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diagnosing failing hardware in a HP dc 7600 convertible mini-tower



 
 
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  #1  
Old April 25th 11, 03:24 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
g
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 28
Default diagnosing failing hardware in a HP dc 7600 convertible mini-tower

The machine running Windows XP(32 bit) with Service Pack 3 has the
required Windows patches/updates, Avast antivirus(the definitions are
set to autoupdate every 8 hours), Zonealarm free firewall utility(which
also is set to auto-update). Did a Avast boot scan(which did not detect
anything), no records in event viewer which can point to the cause
of a freeze, it has 60GB free of out the total 250GB, 4GB RAM(and the
programs being used on it are Word, Outlook, Firefox browser, notepad in
addition to MySQL, Coldfusion, JRun and IIS services). It was OK before
3-4 weeks, but now has two such freezes in a day. Did a scan
with Malwarebytes(after updating its definitions, but that too did not
detect anything). Ran Hijackthis and did not see anything strange in
that also. The cookies in Firefox are set to be deleted when the browser
closes. Ran the Temp File Cleaner utility by OldTimer which removed the
temporary files, but the issue of freezing persisted. I checked using
the msconfig utility and in the registry too and no strange programs are
starting up when Windows starts.

When it freezes, I have to manually hold the power switch for 5-7
seconds to turn it off, then after 10 seconds use the same switch to
turn it on. If I don't do this, nothing changes. I left it for 12 hours
thinking something would happen, but nothing occurred.

I am not using a wireless keyboard or mouse.

The hard disk(Western Digital model) is fine. I ran a Western Digital
diagnostic extended test and Smartfan(temperature monitoring utility's)
extended test on it and both tests were cleared without any errors.

The motherboard is a Intel Lakeport-G i945G and CPU info is below

Version Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
External Clock 800 MHz
Maximum Clock 6000 MHz
Current Clock 3200 MHz
Type Central Processor
Voltage 1.2 V
Status Enabled
Socket Designation XU1 PROCESSOR

The machine was purchased in May 2006 and is out of warranty.

I have 4 sticks of 1GB RAM. I ran Memtest 86 for 18 hours till Pass 12
on all 4 sticks and it had no errors.

I used Speedfan to monitor the CPU, HDD temp and they are

HDD temp 35C
Core 0 42C
Core 1 46C

I opened the tower, cleaned the dust inside it using a compressed gas
duster, opened the CPU fan, cleaned the dust around it also. Thought
that would fix the issue, but the freezes persisted.

Then, I picked a dc7600 minitower(same build as my initial one),
replaced the memory and hard disk on it from my original dc7600 to see
if the CPU/motherboard of the original dc 7600 are faulty, tried using
it(replacement dc 7600 minitower) but after a few hours it also froze.

The CPU and all other hardware components are found to be OK by HP
diagnostics(http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...swLang=13&mode
=2&taskId=135&swItem=ir-45591-1) in a complete test of 25 loops for
both(original and replacement) dc7600 minitowers.

I checked the capacitors on the motherboard(Intel Lakeport-G i945G) of
the replacement dc7600 minitower. Three of them were yellow colored
which had text like

F(which had a hyphen above it)
6.3V 680uF
-55C - + 105C

There were lot of brown colored capacitors which had text like

KZG
6.3V
820uF

The freezing CPU(my initial dc 7600 minitower) is being used by a temp
worker in the office and and current replacement dc 7600 was being used
by a temp worker without any issues, but they work only 20hrs/week, have
2GB RAM and do not run as many programs as I do. They have used it for 4
days now for typing some documents in Word, using Outlook and using a
web browser.

Few more strange things are I used a Ultimate Boot CD for 7 hours and
there were no freezes in the initial dc 7600 minitower.

Also, there have been two days without a freeze when using Windows, then
two freezes on the third day.

When it freezes some keys in the keyboard operate(sometimes) like the
caps lock can be toggled, but the windows key, alphabets/numbers do not.
I can move the mouse pointer from one corner of screen to other. Could
it mean Windows is functional and it is a software issue. But, if it is
a software issue why there are no logs in the Event viewer or a Windows
BSOD(Blue Screen of Death)?


What else can I try to diagnose the hardware issues?
  #2  
Old April 25th 11, 08:50 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Don Phillipson[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 320
Default diagnosing failing hardware in a HP dc 7600 convertible mini-tower

"g" wrote in message ...

The machine running Windows XP(32 bit) with Service Pack 3 . . . OK before
3-4 weeks, but now has two such freezes in a day. Did a scan
with Malwarebytes(after updating its definitions, but that too did not
detect anything). Ran Hijackthis and did not see anything strange . . .

