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This is a cry for HELP

Joined
Feb 20, 2004
Messages
532
To put it simply, all of my applications crash sooner or later. Games will freeze randomly, webbrowsers and aim clients will drop dead sooner or later. I would gladly post some screenshots but i can't seem to be able to host any files anywhere or else I would.

I installed doom3 yesterday, it seems I can't play the game for over 8 minutes until it crashes and I find myself back at the desktop. Its about the same with the splinter cell demo, farcry demo, unrealtournament demo, mozilla, gaim, and thunderbird and internet explorer.


All of those applications blow up sooner or later


I've done everything possible for cooling. I have the case open and a giant house fan blowing into it. I'm sure its not overheating.



I need any advice.
 
Are you overclocking any? Have you tried running memtest86 to check for memory errors?
 
saturnine2 said:
Are you overclocking any? Have you tried running memtest86 to check for memory errors?



haven't tried memtest but thanks for remdinding me


I haven't overclocked anything at all.




I'm going to go to work, I will be back around 10 tonight hopefully.
 
Mushroom Prince said:
thanks


right now i'm looking into all I can do for my harddrive, since I'm seeing the most problems coming from files on it and such.
np

has any of what i've said worked?
 
Carnival Forces said:
np

has any of what i've said worked?


I ran avg, it was a pain to install or at least to get the free version in my opinion. It ran and scanned abut 10 gb before it crashed.
 
What operating system are you using? It sounds like just applications are crashing but not the OS - is this right? Backup your data if you haven't already (if you can).

If it's not spyware, virus, or some other form of malware, you can try:

Creating a new profile by making a new user and logging in as them to see if the problem still occurs. I've seen corrupt profiles cause some odd issues. If it's a hardware problem, it could be anything. So you probably want to run set of diags on your system.

And there's always the old standby - format/reinstall.
 
visick said:
Bad/Failing PSU?


Sounds like it could be.

Things I would check personally.

HEAT!!! What are the temps and dust it out and see if it helps.
RAM Run the memtest86, Ram can cause this type of stuff.

PSU and Hard drive after those two things.


That is exactly what I would do if it was my computer. Especially because you keep crashing no matter what you are running. And Heat/RAM problems will do that to any computer.
 
I love you guys. *sniffles* you all make so much sense.


I'm going to run go make another account.


ON it like stink on a monkey that is the one thing I haven't tried yet.
 
Mushroom Prince said:
I love you guys. *sniffles* you all make so much sense.


I'm going to run go make another account.


ON it like stink on a monkey that is the one thing I haven't tried yet.
Major_A said:
Lol, what are you talking about, he's going to try a solution mentioned above.

Edited: whoops, i'm a dumbass :rolleyes: :p

 
Lol, what are you talking about, he's going to try a solution mentioned above.
 
Major_A said:
Lol, what are you talking about, he's going to try a solution mentioned above.


yeah I wasn't being sarcastic about that I really did go run off and make another user account.


The sad thing is is that I get the same exact problem as what I was having before. I really hope it isn't my install on windows.


How do I get memtest ?
 
Mushroom Prince said:
How do I get memtest ?
memtest link
google1.gif

;)
 
It sounds like a heat problem or a PSU trouble. What temps do you have? And voltages etc? You might want to check that all your fans are working properly etc.
 
In order of likelyhood...

Heat... (vid card or processor)
PSU...
RAM...

Not saying those are the only possibilities, just that they're the most likely.

The problem with the RAM/PSU issue is that its possible for a failing PSU to mimic bad RAM due to it not providing enough juice, or cause bad memtest results making you think you have dead RAM. You just don't know until you do the part swap thing. Unless you have a multimeter and can test your powersupply.

BB
 
To me, if it was a bad PSU, then the system would hard lock..not just individual applications. Sometimes removing the case side will hurt the cooling, but you do have a fan on it, so it shouldn't be heat related. Again, I would think if the memory was bad as well, you'd get random errors, including errors within the OS...not third party apps. However, it certainly can't hurt to try. It may be possible that the memory on the video card is bad....so if possible, try another video card. Usually when that happens, the image is distorted...but at this point anything is possible. I would also try to get a diagnostic utility from the hard drive maker's web site, and test out the drive. Also, you could try running chkdsk on the drive...if you run it in Windows, it will ask if it can run on the next manual boot...say yes, and then reboot. You could also try swapping the IDE cables to see if any of those have gone bad as well. Keep us updated, and we'll go from there.
 
Mushroom Prince said:
To put it simply, all of my applications crash sooner or later. Games will freeze randomly, webbrowsers and aim clients will drop dead sooner or later. I would gladly post some screenshots but i can't seem to be able to host any files anywhere or else I would.

I installed doom3 yesterday, it seems I can't play the game for over 8 minutes until it crashes and I find myself back at the desktop. Its about the same with the splinter cell demo, farcry demo, unrealtournament demo, mozilla, gaim, and thunderbird and internet explorer.


All of those applications blow up sooner or later


I've done everything possible for cooling. I have the case open and a giant house fan blowing into it. I'm sure its not overheating.



I need any advice.


Dont insult people who might be able to help you.
 
