Well, they are classic symptoms .... for the infinite loop AGP error.
Without becoming too technical. What happens is that under specific conditions, the processor tries to send information to the video board, while at the same time the video board tries to access your main memory. When both try to do this at the same time for the same memory location, a so called deadlock occurs. The processor (aka chipset) cannot complete, because the video board keeps rejecting the data, and the video board cannot complete, because the chipset keeps rejecting as well.
Since this effectively cuts off processor access to main memory, the processor cannot continue running (it cannot get new instructions from memory), and thus your machine appears frozen and you need to power cycle or a hard reset to get out of this mess.
The biggest chance of getting hit by the infinite loop problem is when you use drivers that allow the above mentioned deadlock to occur, which, unfortunately, happens almost exclusively with VIA drivers and thus VIA chipsets.
Also, the chances increase drastically when your chipset is very busy, which it normally is only when you are running 3D stuff. This is either with 3D games, or with the Windows XP default desktop.
A faulty processor (which we obviously cannot rule out completely) normally manifests itself differently. Instead of freezing your system, erratic behaviour occurs, which would end up in messed up program data, weird application behaviour or blue screen errors. The same goes for faulty memory modules.
Jan Peter
Without becoming too technical. What happens is that under specific conditions, the processor tries to send information to the video board, while at the same time the video board tries to access your main memory. When both try to do this at the same time for the same memory location, a so called deadlock occurs. The processor (aka chipset) cannot complete, because the video board keeps rejecting the data, and the video board cannot complete, because the chipset keeps rejecting as well.
Since this effectively cuts off processor access to main memory, the processor cannot continue running (it cannot get new instructions from memory), and thus your machine appears frozen and you need to power cycle or a hard reset to get out of this mess.
The biggest chance of getting hit by the infinite loop problem is when you use drivers that allow the above mentioned deadlock to occur, which, unfortunately, happens almost exclusively with VIA drivers and thus VIA chipsets.
Also, the chances increase drastically when your chipset is very busy, which it normally is only when you are running 3D stuff. This is either with 3D games, or with the Windows XP default desktop.
A faulty processor (which we obviously cannot rule out completely) normally manifests itself differently. Instead of freezing your system, erratic behaviour occurs, which would end up in messed up program data, weird application behaviour or blue screen errors. The same goes for faulty memory modules.
Jan Peter
