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The Problem:
I bought my computer about a year ago from cyberpowerpc, and it's been running completely fine up to now. The past few days, it's been having trouble connecting to the internet, and then suddenly my network card pretty much stopped connecting completely to the internet. After that, I started getting a lot of random "blue screen of death" type occurrences. When I can manage to restart my computer, I can open the c: drive and d: drive, but opening programs takes a lot longer than it should (30+ seconds or so)
Potential problems: The internet problem seems to be the internal network card on my motherboard being dead. For some reason, the motherboard that the computer came with doesn't have drivers for Windows Vista (briliant idea to pack it with Vista, yea?)...I had to reformat my computer once, I'll be honest I don't really remember how I got it to work again last time. Also, I generally don't turn my computer off, so it's been running for a significant fraction of the time that I've owned it. I have multiple fans in the case, and there's a temperature gauge on the front panel so it's not overheating or anything.
If I can keep my computer on for long enough, I'm going to run some memory tests on it to make sure my RAM isn't bad. Other than that, and reinstalling drivers, can you give any more advice (other than install XP or buy a mac or useless stuff like that)? I'll buy a new mother board if I have to, but it'd be a huge pain to take everything out and put it all back in, there's a lot of shit plugged into my motherboard and case right now
Thanks TL
Here's the computer specs:
Case: Raidmax Sagitta Mid-Tower 420W Gaming Case w/ Side Panel Window
CPU: AMD Athlon™64 X2 6000+ Dual-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology
CD: 18X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (BLACK COLOR)
CD2: SONY 16X DVD-ROM (BLACK COLOR)
Fan: AMD ATHLON64 CERTIFIED CPU FAN & HEATSINK
Floppy: 1.44 MB floppy drive
Hard drive: Extreme Performance (RAID-0) with 2 Identical Hard Drives (320GB
(160GBx2) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8MB Cache 7200RPM HDD
Memory: (Req.DDR2 MainBoard)1GB (2x512MB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory
(Corsair Value Select or Major Brand)
and
DDR2 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400 800MHz / Non-ECC CL5 / 240-pin / Unbuffered DIMM /
Kingston KVR800D2K2/2GR
Video card: BFG GeForce 7900 GS OC 256MB PCI Express®
Sound card: some sound blaster sound card
Motherboard: (Socket AM2)MSI K9N4 SLI-F nForce 500 SLI Chipset DDR2/800 SATA-II
RAID MBoard w/ Dual 16x PCI-Express
OS: Vista
Power supply: 500 Watts Power Supplies Xion ATX Power Supply
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
When is the last time you cleaned the dust out of your computer?
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A super thorough cleaning with one of those compressed air cans? probably not for a while if ever. I blow on it every now and then (being careful to remove moisture from my mouth first) but that's a good suggestion. I have some in my lab so I can just borrow that....
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check for defective parts, like bad ram, bad hard drive, etc. if u have spares just switch them out and see if you get the problem. ITS CALLED TROUBLE SHOOTING LOL <3
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right now i'm trying to repair my windows installation...took a couple tries to even get far enough to be able to attempt that
i'll go find a floppy so that i can boot from there to do a ram test
i'll unplug from my video card and use onboard video if that helps
i'll get a compressed air can to see if that helps
i'll remove my sticks of ram 2 at a time to see if that helps
my sound card is brand new, i doubt that's the problem, computer shouldn't crash like that anyways
unfortunately the crashes are somewhat intermittent and it's tough to know what will trigger one
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On August 28 2008 22:50 KOFgokuon wrote:unfortunately the crashes are somewhat intermittent and it's tough to know what will trigger one It's almost always a heating problem then, a clean generally fixes the problem. Especially because you're using an AMD system, they're infamous for running hot. You might just be able to move the tower. Most desks come with those wooden slots where you put your tower, but those are actually horrible because they provide no airflow, try moving your box somewhere that has better airflow.