When it freezes, I have to manually hold the power switch for 5-7 seconds
to turn it off, then after 10 seconds use the same switch to turn it on.
If I don't do this, nothing changes. I left it for 12 hours thinking
something would happen, but nothing occurred.


How often have you had a Power Supply Unit fail? I had
three fail in about 25 years (6 or 7 different PCs) and your
symptoms could indicate the PSU. This is easy to check
(in a specialist PC repair shop) and cheap to replace.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)


  #3  
Old April 26th 11, 11:22 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Nobody > (Revisited)
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 154
Default diagnosing failing hardware in a HP dc 7600 convertible mini-tower

On 4/25/2011 12:50 PM, Don Phillipson wrote:


How often have you had a Power Supply Unit fail? I had
three fail in about 25 years (6 or 7 different PCs) and your
symptoms could indicate the PSU. This is easy to check
(in a specialist PC repair shop) and cheap to replace.


Short phrase...
"You've been damned ****ing lucky"

I've replaced 14 power supplies in the last 3 years (thankfully, only
one in my own stuff, and that was just needing more oomph for 'stuffs",
not a true fail).

I'll admit, it's a syndrome that goes with refurbing cheap/free pooters
for free as giveaways to the less fortunate.

That often means rebopping an eMachine box. As much as I think I'm a
tech-e733t guy, most of an eMachine's guts are reasonably decent for a
light-duty user. The snag... *BESTEC* power slurpies.

(aside from the usual 'bogus capacitor plague' that should have ended a
few years ago with a public hanging or assassination of the clowns who
did this crap, and damned near everyone on the planet got bit by that)

Paul will probably agree on at least one.... *BESTEC*
That is the big downfall on anything with the "eMachines" tag.
I'm not gonna search it, but I'll bet the OPs "HP dc 7600" is probably
an eMachine.

Bestec powder slurpies have a poor reliability to start with, but the
worst is that when they fail, they usually overvolt everything in the
pooter and fry it before they puke their guts out.

As an aside on power supplies:

Remember the old "IBM PC 5150"? The stock (85w?)power supply was pretty
much bullet-proof, but it just couldn't handle the draw of a hard-drive
when the XT (w/a 5 or 10 mb HD) came out. IIRC, Ibm's first lot of the
XTs came off the line with the 85 watters, and Big Blue had to do some
severe butt-covering over that.

There was already an "aftermarket' in place, with power supplies in the
100-175 watt range (pricey tho)

I've hot-rodded IBM PCs and PC-XTs with those aftermarket power
supplies even as far as "Super Socket 7", one of them is downstairs as
my "DOS Playtoy" with an AMD K6/III-450 + running at 600 mhz (small
cheater tho, the K6 + was a special "low draw laptop CPU" that could
have been a market killer. Call it a 'cult item'?)


--
"**** this is it, all the pieces do fit.
We're like that crazy old man jumping
out of the alleyway with a baseball bat,
saying, "Remember me mother****er?"
Jim “Dandy” Mangrum
  #4  
Old April 27th 11, 05:59 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Mike[_27_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 15
Default diagnosing failing hardware in a HP dc 7600 convertible mini-tower


"g" wrote in message ...
The machine running Windows XP(32 bit) with Service Pack 3 has the
required Windows patches/updates, Avast antivirus(the definitions are set
to autoupdate every 8 hours), Zonealarm free firewall utility(which also
is set to auto-update). Did a Avast boot scan(which did not detect
anything), no records in event viewer which can point to the cause
of a freeze, it has 60GB free of out the total 250GB, 4GB RAM(and the
programs being used on it are Word, Outlook, Firefox browser, notepad in
addition to MySQL, Coldfusion, JRun and IIS services). It was OK before
3-4 weeks, but now has two such freezes in a day. Did a scan
with Malwarebytes(after updating its definitions, but that too did not
detect anything). Ran Hijackthis and did not see anything strange in that
also. The cookies in Firefox are set to be deleted when the browser
closes. Ran the Temp File Cleaner utility by OldTimer which removed the
temporary files, but the issue of freezing persisted. I checked using the
msconfig utility and in the registry too and no strange programs are
starting up when Windows starts.

When it freezes, I have to manually hold the power switch for 5-7 seconds
to turn it off, then after 10 seconds use the same switch to turn it on.
If I don't do this, nothing changes. I left it for 12 hours thinking
something would happen, but nothing occurred.

I am not using a wireless keyboard or mouse.

