3400 Series, running 2 monitors
  • ATI HD4200, running 1 monitor (on-board adapter)
  • Windows XP Pro SP3
  • Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition Ver. 9.0.21022.8 RTM
  • .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

Further Info - by DaveMorton

After clearing the event logs and restarting VS, I (of course) experienced another freeze. Upon rebooting, and examining the logs, I'm finding no entries that involve the freezing. However, I did find a log entry regarding .NET Framework Optimization service that occurred during the bootup process. I'm not certain how relevant that is, though, since a regular restart of the system shows the same log entry.

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  • Did you try a defrag?
    – David
    Dec 13, 2010 at 15:42
  • Yeah, it didn't help.
    – GhassanPL
    Dec 13, 2010 at 16:10

4 Answers 4

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I have noticed the problem went away after disabling the Ati HotKey Poller service. The Event Log seemed to have errors related to C:\WINDOWS\system32\Ati2evxx.exe everytime my Visual Studio Froze.

0

Have you tried running Visual Studio in compatibility mode? Failing that, a reinstall and installation with the latest patches.

Also, does your computer run a lot of applications in the background when VS is run, and have you tried to run the program with nothing running?

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Winamp/Firefox continues to play whatever it was playing at the time

This sounds more like a winamp issue -- possibly something to do with an audio driver. Can you reproduce the crash without winamp running?

Also, a P4 is way underpowered for running visual studio along side other programs. You really want at least a dual core (even a pentium D would help, though for preference I'd look for a core 2 duo.)

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  • I can reproduce the crash without almost anything running.
    – GhassanPL
    Dec 13, 2010 at 17:01
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I have a similiar setup and started experiencing freezes. It appears using Compatibility Mode (Win 2000) and disabling Visual Themes did the trick.

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