Computer help needed

[Benden]

Hello

Im new to these forums to please be gentle with me...

I'm having alot of problems with my normally quite stable PC. And when i say alot, i mean random reboots, BSOD's, games freezing, desktop apps dying day in day out, and a wierd popping from my speakers with music and games.

Firstly my computer specs (when the problems first started):

Athlon XP 2400+
GA-7DXR motherboard with latest bios revision (F10) (over 4 years old!)
512mb PC2100 DDR....random chips (later got upgraded to 1gb corsair DDR400)
XFX GF4 TI4600
Audigy2 ZS
2 Realtek network cards
1 Maxtor 60gb IDE drive and 1 Samsung 40gb IDE drive
DVD drive and CD burner....i forget the makes and models
350w PSU
Windows XP + SP2 + latest drivers

The first problem i noticed was a lot of 'popping', 'crackling' and 'sizzling' from the speakers when playing mp3's. This may or may not be the speakers at fault which would be a seperate problem to my main one (tbh i recon it is connected to the main problem).

Now the center of the problem is all the random crashes/BSODs/freezes i've been getting. The info given on the BSOD's is rarely the same...they always seem to give different codes and/or different files at fault. So reboot button gets pressed and then on loading windows i sometimes get another random BSOD, reboot again and sometimes another...i just keep rebooting until i get back into windows. These BSOD's seem to occur for no reason whatsoever, i even had one while trying to post this thread!

I seem to get random crashes from games i know that have been 100% stable on my system in the past (Vice City, and CS1.6 mainly). And with HL2 just released i'd love to play it without the crashes/freezes.

Apps will randomly crash for no reason too...i tend to listen to alot of music while im on the desktop and every now and then Winamp will just die on me. Same with Firefox and other applications.

AHA! you say, this is either a RAM or overheating problem. Well thats what i thought at first so i bought some nice shiney Corsair 2x512DDR400 (with flashy LEDs!! ) and installed that....no effect. I have a Thermaltake Xaser III case with a Volcano9 on the CPU, the CPU never goes over 42ish degrees. NB and GFX fans seem to b working. Thinking of the music problems i swapped out my Audigy with an old SB 5.1 which made no difference. Tried using a different HDD to boot from.

I've also tried reformatting the computer to no avail so im pretty sure it isnt a software fault. Ran AVG anti-virus and Adaware...no change. I have also ran Prime95....before and after the RAM upgrade and both times it failed on the first test with the same rounding error.

At this point my opinion is the motherboard is giving up the ghost as its the oldest component except possibly my floppy drive, but as im a poor student i thought i'd try and get a second opinion b4 spending my pennies.

Any help/advice/opinions greatfully appreciated

 

[MaMMa]

have u prime95 or memtest?

 

[Benden]

I have also ran Prime95....before and after the RAM upgrade and both times it failed on the first test with the same rounding error.

I have run memtest once on the old RAM....it only found a couple of errors after 4 hours or so of testing. I havent run it on the new corsair RAM (wouldnt have thought i'd need to on new ram)

 

[hazexban]

New RAM could be bad too, has happened to me 2 times over the years.

I never thought power supplies could shit the bed and cause problems untill recently, I would try using a different Power Supply, I just had semi similiar issues and it turned out to be a shitty Thermaltake PS.

Pete

 

[Astral Abyss]

Well thats what i thought at first so i bought some nice shiney Corsair 2x512DDR400 (with flashy LEDs!! ) and installed that

but as im a poor student i thought i'd try and get a second opinion b4 spending my pennies.

Poor collage students buy a gig of CorsairXMS Pro?

Well, anyway, you took the RAM being the problem out of the equation.

The first thing I thought of when you described that was either RAM or hard drive failing. Random BSODs are pretty common when those two components start to die.

The other possibility is what you stated... motherboard. Are you using the RAID controller for your hard drive? If so, try moving it to the other IDE controller temporarily and see if the problem goes away. I've seen the RAID controller on older boards die upon occasion. The other thing I'd look for is leaking or busted capacitors on the motherboard, especially around the CPU and RAM areas. That was a big problem with poorly made, leaky capacitors around the time that motherboard was built. Also, look for damaged or burnt transistors. I've seen them die as well.

That's where I would start.

 

[Benden]

I'll try and find time to run memtest again on the new ram for the sake of completeness. Im the flats internet host so downtime probably wont go down to well with the flatmates

the PSU is fairly new-ish and has run for atleast a few months b4 this stuff happened...mite give a different one a go just to rule it out tho.

Poor collage students buy a gig of CorsairXMS Pro?

*cough* well...umm...when i do buy hardware i get the best i can

the hdd's are both on the IDE controller and always have been...never seen the need to fiddle wiht RAID with only 2 IDE drives.

Just went crawling around inside my case with a torche....and i can see atleast 10 capacitors in the top half of the mobo that are looking a little less than healthy, bulging and several seem to have their insides leaking out. Cant see any transistors that look dodgy tho but i'll have the whole thing opened up later and scrutinize it. Seeing as this mobo is about 4 years old im beginning to think its very likely this is the culprit.

cheers muchly for all suggestions folks, beginning to think the world hasnt quite ended yet

 

[Chelica]

What kind of PSU do you have?

And to fix the popping problem with the sound, have you tried putting the Sound Card on the last PCI slot?

 

[Benden]

its just some random generic 450w PSU... (not 350w from my 1st post) no name that i can see on it.

i've tried swapping the Audigy round most of the slots, last one included. Havent tried the one just below the GFX, but i'd rather keep that one clear for airflow. I made sure it isnt sharing an IRQ.

 

[Astral Abyss]

Just went crawling around inside my case with a torche....and i can see atleast 10 capacitors in the top half of the mobo that are looking a little less than healthy, bulging and several seem to have their insides leaking out.

Bingo.

That motherboard is toast, and if the capacitors are leaking I would strongly advise against using it at all. The last thing you want is a capacitor discharging onto a ground fault or leaking improper voltage into your components and possibly damaging your system in the process or catching fire (if they got hot enough).

 

[Benden]

just thought i'd post to let u know how i got on....

Installed a brand new Gigabyte 7NF-RZ and not had a single problem since. Of course i promptly flashed the bios and it refused to boot up. most worrying few mins of my life until i reset the cmos!!! but tis all good now, no BSODs, no crashes, no freezes, no popping from the music.

cheers for everyone's help