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Right now mine's just sitting on the floor next to my desk, not in any sort of desk slot or anything
If the [] is my computer, then it sits kind of like this under my desk
i'll clean it out later today and report
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Update:
I used compressed air to clean out the packs of dust in my case, and I tried to do a memory test, but my computer crashed in the middle of it. I'm in the process of testing my computer with some of the sticks of ram removed to see if it crashes, will update as i go
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(hopefully) final update:
I think my computer might be running OK...not great. It still takes a while to open programs upon startup, but at the same time, it seems to start up a lot quicker than it did before? The ram tests all came back fine, i cleaned out the case and it seems to be ok.
Thanks for the few pieces of advice!
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Bump due to new problems
So my restarting problems have gotten worse
I'm pretty sure that it's not a heating problem, because my computer will restart after only being on for 10-15 minutes sometimes, other times it can be on for hours and be fine.
My harddrives are set up in RAID, and partitioned into a c and d drive. I tried to do a check disk scan on the D drive (which does not have windows installed on it), and it crashed partway through., I then tried to do a checkdisk on the c drive after restarting my computer, and it got 42% of the way before crashing. Does this indicate an error with my hard drives, or could something else still be fucking with it?
I've run memory tests in the past, but I'm not sure if my computer will last long enough to do a full 24 hour memory test like I did last time
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Any ideas?
I took out 2 of my sticks of ram and started running the checkdesk application again, it went really fast and then when it got to 41-42% it slowed down significantly
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Could anyone answer this question:
Could a faulty sound card cause my system to crash like this?
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I'm thinking its a hard drive problem. But it might also be a heat issue, because as you said, you have a lot of crap in that case. I would probably wipe them clean and see if they work from a blank slate, but you said you didn't want to do that earlier... so, not really sure what to say.
Edit: As for the soundcard... maybe. Looking around a bit, do you have an onboard soundcard? It seems if you don't disable that then there might be issues if you have a dedicated one.
The other probable culprit is drivers for something (who knows what, maybe your network card? but given you are connected to the internet, maybe not) being screwy, but figuring out what is wrong would probably be difficult. Wiping it clean and starting fresh would be the easiest solution, but again... you said you didn't want to.
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I have an onboard sound card, and I disabled it. I also disabled my onboard network card and am using a USB one...I'm not currently using that computer, but it's on right in front of me at the moment.
I bought a sound card after I updated my on board drivers and my sound stopped working, but I uninstalled all of the drivers and anything and I don't believe there should be any issues
Again, wiping it is a last resort. I don't really have time to do it right now, and I'd almost prefer to just start buying new components and replacing old ones. The hard drive not scanning correctly is worrisome for me, but I just finished the scan of the c: drive after removing my sound card completely and it seemed ok, I'm scanning my d: drive now
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FAIL. sound card was not the problem =( computer just blue screened while doing another checkdisk scan
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maybe it didn't. it just finished the checkdisk scan and restarted >< i put the soundcard into the other PCI slot in my computer and it seems to be working ok..............i really hope that slot was just faulty on my motherboard
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Nope. that wasn't it. Crashed again >< I give up on this thing
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*sigh* I guess I'll keep trying on this thing, better to keep plugging away at it than to buy a new one
I did a fresh install of vista, and that didn't help
I also installed a new motherboard, replugged everything in, no go
if my cpu was faulty, would my computer even start? it can run for a little while before it crashes so i don't think this can be the problem
i've checked my ram multiple times and it's come out clean every time
i've checked my hard drives for errors too
I might buy a shitty video card to swap out to see if my computer runs fine without my video card. My motherboard doesn't have onboard video so i can't swap it, and i don't have another computer to check with unfortunately
other than that....what else could be wrong?! i cleaned most of the parts as I went through and installed the new motherboard, so dust shouldjn't be a problem...
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constant crashing like that can mean a bad power supply...
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EPT
