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Freezing computers

S

Suki243

Gawd
Joined
Jun 30, 2003
Messages
542
Well, I dont know whats wrong but my brother keeps on complaining about his computer freezing. Yesterday he said it froze 10 times and it won't resolve even if you wait all day. Until you restart it. It occurs completly randomly, sometimes during a screen saver, sometimes when he mixing songs, sometimes when its just idling, sometimes with itunes. Any idea of what it could be? Someone suggested heat but all fans are going.
 
With my old graphics card (GeForce 4 MX 440), my computer would crash a lot (mostly during the screensaver) because it would wind itself into an endless loop. I figured it was the drivers but I didn't bother updating them 'cause I didn't care much about the card and I knew I'd upgrade eventually.

Then I got tired of it and I upgraded my display drivers. It seemed to help a little, or at least my computer didn't crash as often. But it still crashed. I figure the card is old and awful and just deserves to crash my computer.

Anyway, I would check his drivers. And give us your brother's computer's specs.
 
It does have an old graphics card, it has an all in wonder 8500 dv. Its not spyware, I have McAffee, PeerGuardian and he never downloads anything except music. It has a the Surge protector battery on it, but I think my computer's psu also died on me too, ( i decided not to trouble shoot the problem, hdd kept on corrupting). His freezes happen everyday
 
Computer specs.
Mobo: Soyo Dragon P4x400
CPU: P4 2.26 ghz not overclocked
Video Card ATI 8500 DV
1 gig of ram
120 maxtor hdd
a dvd burner
300 watt psu
4 fans

Well I said to myself ok it might be dust i haven't cleaned his computer out in a while. So it takes me an hour to find the dust off, I find it. Open up his computer and start dust'n away. Take out video card dust off fan a ***load of dust in that fan and in psu, it comes out I put the video card in and start it up. No post no video nothing just one long hard beep. I say to myself, the curse is true. This computer is the onle cursed computer i've had. So I say to myself my bro is gonna get really mad at me. try it again nothing, go to soyo website and it says clear cmos, do it ( don't think i did it right but w.e.) didn't work. Reseat video card, nothing. leave it alone for a few minutes and say to myself let me try it again. cross my fingers and it works. Check bios to make sure nothing changed, nothing changed. I get into windows and now its there. The drivers are fairly new.

Edit: I checked temperature of cpu when in bios and it said 100 F, kinda high for idling or just starting up?
 
edit: The dust cleaning didn't work. I soon after realized that what I saw on the screen was the image of the desktop buy it was frozen. To add to the curse story, I tried to install the .net software needed to install teh ati drivers and it froze in the middle. I rebooted by pushing the restart button on the case and then it gave me that same hard beep that it did the other day. I took out video card put it back in, cleared cmos, reseated memory, and then it started up. got into windows finally.

installed new drivers just now lets see if it works :confused:
 
WEll, updating drivers didn't work.

I was wondering, should I try to install my old 9800 pro into this one? only thing i'm conserned about is wattage, If anyone could please follow up on this please do so. It is getting extremely annoying, and I don't know what to do, with this there are 2 outa 3 computers down in the house. One was having to do with hdds keep on dying and this one has to do with random restarts.

Edit: it seems after every freeze I have to reseat video card in order for it to post.

Im gonna run an online scanner to double check and make sure there aren't any viruses or anything,

Should I try and reflash bios?
 
its a 300 w MaxPower psu, I also ran memtest86 and let it run for an hour, it didn't fail any.

I'm about to run trend house micro's online scanner on it

Should I flash bios too?, i'm hesitant of that because when i tried to run memtest off a floppy it just kept on clicking and refreshing the same, so i had to run it off a cd. Is that something wrong with the floppy or the floppy drive?
 
ran trend house and adaware, it found some infected cookies but thats all. Not to jynx it or anything but its been about 4 hrs so far and no freeze
 
So far no freezing, but a side note that I just realized. When it froze last, after I rebooted it, it gave me the no video card beep again and didn't go into windows. I kno it was the no video card beep because when i took out video card and tried to boot up it gave me the same beep. I reinserted the video card and I was able to continue into windows once again.

Could that be the cause of this freezing?
Recap:
Ruled out memory as culprit because of memtest86, passed twice(is that enough?)
Failed prime95 within one minute. it said something about error of rounding to .4 .
Spyware, adaware, and Viruses are ruled out.
Power supply may be unreliable because a few years back when we first started with this computer it had an issue with volatages which caused it to restart randomly. (We swapped out psu's and decided to leave this one in) its 300w MaxPower
 
its been 2 days since the last freeze, I didn't do anything significant to stop it, all i did was to run memtest86. Why did it stop all of a sudden?(hopefully it stopped)
 
well, today it froze. It was on a 2 day streak when it gave up.

Recap:
No spyware or viruses (According to trend house micro)
Updated drivers for video card
Memtest86 says memory is fine

Should I flash bios? only worry is that when i tried to run memtest off a floppy it didn't read it, so i had to use a cd. Can I flash bios with a cd also?

IF video card is going bad will the psu be able to support a 9800pro in there? (stock)

Right now there is a 300w psu, with a 1 optical, 1 floppy, 1 hdd, 4 fans
 
Check for bad capacitors on the motherboard. That would certainly cause random stability issues you describe.

Read more here ~ PC Mainboards at risk from defective capacitors!

bad_cap.jpg
 
lol. check for broken capacitors. for sure.

your absolutly certain that these freezes are completely random? because the easyies explanation is heat.

another is PSU, but usually you get voltage alarms, high pitched noises etc etc.

as soon as you boot. and its idleing, whats the CPU load?
 
