Intermittent PC lock up

Dear all,

This is my first post, I've had a lot of help from these forums before
and the guys who respond to them are brilliant and have saved me many
hours of headaches...thanks a million.

There is one problem however that I cannot solve...

I have an Athlon 1.4, 512SD Ram, 2 80Gb Hard Drives, Win2k Pro, and a
128mb Nvidia SE Graphics Card...

My PC is on 24/7, and runs fine when its left alone. In a morning I'll
go to play some music and it will lock up, leaving which ever note it
was playing repeating over and over...also, whilst watching Avi/Mpeg
or any other type of file...but sometimes, it will run for hours
playing CounterStrike or Mp3 then other times it only takes 10 minutes
to lock up and give out this crazy sound, to get going again I have to
power off the PC and reboot...

I have replaced the RAM, Hard Drive and Graphics Card (hence why I
have 512 and 2 seperate 80Gb Drives) I have also replaced the Heat
Sink (the PC runs at about 50 degrees, and system temp is about 45 I
think...)

I have also stripped the PC down and air dustered all the ports and
sockets...and after all this the problem seems to be worse...I cant
even watch a 20 minutes Avi file without a lock up (and the crazy
sustained sound of course...) I have the latest Virus updates and have
reformatted twice since the problem began..

The PC is current at a shop being looked at, and they have ran a
Hardware checker on it for the last 48 hours and only found one bad
cylinder one my C Drive..(which I dont believe to be the problem, as I
tried both drives on there own and it still locks up)...

If anyone kind enough to respond needs any more info please ask..

Please Help!!!!

In this type of problem, the more details, the better.

1) mobo make/model?

2) power supply make/model?

3) memory make/model?

4) Are you OC'ing? Have you tried w/ BIOS defaults?!!! Setup Defaults?

5) Have you tested memory w/ memtest-86 or DocMemory 2.0?

6) Does it ever happen when NOT under stress?

7) Have you monitored temps *when* this happened (i.e., last reported temp)?

8) Have you tried stress specific apps, like Prime95? 3DMark2001?
SiSoftware Sandra 2004?

9) Have you tried a fresh install of the OS?

10) Did it *ever* run OK, or has this always been a problem child?


Jim


"Putim" wrote in message
om...
Dear all,

This is my first post, I've had a lot of help from these forums before
and the guys who respond to them are brilliant and have saved me many
hours of headaches...thanks a million.

There is one problem however that I cannot solve...

I have an Athlon 1.4, 512SD Ram, 2 80Gb Hard Drives, Win2k Pro, and a
128mb Nvidia SE Graphics Card...

My PC is on 24/7, and runs fine when its left alone. In a morning I'll
go to play some music and it will lock up, leaving which ever note it
was playing repeating over and over...also, whilst watching Avi/Mpeg
or any other type of file...but sometimes, it will run for hours
playing CounterStrike or Mp3 then other times it only takes 10 minutes
to lock up and give out this crazy sound, to get going again I have to
power off the PC and reboot...

I have replaced the RAM, Hard Drive and Graphics Card (hence why I
have 512 and 2 seperate 80Gb Drives) I have also replaced the Heat
Sink (the PC runs at about 50 degrees, and system temp is about 45 I
think...)

I have also stripped the PC down and air dustered all the ports and
sockets...and after all this the problem seems to be worse...I cant
even watch a 20 minutes Avi file without a lock up (and the crazy
sustained sound of course...) I have the latest Virus updates and have
reformatted twice since the problem began..

The PC is current at a shop being looked at, and they have ran a
Hardware checker on it for the last 48 hours and only found one bad
cylinder one my C Drive..(which I dont believe to be the problem, as I
tried both drives on there own and it still locks up)...

If anyone kind enough to respond needs any more info please ask..

Please Help!!!!

I have had similar as yet unsolved problems, (my computer frozen a few mins
ago,
(OE crashed) so I am retyping this!!).
One thing I am considering is whether my power supply is not over loaded at
times. You appear to have replaced everything apart from the PSU, which is
probably
cheaper to replace.
Did you replace all that stuff before or after the problems started, its not
clear to
me?
I also have two drives (much smaller ones!!) maybe try it with just one
drive?
Opps you have done that!
Your symptoms are fairly similar to mine but I don't get probs playing
music or or video (well I haad one occurance of a note repeating) it is
usuall OE which freezes on me).
Was it a cheapo computer like mine?
Mine also runs fine when left alone!! - Works well if you don't use it!!

