Pc Dying

[kknd_cf]

I won't bother giving you the specifications of my PC as they are ok. It can run Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 for example at full speed, full settings. All my drivers are installed correctly also. But for some reason when randomly doing shit on my desktop, say for example launching firefox everything will freeze up. I know when it's about to happen because my media stops playing, I have about five seconds till complete death. If I reboot rather than turn off and on from here I get a "system boot error" message. I did get a bit of blue screen of death a while ago but that seems to have gone.

Anyway the freeze up is happening more constantly now. The PC never dies when its memory is put to the test when I'm running say a high-spec game but seems to randomly die when launching a small program. Also all my software seems to be slowly falling apart, things just fuck up (for example Trillian needed a reinstall today as it kept not launching then dying resulting in freeze-ip).

Another problem the PC has is when trying to access a CD-R disk using my DVD-R drive I have to wait about 20 seconds until I get the message "unable to access disk" followed by a not-responding of My Computer.

Sorry for the shit thread but I guess I can rely on you guys to help me out here, thanks.

EDIT: gah shit, steam just died

 

[sam fisher]

Its the bi-annual complete windows crash. I think a reinstall may be neccisary.

 

[kknd_cf]

PS, I've formatted four times.

 

[Goity]

I had pretty much the same thing, your motherboard is fucked I think.

 

[sam fisher]

not neccisarily! I had that and 3 linuxes and 4 xp's later its ok.

 

[Cyclops]

I'm going to go for overheating of the cpu.

 

[RiX0R]

Smells like memory corruption to me.

Try testing your memory with a tool like memtest86 (Google for it). A surface check of your harddisk may be in order too.

 

[D.C.]

yeah, you should definitely check your memory. Had a similair problem on my old pc. After like 10 formats I found out it was a problem with the memory i bought like almost a year before. Fortunately I had the receicpt and was able to replace it with another module.

Also try googling for you problem and check pc specifique forums. That's how I found out what the problem was.

 

[kknd_cf]

Right I'll leave memtest86 running tommorow and I'll get back to you guys.

 

[Ferentix]

You might like to use a tool to check harddrive health... a guy on the gentoo forums reccomended me "smartmontools" to check the health of my old HD in my Linux box (after somehwo breaking my installation badly... but that's a different saga). I don't know if there's a version for windows (though there is probably an equivalent tool somewhere if it isn't), but there are a fair few live, floppy based distros of Linux that have all that sort of maintenance software. Worth a try. Good luck, and I hope it isn't serious, or at least is fixable

How old is the PC or the different parts of it, out of interest?

 

[darkman]

I had a problem somewhat like that on a computer a couple of years ago and it turned out that my video card was over heating. I put in a couple of more fans and the problem was solved.

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

There are a few things that can cause what you are describing. It sounds very much a heat problem:

1. Lack of correct ventalation in your case, although you might have a fab fan on the CPU, you still need to get rid of the heat from the case, so make sure you got at least one case fan. don't rely on the PSU pulling the heat out.

2. The PSU is either not up to the job, or is failing. A PSU feeds everything in your system, if it is on the blink, then will cause exactly the faults you are describing.

3. The Fan on the CPU is faulty and slowing down or stopping, or possibly the fan sensors are faulty and giving wrong feedback to ACPI thus the CPU is overheating and causing the CPU thermal cut-out diode to act thus saving your system by reducing CPU to a minimal and eventually to a stop. Also the cohesion between the CPU and Heat sync has broken and you got a heat spot (Not very likely but I have seen it once before). Check that by reseating the CPU and by applying a new layer of Heat Sink Compound between the CPU and Heat Sink.

All that said, you have reformatted on more than one occasion and the fault is still there. May I ask, is the fault imediate after an OS install, or does it reappear after a while?

