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Hello again, this is the follow up to my previous blog entry whining about my pc. Thanks for all the help offered
To summarise, after 10 minutes or so of use my PC shits down, either simply powering off or going to the blue screen of death "collecting data for crash dump" before restarting. It does not seem to matter what I am doing any more, though in the past such crashes only occurred when I was playing a graphically demanding game.
In answer to a few questions posted then, my PSU is 550 watts, which I think is a reasonable amount for my hardware.
The Hard disk does not seem to be making any nasty noises.
On start up the pc almost always displays the following message just after the bit where I am prompted to press dell to go to the bios:
A: drive error occurred
press F1 to continue
last time I started up my Pc it also displayed a message something along these lines:
A sync flood error occurred.
what does this mean?
As suggested I ran memtest, while it was running no faults were found, but both times I have tried to run the program, my PC crashes in a slightly different way to usual. The screen goes blank, the pc is unresponsive, even the num lock light wont go on and off, but the power supply is still whirring away.
Any more ideas about what this suggests is wrong?
As suggested previously I will try to get hold of a spare hard disk to see if this is a problem with that. Though the fact it crashed when running memtest, which is booted from a cd seems to indicate that there is another fault.
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heh, "PC shits down".
Dust? Temperature Issues? Vacuum your computers innards (anywhere air is supposed to travel and temperature is shifted) also get a program that registers temperatures in key places (CPU, GPU, RAM)
Also, have you overclocked the computer? Did someone overclock it for you? Did you build it yourself?
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oops, I don't really want to edit that back.
I have not over clocked my PC but another message sometimes displayed on startup is "the previous instance of over clocking has failed"
I mentioned in my first blogpost that I had monitored temperatures and nothing seemed that unreasonable. Will try again though and post the numbers,
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Well there's nothing wrong with a bit of spring(winter) cleaning in your computer, so check for dust aswell, it could easily ruin alot of things.
And that part about the overclocking does seem eerily suspicious.
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Did you not read any of the comments on your last blog?
The diagnosis was your computers power supply was failing. Hence, you need to replace it. If you don't want to replace it without knowing for sure. Find a buddy who has a similar strength power supply, swap his in for a short period and test it. If it works, your Power Supply needs replacing.
It's simple, when something ages over time (like a car engine) it loses horsepower. Same thing with everything else. Your PSU is likely unable to power your computer anymore, the instability is a result of this. Not enough power, unstable computer. This is common when you overclock to high without increasing the power needs of the overclock (voltage settings).
Edit: Your computer is 2+ years old now right?
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On January 07 2010 09:17 Heggie wrote:
In answer to a few questions posted then, my PSU is 550 watts, which I think is a reasonable amount for my hardware.
A 400W Corsair > 600W no name.
If it is a shitty brand 550W means nothing.&
What is the brand / model ?
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BSOD usually means software rather than hardware problem.
Reformat?
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I would check to make sure everything is properly cooled first -you'll probably be able to get into BIOS within the first 10 mins and at least get a sense of the temperatures that everything is running at.
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Wattage is rarely an issue with modern systems and video cards; amps on the 12V rail are a lot more important. Get a program that monitors 12V rail voltage (asus has one, not sure about other mobo manufacturers). Then, record the 12V rail voltage playing games. You'll probably see it drop down closer to 11, at which point everything goes to hell. Trying to find a low end PSU with high 12V rail amperage is pretty much impossible. If you had a gratis PSU, you've almost certainly got trash.
Not sure about the 9800GTX, but I know the 260 has stupid crazy amperage requirements. They also don't like to draw evenly across their 3 power connections, which can lead to crashes with low end PSUs.
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The PSU is a 550 watt COLORSit en60950
This PSU is a replacement I was given for free by a friend half a year ago and it does seem that it is trash now that I actually get round to looking up what it is 
I will do a bit of a spring clean as suggested. Do you think there is enough reason to believe the PSU is at least part of the problem and I should get a new one? If so could someone give me a recommendation for a good PSU?
My specs are:
Windows Vista
Can't remember the motherboard
AMD Athlon 6000+
2 gig ram
Nvidia 9800GTX
Thanks a lot for all the advice.
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EPT