Let us know it you get it fixed!
Have a look at the PSU though, I am sure the computer shop could
change that easilly enough.



"Putim" wrote in message
om...
Dear all,

This is my first post, I've had a lot of help from these forums before
and the guys who respond to them are brilliant and have saved me many
hours of headaches...thanks a million.

There is one problem however that I cannot solve...

I have an Athlon 1.4, 512SD Ram, 2 80Gb Hard Drives, Win2k Pro, and a
128mb Nvidia SE Graphics Card...

My PC is on 24/7, and runs fine when its left alone. In a morning I'll
go to play some music and it will lock up, leaving which ever note it
was playing repeating over and over...also, whilst watching Avi/Mpeg
or any other type of file...but sometimes, it will run for hours
playing CounterStrike or Mp3 then other times it only takes 10 minutes
to lock up and give out this crazy sound, to get going again I have to
power off the PC and reboot...

I have replaced the RAM, Hard Drive and Graphics Card (hence why I
have 512 and 2 seperate 80Gb Drives) I have also replaced the Heat
Sink (the PC runs at about 50 degrees, and system temp is about 45 I
think...)

I have also stripped the PC down and air dustered all the ports and
sockets...and after all this the problem seems to be worse...I cant
even watch a 20 minutes Avi file without a lock up (and the crazy
sustained sound of course...) I have the latest Virus updates and have
reformatted twice since the problem began..

The PC is current at a shop being looked at, and they have ran a
Hardware checker on it for the last 48 hours and only found one bad
cylinder one my C Drive..(which I dont believe to be the problem, as I
tried both drives on there own and it still locks up)...

If anyone kind enough to respond needs any more info please ask..

Please Help!!!!

On 16 Apr 2004 12:46:43 -0700 As truth resonates honesty
(Putim) wrote :

Dear all,

This is my first post, I've had a lot of help from these forums before
and the guys who respond to them are brilliant and have saved me many
hours of headaches...thanks a million.

There is one problem however that I cannot solve...

I have an Athlon 1.4, 512SD Ram, 2 80Gb Hard Drives, Win2k Pro, and a
128mb Nvidia SE Graphics Card...

My PC is on 24/7, and runs fine when its left alone. In a morning I'll
go to play some music and it will lock up, leaving which ever note it
was playing repeating over and over...also, whilst watching Avi/Mpeg
or any other type of file...but sometimes, it will run for hours
playing CounterStrike or Mp3 then other times it only takes 10 minutes
to lock up and give out this crazy sound, to get going again I have to
power off the PC and reboot...

I have replaced the RAM, Hard Drive and Graphics Card (hence why I
have 512 and 2 seperate 80Gb Drives) I have also replaced the Heat
Sink (the PC runs at about 50 degrees, and system temp is about 45 I
think...)

I have also stripped the PC down and air dustered all the ports and
sockets...and after all this the problem seems to be worse...I cant
even watch a 20 minutes Avi file without a lock up (and the crazy
sustained sound of course...) I have the latest Virus updates and have
reformatted twice since the problem began..

The PC is current at a shop being looked at, and they have ran a
Hardware checker on it for the last 48 hours and only found one bad
cylinder one my C Drive..(which I dont believe to be the problem, as I
tried both drives on there own and it still locks up)...

If anyone kind enough to respond needs any more info please ask..

Please Help!!!!

Home computers and windows were never meant to be,"Servers".Leaving it
on 24/7 is not a good idea.Just re-boot.



--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
email shepATpartyheld.de
Free songs to download and,"BURN" :O)
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm

In article 5ea7bdf8.0404161146.2898ab04
@posting.google.com, says...
Dear all,
(major snippage)

Assuming ambient air temp of 25C, air temp inside the
case should only be 30-40C. (Get a cheap indoor/outdoor
therm with the lead you can stick inside.)

