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A machine that a friend of mine hard locks while doing anything that is processor intensive.
At first, I thought it was an OS issue (WinME) coupled with too many programs running in the background. So I closed all of those out (MSCONFIG) except for the printer, and tried again with the same result. She can email, do light websurfing without too much issue, but as soon as something taxes the system overmuch (extracting old emails, full HDD scan, virus scan, etc), same result. Safe mode has same result. It should be noted that the hard locks happen closer and closer together in terms of time interval the longer it runs.
So, thinking that this might be a hardware problem, I booted UBCD and tried to run Memtest for a few hours to see what would happen. At 21 minutes in (no errors), hard lock. Tried to do a disk scan (IBM utilties on the UBCD) scan got about 10% in, hard lock. For the hell of it, I did a Prime95 test (again, UBCD) about 2 minutes in, hard lock.
So, now really thinking this is heat related, I pointed a fan at the interior of the case and tried to run things again. From inside Windows, a HDD scan got a lot further, but has since stopped working.
So, I am still thinking heat related here, but it's seeming like something that isn't the processor. Northbridge? Video card? Power supply? I'm kind of just looking for opinions here as it looks hardware related to me and she needs to get a new PC anyway.
Thoughts are appreciated.
At first, I thought it was an OS issue (WinME) coupled with too many programs running in the background. So I closed all of those out (MSCONFIG) except for the printer, and tried again with the same result. She can email, do light websurfing without too much issue, but as soon as something taxes the system overmuch (extracting old emails, full HDD scan, virus scan, etc), same result. Safe mode has same result. It should be noted that the hard locks happen closer and closer together in terms of time interval the longer it runs.
So, thinking that this might be a hardware problem, I booted UBCD and tried to run Memtest for a few hours to see what would happen. At 21 minutes in (no errors), hard lock. Tried to do a disk scan (IBM utilties on the UBCD) scan got about 10% in, hard lock. For the hell of it, I did a Prime95 test (again, UBCD) about 2 minutes in, hard lock.
So, now really thinking this is heat related, I pointed a fan at the interior of the case and tried to run things again. From inside Windows, a HDD scan got a lot further, but has since stopped working.
So, I am still thinking heat related here, but it's seeming like something that isn't the processor. Northbridge? Video card? Power supply? I'm kind of just looking for opinions here as it looks hardware related to me and she needs to get a new PC anyway.
Thoughts are appreciated.