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Hello chaps,
I am ending my lurker status to request some advice on what is up with my PC.
A few months ago my PC started powering off unexpectedly when playing some graphically intensive games, crysis and Empire Total War in particular. I suspected this might be problem with inadequate cooling so I monitored temperatures while playing these games but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
I did not really do anything about it since I don't play games that much now anyway.
Recently however my PC exhibits a similar problem just under normal use. 10 minutes or so after start up the computer will just power off. Sometimes this is accompanied by the PC freezing, sound looping and crashing to the blue screen of death. And the frequency of such crashes is increasing.
On startup the computer also complains of suffering a drive error, I'm not sure if this is sometimes or always, will check and post more details.
I have formatted my hard drive and reinstalled windows but the problem is still there, so it must be a hardware fault I think. I'm unsure how to diagnose which component is faulty without replacing components, which is difficult since I don't have replacements.
My specs are:
Windows Vista
Can't remember the motherboard
AMD Athlon 6000+
2 gig ram
Nvidia 9800GTX
Anyway, I'd be very grateful to anyone with any bright ideas. Thanks
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im not a big hardware geek but I can tell that this isnt a lot of ram for vista o.o
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How many slots for RAM do you have, and how many are you using? I had a similar issue and when I swapped the sticks into other slots it worked fine.
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on first guess i would have thought its your gfx card that is overheating (games, and vista uses aero 3d stuff so that led me there).
can you explain whether the 'drive error' is just the drive error scanning program telling you that something went wrong in a particular file/folder (which is normal if your comp crashes before saving cached data to disk) or whether its something like unreadable sectors on disk / drive unrecognisable (which would lead me to believe its not your gfx card but instead your hard disk).
(a suggestion: it never hurts to open your pc's cover and undust the devices carefully, since dust can lead to sudden overheating, especially if your vent is dusted and thus going crazy aka dead, also often there are temperature sensors only on the cpu the motherboard and the hard disk, and sometimes there is no gpu (graphics processor on gfx device) temperature sensor, so your monitoring might not be sufficient enough, dunno though)
in the first case the best way to determine the problem would be opening the cover of your pc and running / booting it while closely watching what your gfx card cooler (most probably vent) does, could be your main cooler works, but gfx cooler screwed up :/ ... (at least you would know what was the problem in that case); however if your gfx seems to be fine even when the comp crashes, which would again hint to the second case..
in the second case (again while your pc cover is opened) listen whether the hard disk is making strange noices (scratching/aching ones in particular, it sounds like the disk is trying to read (which makes the disk rotate) and the disk rotation stops/hesitates (cuz it cant read a particular sector), that would mean its time to backup stuff as fast as possible and try switching your hard disk for another one (just burrow some unused but still big enough from friend; edit: hopefully this is manageable in your situation T_T), and look what happens when you use the new one, if it still crashes, your hard disk was probably fine (and you can return the burrowed one), and you just misinterpreted normal working noice as strange ones (can happen o_O).
(on a second thought, maybe check this first ; ) -->) if neither of those two seem to be the case, you should probably check whether your motherboard sockets/cables are properly plugged in, e.g. is your gfx device locked tightly in its slot, are the cables running from the board plugged in properly in both the board and the devices (hard disk f.e.) ), are the ram bars tightly in position (cant hurt to remove them and undust them too, then put em back in again  )
if nothing of this helps, you should probably consider checking whether some tech geek is available to help you find the problem, since often its a lot easier to find the culprit if someone who knows what to look for is there in person and can see for himself...
anyways gl, hopefully your pc will be fixed soon...
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On January 05 2010 20:01 FaCE_1 wrote:
im not a big hardware geek but I can tell that this isnt a lot of ram for vista o.o
No, 2GB ram works fine, I use Vista with 2gb ram and ATI Radeon HD3850 and I still play cod4/mw2/fallout3/etc etc on max.
to op: You might have a ram issue. Get Memtest, burn it on a CD, boot from it and leave the comp on overnight. If you wake up and there are errors this means your memory is faulty (there shouldn't even be one) and you should get it replaced.
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my old computer used to have that too.
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Could also just be the PSU packing up, or not being powerful enough, turning off components to save energy.
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United States17042 Posts
repeating what other people said - memtest. To rule out other things, you might try running linux from a livecd. If that crashes, you can rule out your hard disks, as your cd-rom drive shouldn't have the same problem. As an added bonus, some linux distros (ubuntu comes to mind) have memtest as part of their normal live-cd distribution.
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United States17042 Posts
However, that won't rule out overheating from various non-hard disk components.
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My best guess is that it is the RAM, 2 G is not an adaquete amount for Vista and what I'm assuming is that when you run programs that require a lot of memory the computer can't support itself anymore.
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What is your PSU ?
If it is a "no name" it might make your comp crash when your CPU / GPU are used at 100% ( Crysis :o )
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Random shut downs are typically a symptom of a failing Power Supply. Instability can also be caused by the same reason (blue screens, lock ups crashes.) If temps were within reason then it's likely to be PSU. Especially if your PC is a few years old.
Edit: Even if you only had 1gb of memory it wouldn't cause the computer to crash like you describe. It would merely be a frustrating and slow experience.
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most likely now is PSU like the others say
but check your windows event log for any indications to other problems, like failing io or such.
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2GB memory is absolutely fine for Vista.
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EPT