May I point out again, I would make sure your case has good ventalation, this is often missed by a lot of people, i.e. Well my CPU has a HUGE fan so heat isn't a problem..... ah, but where's the heat going? If you have a state of the art PC, then you really do need a fan at the front to suck air in, and one at the back to push it out. imagine where the air will be going, imagine the airflow drifting through the cpu cooler and out the back. This is what you need.

All above taken in, you may well have a faulty component that is heat effected. The nature of the fault (Okay for a while, slows down and stops/crashes) does indicate heat. when your system crashes, and you reboot, is the time period of the next crash the same, or is the crashing more frequent?

 

[trooper]

Sounds like a hard drive dying or in a bad way.

Install and run this program below, Check the "Heath" tab and run an error scan to see whats up.

http://www.hdtune.com/

Trooper

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Sounds like a hard drive dying or in a bad way.

Install and run this program below, Check the "Heath" tab and run an error scan to see whats up.

http://www.hdtune.com/

Trooper

​

Sorry I don't agree with the hard drive theory, if the drive was failing you would get data corruption, you would get random boot failures and get frequent corrupted registry. You would see at least one error like C:\Windows\system32\config\system is corrupt etc. Slowing down and stopping is not usually a HDD failure. I would expect to see more errors in the way of File access errors if it was the hard drive.

Edit: Don't forget that hard drives produce heat too, so make sure the drive has adiquate space and ventilation.

 

[kknd_cf]

The problem starts appearing quite a while after OS reinstall. Also yes now if I reboot after a crash it pretty much happens again very fast.

If anything I wouldn't of thought it's a graphics card overheat because it can survive me playing hours of say Half Life 2 Deathmatch.

 

[Goity]

The problem starts appearing quite a while after OS reinstall. Also yes now if I reboot after a crash it pretty much happens again very fast.

If anything I wouldn't of thought it's a graphics card overheat because it can survive me playing hours of say Half Life 2 Deathmatch.

​

I got the same thing exactly

 

[Rayek]

I have a similar problem as you for the CD thing. Apparently it's bad to have 2 DVD drives hooked up to the same IDE cable, because when I open My Computer right after I instert a disk, or try to access the disk in any way possible, my computer totally freezes. Happens with both DVDs and CDs. I've gotten used to it (Along with all the other Windows shat idiosyncrasies), but it's stilla apin that has been alleviated by my OS switch.

For the real problem, I think it's a bad ram sector, or even a cache problem. That would be my guess.

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

The problem starts appearing quite a while after OS reinstall. Also yes now if I reboot after a crash it pretty much happens again very fast.

If anything I wouldn't of thought it's a graphics card overheat because it can survive me playing hours of say Half Life 2 Deathmatch.

​

It really does sound like a heat issue. As I said before, this could be effecting any part of the PC. Try getting some quiet case fans, see if that makes a difference.

 

[Rico]

If it's a heat issue, check your motherboard temperatures of course! Just search for a revelant motherboard monitoring tool (depends on the brand - mine is called ASUS Probe) Try underclocking, running the PC with case open, or adding a fan.

You've already got tests for memory and hard drive, which you may as well run.

That leaves PSU and motherboard. If it's down to those, try getting a new PSU (you may as well anyway, make sure it's good) and isolate the problem down to the motherboard.

 

[BaDToaD]

It's very unlikley to be anything to do with heat since the PC runs games at high settings and that cooks a PC more than just about anything.

It's unlikely to be memory as once again that will get a thorough work out via gaming.

Hard drive? possible but not where I'd put my money.

Viruses I doubt is the problem as Tom is a veteran PC user and I'm sure he's up to date and has scanned his PC. Haven't you Tom?

One quick thing worth trying that sometimes fixes inexplicable crashes on the PCs I support is to open the case and disconnect and reconnect everything you can. IDE cables, Floppy cable, remove and reseat the memory, processor and cards etc.

I would say if the advice in the thread doesn't help then simply chalk it down to a windows special and rebuild the PC from scratch and Ghost an image of the freshly built PC it saves an age in the future.