Check your voltages with a hardware monitor in windows or in the Bios. Another thing can be that the cooling solution on the video card or processor can be causing the random crashes. Redo all of your thermal paste applications, clean the memory sticks and try one stick at a time. record your observations and post here.
 
If you could post some temps of your cpu/motherboard under load or whatever readings you can get would be helpful.

You can throw a house fan next to your pc, but if the heatsink is so clogged with dust the extra air won't do anything for it.

You may be sure that the house fan has eliminated any heat problem, but a temp reading will make it more sure then just thinking.

People have mentioned Adaware and Spybot, have you run those?

Are there any parts you have that you can swap out, or have another computer?

Where you could take your current hard drive, throw it into another computer as a slave, and run all the scans on it there.


It makes it very hard to help you when you only try few things from our posts and don't give us any information when we ask for it. We are only trying to help, but with the little information you are giving us it is very hard to move forward with any other suggestions.

So here is a list of questions that have been asked but not answered that I found:

What operating system are you using?
It sounds like just applications are crashing but not the OS - is this right?
What are your temp readings?
What are the voltage readings either in the bios or from a windows utility?
 
alright so here is my update.


Right now i have this gut feeling that somehow the problem lies within my ram.


I have moved my crucial 512 stick of pc 2700 around in different slots on my motherboard.


keep in mind i have the soyo kt600 dragon ultra platinum blah blah blah


so that means i have 3 slots, and no dual channel capability and what not just some more background information I can think of.



my ram voltage is 2.46 volts according to the bios.

my processor runs at about 41 C 105 F according to sandra

accordinng to boot screen it runs at about 132 F


case seems to be doing 81 F according to the case

case does about 89 F according to the bios


is that normal ?



When i put my stick of ram in the third slot, it gives me a black screen about how it failed to boot normallly ( windows xp, sorry I forgot to mention that ) but i just hit the space bar and bootn normally anyways.

restarted again and even within the third slot the computer boots normally.




Thats what I did today.


On top of that, my other suspicion has been my ati drivers. So I uninstalled my ati driver. then downloaded the latest catalyst driver for the radeon series at ati's website, then i installed it again as much as i could to the best of my ability.



I'll update my sig in a bit so it will be a little bit more comprehensive.


Also I don't think there is anything wrong with the card, the fans are spinning etc. No distorted video at 1024 by 768.




after all that, same symptoms. Well for my games anyway. Mozilla and gaim haven't crashed in a long time.
 
Your cpu temp seems kind of high, is there any dust that can be blown out of it or is it fairly clean?


The next step, is that you need to throw memtest86 on a floppy, boot to the floppy and let that run over night.

Run the ram in whatever slot and see how it goes.

2.46volts for ram is kind of on the low side as spec is 2.5 for most chips. Try giving it 2.6 if your bios allows and then see what it reports.

Also, how are the voltages for your cpu?
 
Dekar12 said:
Your cpu temp seems kind of high, is there any dust that can be blown out of it or is it fairly clean?


The next step, is that you need to throw memtest86 on a floppy, boot to the floppy and let that run over night.

Run the ram in whatever slot and see how it goes.

2.46volts for ram is kind of on the low side as spec is 2.5 for most chips. Try giving it 2.6 if your bios allows and then see what it reports.

Also, how are the voltages for your cpu?



tickled to see your keeping up with me.


I don't have a floppy drive but I'm working on that really.


I'm going to go see what my voltage on the cpu is and put my ram up to 2.6
 
What about video card temps? They might be affecting it a bit. Make sure you try Dekar12's advice and boost the voltage. It might be what is causing the problem.
Also have you run Spyware checker and virus scanner? And maybe check your RAM usage, if you haven't set up your virtual memory properly computers can crash when they run out of RAM. But that is a stab in the dark, try what has been suggested and see if it works. Luck.
 
Do you have a cd writer?

you can make a bootable cd with memtest86 on it from their .iso image found here.
http://memtest86.com/memtest86-3.1a.iso.zip

After the voltage increase to your ram, download prime95, install that up and then run the torture test, pick the first option as it stresses just your cpu. The second and third options test the cpu, but involve the motherboard and more of the ram. Second using less ram then the third.

Oh, prime95 will give errors and stop automatically so you don't have to worry about it blowing anything up. This won't tell you exactly what is wrong, but if you dont get errors on the first test, but you get errors on the second or third then it points to your ram/motherboard as being problems.
 
Mushroom Prince said:
drekar I want to have your children.
Glad to see you got everything running right. I thought it was a ram problem. Wait...you want to have his children? are you both guys? This reeks of mansechs. :p
 
Mushroom Prince said:
yeah this calls for a celebration


I'm off to get some friends and about 16 liters of orange soda.
lol, underage?
OT: well, i'm glad you got your rig back up and working, happy computing! Now that's it's stable...why not REALLY put it to the test: http://folding.stanford.edu TEAM 33!!!
 
saturnine2 said:
Glad to see you got everything running right. I thought it was a ram problem. Wait...you want to have his children? are you both guys? This reeks of mansechs. :p


lol

I will pass on the children ;)

Glad to hear that has so far stopped your problems. It is always a pleasure to get someone's rig running right for them again.
 
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