Shearer9 Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 Right, so I have this computer that is about 4 years old. It was top of the line in 2005, spent a lot of money on it, could still expand it to have 2 gb more RAM and another graphics card as well as using a 64 bit operating system as well. But for a while now, I've been unable to get anything running on it with stability. It always runs pretty fast, then crashes randomly, with no warning and for no reason. I just did another re-installation with Windows, but a few days in it's starting crashing again, even running minimal things. I left uTorrent to run overnight but it crashed in the middle of the night. How can I find out what the hell is causing these problems and correct it? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LucaAltieri Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 When you say "crash" what exactly does it do? An error message while still in windows? Blue screen of death? Turning itself off? Freezing and requires a restart? Details man. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 Go into system properties, the advanced tab, the settings button on startup and recovery and uncheck automatically restart under system failure. At least then it'll leave the error code on screen instead of just rebooting. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shearer9 Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 Cheers Dave, have done that, hopefully will throw up some data. It's Windows XP if that means anything. And it's resetting some odd things. Like every time uTorrent opens up after a crash, it has to re-scan all the unfinished torrents. And some of my basic system properties (like lock the Taskbar, the style of the windows, auto-hide the taskbar, etc.) are also getting reset. Strange. But everything else works just fine, it's just after the crash weird little things like that happen. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrissy Bee Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 I reckon the CPU could be overheating. If the crashes are when your PC is doing something strenuous or is on for a while and just turns itself off then it could be. Have a look inside, the CPU heatsink may well be full of four years worth of dust. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shearer9 Posted June 10, 2009 Share Posted June 10, 2009 Good idea, will check that, haven't cleared the dust in a while. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shearer9 Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 OK, opened it up, cleaned the heat sink and fan as best I could just blowing on it, will pick up some compressed air tomorrow. I just left the case open to see if that would help as well. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willow Posted June 11, 2009 Share Posted June 11, 2009 Go into the BIOS to check your CPU and motherboard temperatures maybe. You can also download a program that does this, maybe Speedfan but there could be much better ones.. My mate added more thermal paste to his CPU and he reduced his temps by over 50 degrees fixed all of his problems Can't you check in Window's Event Manager? I think it logs system messages but I've not looked at it much. I got some compressed air the other day and, I admit, I love using it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shearer9 Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 I did the air today, gave it a good cleaning and it seems to be going pretty stable. Still won't save my Windows appearance though, very, very strange, never seen that before. 50 degrees? Fahrenheit or Celsius? I actually have a panel on this comp that tells me what the temperature of the CPU, the system, etc are, but I don't know what to look for temp wise. I've also got a way to slow down and raise the fan speed inside the comp as well, don't know how much that will help. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shearer9 Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Did a little searching around, and this is exactly the kind of setup I have: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/274/6 Sounds incredibly easy, I'm always wary when opening my computer but surely just cleaning off any residue and smearing some goo on there couldn't go wrong? The thermal paste is also really cheap. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willow Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 I did the air today, gave it a good cleaning and it seems to be going pretty stable. Still won't save my Windows appearance though, very, very strange, never seen that before. 50 degrees? Fahrenheit or Celsius? I actually have a panel on this comp that tells me what the temperature of the CPU, the system, etc are, but I don't know what to look for temp wise. I've also got a way to slow down and raise the fan speed inside the comp as well, don't know how much that will help. celcius. I think your temps should be safe between 30-60 and anything over that and its probably overheating. my mates was at 95.. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shearer9 Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 Still not getting any data from the crashes, it just completely freezes, I don't even get a serious error message when restarting. Anything over 40 degrees and a crash is imminent though. I have this panel: http://www.abit.com.tw/upload/products/guru-panel.htm and it comes with some software that I've always been suspicious of, I think it messes with the way the CPU is overclocked and does weird things that cause it to crash. I guess I'll try some thermal paste now because I'm not really sure what to do, but this must be a hardware issue, right? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Lazlo Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 It's a bit of a piss in the wind for you, but yes it's very likely to be hardware. Overheating is one of the main causes of the fault you specified but there is a good chance that it isn't that especially if you've taken steps to remedy this. Diagnosis is really hard, when it crashes do you need to turn it off for a little while or does it start straight back up on restart, if the former is true your power supply is most likely to blame. More so if the computer is not even giving you a fault message Faulty mobo,h.d or mem or processor can give the results you are experiencing, look it it like when something is under load and getting hot it ceases to function. I bet you get the most prolonged period of no crashing when it is cold (when you first start it up) If you can rule out overheating then take it to somewhere like computer orbit for them to have a look at it because if you don't have the parts to swap and diagnose you will be in for a long slog. Yes they'll charge you but if you start taking suggestions of psu or mem whatever you'll spend more this way. They'll tell you what it needs in the price you pay for them to have a look, you don't have to pay them to fix it. If you leave it in a suspended state in bios and see if it freezes 9/10 times this can rule out hd or mem faults, don't take that as gospel though. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willow Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 just a note, Abit went out of business in Dec 08 so you're unlikely to get any support and new drivers ever again my board is abit but I'm hoping to replace it soon, for like 30-40 quid Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shearer9 Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 I would say it's true that it's less likely to crash when cold, it generally happens when I'm playing games or have a lot of stuff going on. I reformatted about 2 weeks ago, everything was pretty good but now it's going down pretty regularly, and sometimes hangs when it comes back up. Probably froze/crashed 6 times today while I worked through various things. When it crashes now I've started looking through the error logs, every time I consistently get the same series of notifications. They all come from the Service Control Manager, telling me that various services have entered the start state. I sometimes get this as well: "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation." I really am starting to run out of ideas, the default shutdown temps for my CPU, system, etc are double what they are when it generally crashes, so I'd doubt it's temperature. Just from searching around I'm guessing it's either the processor, motherboard or hard drive. Is there any way to do self diagnostics? There is a pretty good computer shop around here (I'm not UK-based) so I've considered taking it in, but the processor was really expensive so I'm hoping it's not that. The worst fucking thing about all this is that the computer still runs very fast, whenever I'm playing any games or running a bunch of stuff at once it performs really well, then just hangs randomly, it's so maddening. That's really the one thing that gives me hope in all this. Cheers for all the suggestions, it has been helpful, but does anyone know of a good set of Windows tech help forums that might be able to help walk me through this? Most of the stuff found on google looks pretty crap. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToonTastic Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 May be of some help ? http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/12946/?o=140 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToonTastic Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 And maybe this http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/here-vp568808.html Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToonTastic Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 What service pack of windows are you using as well. Seems there was an error with SP1 but make your sure on SP3. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shearer9 Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 Still on SP2. I'm thinking about reformatting right now and immediately updating everything to SP3. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToonTastic Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 Still on SP2. I'm thinking about reformatting right now and immediately updating everything to SP3. You can put SP3 on to the windows disk so it will install it all when it install, hang on I'll get the software which you can use rather than using windows. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToonTastic Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 Here it is, it's great used it loads http://www.nliteos.com/ Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shearer9 Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 Thanks, I've also come across disabling NCQ as another possibility, but I get the impression this is also something I need to do from installation of the OS. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Lazlo Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 Well you could start with the h.d. Enter bios and leave it, see if it crashes in bios. If it crashes try again with the hd unplugged (it should give the same result but just to make sure) If it crashes under these conditions it's not your hard drive. If it doesnt crash download the diagnostic tool from the hd manufacturers site and run it. This will tell you if it's on it's way out. Also if it hangs in bios then it's nothing to do with software. If you have more than 1 stick of memory take one out, boot up see if it crashes. Swap the sticks and repeat. If it still crashes it's not your memory. Out of the other 3 it's least likely to be your processor, so that leaves you with psu or mobo. Not sure about that guru panel like, but anything that uses a software cpu overclock is dodgy, you should be able to kill it in msconfig Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shearer9 Posted June 18, 2009 Share Posted June 18, 2009 Ok, I think I've got a pretty good idea now. I did some stress testing and found the only thing that regularly and predictibily causes it to freeze or crash is downloading large files. There's something about writing to a hard drive (either external or internal) that it really doesn't like. I've run uTorrent and regular downloads, to both hard drives, and that is pretty much when the crashes occur. I'm almost convinced now that that's what's going on. I think I've screwed up my tcpip settings just through all the bizarre and random fixes I've attempted but I'm planning on reformatting now with NCQ disabled. Any tips on how to go about that? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Lazlo Posted June 18, 2009 Share Posted June 18, 2009 Ok, I think I've got a pretty good idea now. I did some stress testing and found the only thing that regularly and predictibily causes it to freeze or crash is downloading large files. There's something about writing to a hard drive (either external or internal) that it really doesn't like. I've run uTorrent and regular downloads, to both hard drives, and that is pretty much when the crashes occur. I'm almost convinced now that that's what's going on. I think I've screwed up my tcpip settings just through all the bizarre and random fixes I've attempted but I'm planning on reformatting now with NCQ disabled. Any tips on how to go about that? If what you say is true then is your hard disk formatted to fat32 rather than ntfs ? Although i can't see that being the case. As far as i know ncq is only an option for ide drives, it appears under system/ device manager/ primary/sec channel, in properties. (i think) I don't think you can reformat with it disabled but you can disable it once you boot into windows. Tbh mate, i don't think that's your problem but have a go anyway, let us know how you get on. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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