CPU temp as reported by the motherboard can vary wildly
from reality. Max temp also varies by make/model of the
CPU. 60C would almost definitely be too hot, 55C is
probably too hot, 50C is marginal, 45C would be ideal
but not possible for certain CPUs.

Temps on the hard-drive can be problematic, but usually
show up as hard drives failing rather then random
reboots. 7200rpm drive almost always require constant
airflow over their electronics to keep from baking. So
either the case needs to draw air across the drives or
there needs to be dedicated fans to push air across the
drives. (Doesn't take much movement to cool the drives,
as long as they're not packed like sardines.)

You don't specify what motherboard you're using. Or if
you're using DDR RAM (2x256) or a single 512MB chip.
You haven't mentioned verifying that you have the latest
BIOS for your system, or that you're not over-clocking,
or that you have the latest hardware drivers from your
manuf. (BIOS update is probable, especially if it's an
nForce board using DDR memory.)

Random reboots are usually bad/marginal hardware.

Wow, I didnt expect so many replys so soon...

I've just got the PC back from the shop, they've run some Hardware
testing software on it for the last 48 hours, and only found one bad
sector on one drive...they said I've done everything they would have
and then charged me a tenner for it!!...never mind...

I'll try to answer all the questions...

My Ram is Kingston, I'm using 2 256 133 SDRAM sticks.

I'm not overclocking, and I've loaded all BIOS settings
Supervisor/Default etc..

Although I havent updated the BIOS

I've tried various software Memory Manager, Motherboard monitor and
neither report bad or high use of memory or heat...and I also tried
SiSoftware Sandra 2004..

I've reinstalled the OS and formatted twice, only installing Codecs
and one orginal game (CounterStrike) with all Windows updates..

The PC has being fine until this started about 5 months ago..(I've had
the PC about 2 years, it was built by a the shop who I've just took it
back to..

When all this started I just assumed it was the RAM, I took the old
stick out and put the new one in, didnt work..so I put both sticks
back in...

Then I borrowed a mates Hard drive and used that for about 2 hours..it
was fine..so I went and got another hard drive and used that one, then
about a week later it crashed again...so I put the old one back
in...so far I was only making the pc a better one, so it was just a
good excuse to upgrade I suppose...

Anyway, I needed a new Graphics Card, so I upgraded to a 128mb Nvidia
9200SE, and it still crashes...


My Motherboard is a JetWay I think, although I'm not sure on the
model...

Would updating the BIOS really help that much? and is it hard to do?

I'm not sure what power supply I'm using, but I'll have a look and
post it...
For the cost of a PSU I dont mind getting another one, would a 400
watt be needed?

A reminder of the Spec:
1.4 Athlon,
2 80Gb Hard Drives
512mb SDRAM 133mhz
Nvidia 9200SE 128mb Graphics Card
I also have an Fan fitted into a PCI slot, and a front fan that fits
into the spare floppy drive..(I think I forgot to mention that before)

I've also checked the Heat Sink Paste today and it looks ok..just a
little bit on there but not too much....

Thanks for the replys/suggestions guys.! As soon as I fix this I'll
post the problem...

Bye for now..!!

This is a bit of a long shot, and I hadn't mentioned it until now believing
the PC was relatively new, but then you just mentioned that everything had
been fine for about 5 months. That got me to thinking maybe you've had this
mobo considerably longer.

I suggest taking a *very* close look at the motherboard and look for leaking
capacitors ( http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195 ).
Whenever a perfectly good system suddenly starts acting up, esp. if it's
around 18 months old, I start looking for leaking capacitors. Having the PC
on 24/7 may accelerate the process considerably as well. I've had several
people over the past year discover this problem, much to their surprise.
Not likely, but worth checking. This is easily missed, even by an expert!
You often need to be *looking* for it to even notice it.

HTH

Jim

"Putim" wrote in message
m...
Wow, I didnt expect so many replys so soon...

I've just got the PC back from the shop, they've run some Hardware
testing software on it for the last 48 hours, and only found one bad
sector on one drive...they said I've done everything they would have
and then charged me a tenner for it!!...never mind...

I'll try to answer all the questions...

My Ram is Kingston, I'm using 2 256 133 SDRAM sticks.

I'm not overclocking, and I've loaded all BIOS settings
Supervisor/Default etc..