I wil check for capictors, I have a psu tester i'll test for that too, but today my bro said that it went into windows and he left for a while and then when he came back he found hte screen all black, it didn't restart by itself, and then when he rebooted it, it started to beep, he reseated the video card but now nothing comes up. I will try reseating it myself and see if it works.

YEs they are completly random, sometimes they happen a minute after he boots up, sometimes it doesn't happen for a few days, sometimes it happens when he's in word, sometimes when he's in internet explorer, sometimes when there isn't anything on except windows media player or winamp. Sometimes in virtual dj. They are completly random, and even sometimes when its in the middle of a screen saver.

When it freezes the hdd light becomes dark it doesn't spin. Ill try and see if it makes weird sounds but I dont know when it freezes, usually when i've beenthere i haven't heard clicks or anything.


Edit: I check psu with psu tester and it's voltages are fine. Wats really weird is I took out video card , and booted it up and it didn't beep or anything, the spearker was connected and everything. But no beeps like usual. When I rplugg it back in and boot it up it works. Wat the heck?Could it be a bad mobo, a bad video card?
 
Some other info;
The cpu usage when it starts is 2%

Another note! Maybe important! I ran Prime95 on it I dont know why but when i did it failed within a minute it says the following:

Test1, 4000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M19922945 using 1024 FFT length.
FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file
Torture Test ran 0 minutes - 1 errors, 0 warnings.
Execution halted.

I ran memtest86 for 2 hours and no errors, if you want I can run it on monday all day.

I don't see any bursted caps from where i'm sitting but I would have to take out the mobo to make sure.

This computer is extremly loud so i can't run it all night otherwise i would.

The specs are:
Computer specs.
Mobo: Soyo Dragon P4x400
CPU: P4 2.26 ghz not overclocked
Video Card ATI 8500 DV
1 gig of ram Corsair XMS PC3200 2x512
120 maxtor hdd
a dvd burner
300 watt psu
4 fans

Edit: Ran motherboard moniter and it is reading a 34 C for cpu and 43C for case

Edit 2: After a restart of the computer it failed to load into windows, restarted itself and then asked me which configuration i would like i put regular and it loaded in this time but gave me that windows system crash error. I sent it cause i was curious and it suggested that I update bios. The only problem is when I ran memtest86 off a floppy it didn't read it right it stopped in the middle while it was loading, i tried twice. I don't want it to happen in the middle of a bios flash. So I had to use a cd my question isc ould i use a cd for bios or what should be my next step, replacing the floppy to flash bios?
 
anyone have any comments about the prime95 test?

Like I said i'm scared to use my bios flash because of the floppy, when I used memtest86 it stopped loading in hte beginning I don't wnat that to happen during a flash. what should I do, try and replace floppy and see if it works? Is there a way to transfer it onto a flashdrive perhpaps and run it off there?
 
temp of CPU?
normaly you only fail Prime95 when your oc'ed too much or running hot or just a bad chip in general....
 
Ran prime95 once again and got a similar error, the only difference is that the rouding was 0.496358162 instead of .5 (last time was .5). If it helps, when we first assebled this computer(some1 esle did), we had issues that would cause it to restart itself, it ended up being something with the voltages. I don't know what he did but what should they be? Mobo moniter says teh following:

--Sensor Chip Readings--

Temperature Readout[1] : 43
Temperature Readout[2] : 33
Voltage Readout[1] : 1.456
Voltage Readout[2] : 0.176
Voltage Readout[3] : 3.344
Voltage Readout[4] : 5.08032
Voltage Readout[5] : 11.248
Voltage Readout[6] : -2.07456
Voltage Readout[7] : -2.98144
Fan Readout[1] : 2393
Fan Readout[2] : 2766
 
I am not oc'd whatsoever, everything is stock, What would be possible bad chips? Proc.? ram? mobo?
 
That 12v rail looks to be out of spec. 11.2 v is far under what is acceptable. What area your current BIOS settings? The default sttings ight be undervolting orsomething else.
 
Indeed, a fluctuating +12v rail could cause many problems. Maybe the PSU is what's causing you grief.
Any idea the brand or specs on the label? We already know it's a 300w unit, unfortunately
that doesn't tell us much.

Note ......... voltage readings taken with onboard sensors & software are notoriously inaccurate.
Only way to be sure what the +12v rail is providing is to use a multi-meter.

See if you can test the voltages under load with a meter before making any final conclusions about the condition of the PSU.
 
can you bump up the voltage to the cpu a few notches? prime will fail if the cpu isn't getting enough juice. which again suggests a psu problem since it sounds like everything's at stock settings.
 
Psu brand is: MaxPower

Yes I can bump of voltages on cpu through bios
From what I can tell cpacitators are fine, I dont see any bursted or moved or out of place capacitators, but I'll inspect once more.

How would I test it with a multimeter, under load. I can test with a power supply tester that lets me use a multimeter but it can't happen under load.
When testing with a multimeter it says 12.1-12.2 but once for a split second it dropped down to 11.6. In bios it says 11.8, core voltage is 1.44
 
Here's my opinion:

1) Passes memtest86, great not a northbridge/memory problem
2) Fails Prime95, CPU/power/heating problem

a) Temps are fine, great
b) Your rails are crap, and so is your power supply.

Get yourself a new power supply, 100:1 odds it will fix it.
 
Will do, i will go and spend a little more money and buy an antec this time ;) probably a little more wattage so I can put in a 9800 pro
 
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