The hard disk(Western Digital model) is fine. I ran a Western Digital
diagnostic extended test and Smartfan(temperature monitoring utility's)
extended test on it and both tests were cleared without any errors.

The motherboard is a Intel Lakeport-G i945G and CPU info is below

Version Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
External Clock 800 MHz
Maximum Clock 6000 MHz
Current Clock 3200 MHz
Type Central Processor
Voltage 1.2 V
Status Enabled
Socket Designation XU1 PROCESSOR

The machine was purchased in May 2006 and is out of warranty.

I have 4 sticks of 1GB RAM. I ran Memtest 86 for 18 hours till Pass 12 on
all 4 sticks and it had no errors.

I used Speedfan to monitor the CPU, HDD temp and they are

HDD temp 35C
Core 0 42C
Core 1 46C

I opened the tower, cleaned the dust inside it using a compressed gas
duster, opened the CPU fan, cleaned the dust around it also. Thought that
would fix the issue, but the freezes persisted.

Then, I picked a dc7600 minitower(same build as my initial one), replaced
the memory and hard disk on it from my original dc7600 to see if the
CPU/motherboard of the original dc 7600 are faulty, tried using
it(replacement dc 7600 minitower) but after a few hours it also froze.

The CPU and all other hardware components are found to be OK by HP
diagnostics(http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...swLang=13&mode
=2&taskId=135&swItem=ir-45591-1) in a complete test of 25 loops for
both(original and replacement) dc7600 minitowers.

I checked the capacitors on the motherboard(Intel Lakeport-G i945G) of the
replacement dc7600 minitower. Three of them were yellow colored which had
text like

F(which had a hyphen above it)
6.3V 680uF
-55C - + 105C

There were lot of brown colored capacitors which had text like

KZG
6.3V
820uF

The freezing CPU(my initial dc 7600 minitower) is being used by a temp
worker in the office and and current replacement dc 7600 was being used by
a temp worker without any issues, but they work only 20hrs/week, have 2GB
RAM and do not run as many programs as I do. They have used it for 4 days
now for typing some documents in Word, using Outlook and using a web
browser.

Few more strange things are I used a Ultimate Boot CD for 7 hours and
there were no freezes in the initial dc 7600 minitower.

Also, there have been two days without a freeze when using Windows, then
two freezes on the third day.

When it freezes some keys in the keyboard operate(sometimes) like the caps
lock can be toggled, but the windows key, alphabets/numbers do not. I can
move the mouse pointer from one corner of screen to other. Could it mean
Windows is functional and it is a software issue. But, if it is a software
issue why there are no logs in the Event viewer or a Windows BSOD(Blue
Screen of Death)?


What else can I try to diagnose the hardware issues?


It sounds like you found the problem - either one of your memory sticks or
the hard drive, since you swapped them into another machine and then that
other machine experienced freezes.... so did you isolate which one of those
things was the cause? Does the problem continue?


  #5  
Old April 29th 11, 02:06 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
g
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 28
Default diagnosing failing hardware in a HP dc 7600 convertible mini-tower

On 4/27/2011 12:59 PM, Mike wrote:
wrote in message ...
The machine running Windows XP(32 bit) with Service Pack 3 has the
required Windows patches/updates, Avast antivirus(the definitions are set
to autoupdate every 8 hours), Zonealarm free firewall utility(which also
is set to auto-update). Did a Avast boot scan(which did not detect
anything), no records in event viewer which can point to the cause
of a freeze, it has 60GB free of out the total 250GB, 4GB RAM(and the
programs being used on it are Word, Outlook, Firefox browser, notepad in
addition to MySQL, Coldfusion, JRun and IIS services). It was OK before
3-4 weeks, but now has two such freezes in a day. Did a scan
with Malwarebytes(after updating its definitions, but that too did not
detect anything). Ran Hijackthis and did not see anything strange in that
also. The cookies in Firefox are set to be deleted when the browser
closes. Ran the Temp File Cleaner utility by OldTimer which removed the
temporary files, but the issue of freezing persisted. I checked using the
msconfig utility and in the registry too and no strange programs are
starting up when Windows starts.

When it freezes, I have to manually hold the power switch for 5-7 seconds
to turn it off, then after 10 seconds use the same switch to turn it on.
If I don't do this, nothing changes. I left it for 12 hours thinking
something would happen, but nothing occurred.

I am not using a wireless keyboard or mouse.

The hard disk(Western Digital model) is fine. I ran a Western Digital
diagnostic extended test and Smartfan(temperature monitoring utility's)
extended test on it and both tests were cleared without any errors.