Although I havent updated the BIOS

I've tried various software Memory Manager, Motherboard monitor and
neither report bad or high use of memory or heat...and I also tried
SiSoftware Sandra 2004..

I've reinstalled the OS and formatted twice, only installing Codecs
and one orginal game (CounterStrike) with all Windows updates..

The PC has being fine until this started about 5 months ago..(I've had
the PC about 2 years, it was built by a the shop who I've just took it
back to..

When all this started I just assumed it was the RAM, I took the old
stick out and put the new one in, didnt work..so I put both sticks
back in...

Then I borrowed a mates Hard drive and used that for about 2 hours..it
was fine..so I went and got another hard drive and used that one, then
about a week later it crashed again...so I put the old one back
in...so far I was only making the pc a better one, so it was just a
good excuse to upgrade I suppose...

Anyway, I needed a new Graphics Card, so I upgraded to a 128mb Nvidia
9200SE, and it still crashes...


My Motherboard is a JetWay I think, although I'm not sure on the
model...

Would updating the BIOS really help that much? and is it hard to do?

I'm not sure what power supply I'm using, but I'll have a look and
post it...
For the cost of a PSU I dont mind getting another one, would a 400
watt be needed?

A reminder of the Spec:
1.4 Athlon,
2 80Gb Hard Drives
512mb SDRAM 133mhz
Nvidia 9200SE 128mb Graphics Card
I also have an Fan fitted into a PCI slot, and a front fan that fits
into the spare floppy drive..(I think I forgot to mention that before)

I've also checked the Heat Sink Paste today and it looks ok..just a
little bit on there but not too much....

Thanks for the replys/suggestions guys.! As soon as I fix this I'll
post the problem...

Bye for now..!!

I was just looking at capacitors and I found this quoye

" An F16 fighter for example, won't contain a single electrolytic
capacitor."
From.
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/11/0....shtml?tid=137

I am going to take a look at my mobo too.
I think there will be some big ones in the PSU too and I will see
if I can get a look inside the PSU housing. I think basically the bigger
they are the more likely they are to fail.






"Jim" wrote in message
news:xbbgc.12971$Yf6.3880@fed1read07...
This is a bit of a long shot, and I hadn't mentioned it until now
believing
the PC was relatively new, but then you just mentioned that everything had
been fine for about 5 months. That got me to thinking maybe you've had
this
mobo considerably longer.

I suggest taking a *very* close look at the motherboard and look for
leaking
capacitors ( http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195 ).
Whenever a perfectly good system suddenly starts acting up, esp. if it's
around 18 months old, I start looking for leaking capacitors. Having the
PC
on 24/7 may accelerate the process considerably as well. I've had several
people over the past year discover this problem, much to their surprise.
Not likely, but worth checking. This is easily missed, even by an expert!
You often need to be *looking* for it to even notice it.

HTH

Jim

"Putim" wrote in message
m...
Wow, I didnt expect so many replys so soon...

I've just got the PC back from the shop, they've run some Hardware
testing software on it for the last 48 hours, and only found one bad
sector on one drive...they said I've done everything they would have
and then charged me a tenner for it!!...never mind...

I'll try to answer all the questions...

My Ram is Kingston, I'm using 2 256 133 SDRAM sticks.

I'm not overclocking, and I've loaded all BIOS settings
Supervisor/Default etc..

Although I havent updated the BIOS

I've tried various software Memory Manager, Motherboard monitor and
neither report bad or high use of memory or heat...and I also tried
SiSoftware Sandra 2004..

I've reinstalled the OS and formatted twice, only installing Codecs
and one orginal game (CounterStrike) with all Windows updates..

The PC has being fine until this started about 5 months ago..(I've had
the PC about 2 years, it was built by a the shop who I've just took it
back to..

When all this started I just assumed it was the RAM, I took the old
stick out and put the new one in, didnt work..so I put both sticks
back in...

Then I borrowed a mates Hard drive and used that for about 2 hours..it
was fine..so I went and got another hard drive and used that one, then
about a week later it crashed again...so I put the old one back
in...so far I was only making the pc a better one, so it was just a
good excuse to upgrade I suppose...

