Computer crashing no apparent reason

P

polive

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 28, 2005
Messages
1,283
Started yesterday playing BF2. The game froze and stayed on one frame for a second or so and then something in the case started making a sort of rhythmic fan stopping/starting or clicking noise, something. I pressed the reset button on the case, and I think it may have started the boot process but it was still making the noise.

I immediately held down PWR and shut down fearing something was wrong. I looked in the case to see if anything was physically wrong...nope. Turned back on and it booted fine. Computer ran all night no problem.

This morning I was unzipping a large file and it started doing the same thing. I tried the reset again and it still made the noise. I powered it down again. WTF? This time when I turn it on it wants to run CHKDSK on my games partition of my drive which is in 3 partitions (it didn't run CHKDSK on Windows partition)...no errors. I'm on WinXP SP3.

I downloaded a trial of Active SMART to check if it's my hard drive that's failing. It shows everything as normal. I can't really determine where the fault is. My tower is on the floor, rig in sig, mostly clean and dust free. Temps are fine. No viruses, spyware, etc. I haven't reformatted in about a year. My main hard drive is about 3.5 - 4 yrs old, actually the whole system is that old except the video card. I've kept pretty good backups so I'm not too worried about data.

Anyone know what it might be? Or what to look at as far as logs if it does it again?
 
The PSU is reading normal using Lavalys Everest. It shows about 2% low on the 12v rail which is normal, and the other rails are also spot on. I'm ruling out the PSU for now. The video card is new, < 3 months old. The RAM passes memtest. I just played TF2 for an hour with no issue on high settings.

Only thing I can think of is the mobo dying or the HDD crapping out. I'll post again if anything changes. CPUs don't just start acting up do they? The CPU has been OC'd for years with no issue and good cooling.
 
It started the ticking again last night and woke me up! It's gotta be the hard drive. :mad:

Powered down for the night and ordered a new hdd. Seagate Barracuda.
 
It sounds like your hard drive has developed some bad sectors.
Find someone with (or buy) HDD Regenerator or Spinrite and scan the drive overnight.
Both of these utils have rescued drives I thought were beyond repair.
 
And if the drive breaks down many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the platter
And if your chipset explodes with dark smoke too
I'll see you on the new-purchase of the cpu :D
 
hehe, well I'm hoping it'll hold out til Weds. when my new drive comes from the 'Egg. It really only does it occasionally and I backed up everything to an external drive in the meantime. I took off the side of my case and last time it did the noise I got down and put my ear up to the side of the hard drive and it was definitely making some weird noises. Hope it doesn't KABOOM or do something so dramatic as to mess up anything else in the system.
 
Nenu said:
It sounds like your hard drive has developed some bad sectors.
Find someone with (or buy) HDD Regenerator or Spinrite and scan the drive overnight.
Both of these utils have rescued drives I thought were beyond repair.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I would probably do that, but the drive is already several years old. Probably time for a new one anyway. I'm ready for the SSD's to go mainstream already so I can afford one.
 
At least your HD gave you some warning. It isn't uncommon for them to just suddenly die. It probably is making noise from mechanical wear.
 
voigts said:
At least your HD gave you some warning. It isn't uncommon for them to just suddenly die. It probably is making noise from mechanical wear.
Click to expand...

Yeah I know I got lucky with the early warning noises. I will ghost the new drive as soon as I get everything how I like it, and store the image on my external, and then to another external. You can't be too careful. Rember that everybody - BACK UP, especially irreplaceable files like family and friend pictures, your resume, other important docs.

Flash drives are cheap these days if you can only afford one of those. External usb hard drives are a great tool. They hold a LOT of data these days. And upload stuff to image hosting sites, or email yourself smaller files to a web-based email like gmail or whatever also for extra protection.

Yes, I'm recommending double bagging it. :D

It's been almost a year since I formatted anyway, might as well start fresh and maybe go Vista this time./?? Nah. :D
 
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