The motherboard is a Intel Lakeport-G i945G and CPU info is below

Version Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
External Clock 800 MHz
Maximum Clock 6000 MHz
Current Clock 3200 MHz
Type Central Processor
Voltage 1.2 V
Status Enabled
Socket Designation XU1 PROCESSOR

The machine was purchased in May 2006 and is out of warranty.

I have 4 sticks of 1GB RAM. I ran Memtest 86 for 18 hours till Pass 12 on
all 4 sticks and it had no errors.

I used Speedfan to monitor the CPU, HDD temp and they are

HDD temp 35C
Core 0 42C
Core 1 46C

I opened the tower, cleaned the dust inside it using a compressed gas
duster, opened the CPU fan, cleaned the dust around it also. Thought that
would fix the issue, but the freezes persisted.

Then, I picked a dc7600 minitower(same build as my initial one), replaced
the memory and hard disk on it from my original dc7600 to see if the
CPU/motherboard of the original dc 7600 are faulty, tried using
it(replacement dc 7600 minitower) but after a few hours it also froze.

The CPU and all other hardware components are found to be OK by HP
diagnostics(http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...swLang=13&mode
=2&taskId=135&swItem=ir-45591-1) in a complete test of 25 loops for
both(original and replacement) dc7600 minitowers.

I checked the capacitors on the motherboard(Intel Lakeport-G i945G) of the
replacement dc7600 minitower. Three of them were yellow colored which had
text like

F(which had a hyphen above it)
6.3V 680uF
-55C - + 105C

There were lot of brown colored capacitors which had text like

KZG
6.3V
820uF

The freezing CPU(my initial dc 7600 minitower) is being used by a temp
worker in the office and and current replacement dc 7600 was being used by
a temp worker without any issues, but they work only 20hrs/week, have 2GB
RAM and do not run as many programs as I do. They have used it for 4 days
now for typing some documents in Word, using Outlook and using a web
browser.

Few more strange things are I used a Ultimate Boot CD for 7 hours and
there were no freezes in the initial dc 7600 minitower.

Also, there have been two days without a freeze when using Windows, then
two freezes on the third day.

When it freezes some keys in the keyboard operate(sometimes) like the caps
lock can be toggled, but the windows key, alphabets/numbers do not. I can
move the mouse pointer from one corner of screen to other. Could it mean
Windows is functional and it is a software issue. But, if it is a software
issue why there are no logs in the Event viewer or a Windows BSOD(Blue
Screen of Death)?


What else can I try to diagnose the hardware issues?


It sounds like you found the problem - either one of your memory sticks or
the hard drive, since you swapped them into another machine and then that
other machine experienced freezes.... so did you isolate which one of those
things was the cause? Does the problem continue?


No, I did not find the issue yet. Memory sticks are OK I think since I
ran Memtest 86 for 18 hours till Pass 12 on
all 4 sticks and it had no errors. Also, they are Micron modules so I
suspect they are not faulty.

The hard drive was tested by Western Digital
diagnostic extended test and Smartfan(temperature monitoring utility's)
extended test on it and both tests were cleared without any errors.

The problem is intermittent and continues. There are no freezes for two
days, the third day two freezes, then fourth day one freeze. I don't
know what could be the issue yet.



  #6  
Old May 2nd 11, 01:32 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
g
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 28
Default diagnosing failing hardware in a HP dc 7600 convertible mini-tower

On 4/25/2011 3:50 PM, Don Phillipson wrote:
wrote in message ...

The machine running Windows XP(32 bit) with Service Pack 3 . . . OK before
3-4 weeks, but now has two such freezes in a day. Did a scan
with Malwarebytes(after updating its definitions, but that too did not
detect anything). Ran Hijackthis and did not see anything strange . . .

When it freezes, I have to manually hold the power switch for 5-7 seconds
to turn it off, then after 10 seconds use the same switch to turn it on.
If I don't do this, nothing changes. I left it for 12 hours thinking
something would happen, but nothing occurred.


How often have you had a Power Supply Unit fail? I had
three fail in about 25 years (6 or 7 different PCs) and your
symptoms could indicate the PSU. This is easy to check
(in a specialist PC repair shop) and cheap to replace.


If it is a failing PSU, how come it works fine for 2 days, then freezes
the third day. Also, I when it freezes some keys in the keyboard
operate(sometimes) like the caps lock can be toggled, but the windows
key, alphabets/numbers do not. I can move the mouse pointer from one
corner of screen to other. Does this appear to be a failing PSU?


 




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