Anyway, I needed a new Graphics Card, so I upgraded to a 128mb Nvidia
9200SE, and it still crashes...


My Motherboard is a JetWay I think, although I'm not sure on the
model...

Would updating the BIOS really help that much? and is it hard to do?

I'm not sure what power supply I'm using, but I'll have a look and
post it...
For the cost of a PSU I dont mind getting another one, would a 400
watt be needed?

A reminder of the Spec:
1.4 Athlon,
2 80Gb Hard Drives
512mb SDRAM 133mhz
Nvidia 9200SE 128mb Graphics Card
I also have an Fan fitted into a PCI slot, and a front fan that fits
into the spare floppy drive..(I think I forgot to mention that before)

I've also checked the Heat Sink Paste today and it looks ok..just a
little bit on there but not too much....

Thanks for the replys/suggestions guys.! As soon as I fix this I'll
post the problem...

Bye for now..!!

This link might be of interest.
(JetWay with leaky capacitors).

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache...=en &ie=UTF-8

"Putim" wrote in message
m...
Wow, I didnt expect so many replys so soon...

I've just got the PC back from the shop, they've run some Hardware
testing software on it for the last 48 hours, and only found one bad
sector on one drive...they said I've done everything they would have
and then charged me a tenner for it!!...never mind...

I'll try to answer all the questions...

My Ram is Kingston, I'm using 2 256 133 SDRAM sticks.

I'm not overclocking, and I've loaded all BIOS settings
Supervisor/Default etc..

Although I havent updated the BIOS

I've tried various software Memory Manager, Motherboard monitor and
neither report bad or high use of memory or heat...and I also tried
SiSoftware Sandra 2004..

I've reinstalled the OS and formatted twice, only installing Codecs
and one orginal game (CounterStrike) with all Windows updates..

The PC has being fine until this started about 5 months ago..(I've had
the PC about 2 years, it was built by a the shop who I've just took it
back to..

When all this started I just assumed it was the RAM, I took the old
stick out and put the new one in, didnt work..so I put both sticks
back in...

Then I borrowed a mates Hard drive and used that for about 2 hours..it
was fine..so I went and got another hard drive and used that one, then
about a week later it crashed again...so I put the old one back
in...so far I was only making the pc a better one, so it was just a
good excuse to upgrade I suppose...

Anyway, I needed a new Graphics Card, so I upgraded to a 128mb Nvidia
9200SE, and it still crashes...


My Motherboard is a JetWay I think, although I'm not sure on the
model...

Would updating the BIOS really help that much? and is it hard to do?

I'm not sure what power supply I'm using, but I'll have a look and
post it...
For the cost of a PSU I dont mind getting another one, would a 400
watt be needed?

A reminder of the Spec:
1.4 Athlon,
2 80Gb Hard Drives
512mb SDRAM 133mhz
Nvidia 9200SE 128mb Graphics Card
I also have an Fan fitted into a PCI slot, and a front fan that fits
into the spare floppy drive..(I think I forgot to mention that before)

I've also checked the Heat Sink Paste today and it looks ok..just a
little bit on there but not too much....

Thanks for the replys/suggestions guys.! As soon as I fix this I'll
post the problem...

Bye for now..!!

Cheers Jim, I will certainly have a look at that..Ive being playing
CounterStrike today and the PC has locked up every time after about 15
minutes....I messed around with BIOS settings but still no good...

I've just loaded Optimum settings...we'll see how it goes tonight..!!

Thanks again for the advice.!

"Jim" wrote in message news:xbbgc.12971$Yf6.3880@fed1read07...
This is a bit of a long shot, and I hadn't mentioned it until now believing
the PC was relatively new, but then you just mentioned that everything had
been fine for about 5 months. That got me to thinking maybe you've had this
mobo considerably longer.

I suggest taking a *very* close look at the motherboard and look for leaking
capacitors ( http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195 ).
Whenever a perfectly good system suddenly starts acting up, esp. if it's
around 18 months old, I start looking for leaking capacitors. Having the PC
on 24/7 may accelerate the process considerably as well. I've had several
people over the past year discover this problem, much to their surprise.
Not likely, but worth checking. This is easily missed, even by an expert!
You often need to be *looking* for it to even notice it.

HTH

Jim