PC under attack?

Gavin78

Like most that hang around these tech places probably build their own pc's and it's unfortunate in situations like yours (been their myself) you have to start pulling bits out and testing them. lucky for me I have spare parts hanging around.

Sometime it's hard to find the fault. shops like PC world charge a fortune I wouldn't touch them if possible

JohnG

Cheers, I've been looking at a few other threads which mention the memory or Power Supply could be causing similar problems to mine, sadly none seem to have any final conclusions.
I'll pull the tower out probably tomorrow and a) check the Sata Lead and make a note of it's size/type b) take a look at the Ram and probably try taking one and another out as suggested, however I'm thinking there are programs/downloads for checking memory just not sure, if there are, how/where/which would be suitable for mine?

poppellerant

You can download and run Memtest from a USB stick or CD. You'd need to tell your PC to boot up from either of these. With Memtest, test each stick of memory seperately. If they all pass, test the slots by putting one stick in a slot at a time. If there is a problem, either with the slot or memory, then the above should help find it.

I have to say, I'm not sure faulty memory would cause slowdowns. I'm starting to wonder if the CPU is perhaps overheating. Or, as Gavin78 said, even the power supply (PSU).

First off testing the PSU. Any voltages coming from the PSU to the computer are fairly low - the highest one being 12v. If you look at the four pin molex connector that provides power to your CD/DVD drive, you will see four wires - two black, one yellow and one red. If you look on the big twenty pin connector that provides power to your motherboard, you will see an orange one. The yellow, red and orange wires are the ones of interest.

With a multimeter, connect the negative probe to the black wire next to the yellow pin on the four pin connector. Set your multimeter to measure voltage, then test the yellow, red and orange wires. With a safe 5% allowance, they should read as follows:
Yellow (12v) - between 11.43v and 12.60v
Red (5v) - between 4.76v and 5.25v
Orange (3.3v) - between 3.14v and 3.47v

If your readings exceed any of those voltage ranges, then perhaps you should be looking at a new PSU.

To test if your CPU is overheating, use SpeedFan. It should really be under 50c in this warm reather, ideally under 40c. While monitoring SpeedFan, stress out your computer. There is a graph which provides historic data, to help you out.

Gavin78

Prime 95 would be a good stress test for the pc?

I was aiming more for the PSU rather than ram. But I was thinking perhaps if the pc was accessing in and out of it and it was bad ram then that could be a cause of the blue screens but in saying that unless he's using something that will take up nearly 4 gig then we'll never know I guess.

I can't remember myself but I think the memtest programs take a while testing the ram?

Just wondering how often is the pc running and for how long?

poppellerant

Prime95 should do the trick is warming up the CPU and stress testing it.

I have come across a case where the computer would randomly crash for no reason, regardless of what was changed. In the end, it turned out that one of the RAM slots were defective.

But hopefully in JohnG's case, the memory might just need reseating and all is well again. But that's just wishful thinking. :rotfl:

JohnG

Ooops, have made a bit of a mess of things . Went to download/run the Speedfan software but seemed to end up with something completely different (Some Zip box or something along with tool bars etc) so I uninstalled all that to start again but.....
Spotted the Intel Control centre listed, and wait for it, double clicked to have a look at it, completely overlooking the fact that it would uninstall it <doh!> :eek:. So, I'm looking to find how to reinstall it as I suspect it might be important but can't find which one is correct from the Intel website.
I managed to check for driver updates whilst I was on the intel site, and I downloaded the latest (apparently) graphics driver but this seems to of made my graphics worse than before?
All in all, it's looking like my wife is going to be proven right (again) I will have to stick to my day job .

Any reassuring advice would be appreciated?

JohnG

Well I have downloaded the SpeedFan thing and it's showing the CPU at 90c :eek: Also the Aux (Whatever that is) is also high at around 58c.
So that sounds like the CPU could be the problem then do you think?

poppellerant

Is the fan moving round, if at all? 90c is blazing hot, so the CPU is probably throttling a lot of the time. Luckily they are fairly cheap to fix.

If the heatsink is full of dust, use a soft paint brush to get the dust out of the heatsink. If the fan isn't turning, make sure it's plugged into the motherboard.

If the CPU fan has seized completely, you might be just as well buying a new heatsink. You'd be looking at upto £20-ish for a new heatsink with fan.

Gavin78

90c perhaps the reason why the pc has been shutting down then. I would take the fan off give it a really good clean out, I would suggest a soft paint brush to clean the fan out.

Next step would be to clean the thermal paste off the cpu and buy some more and re-apply the silver paste works much better and then stick the fan back on (can be a little tricky sometimes) if you are still having problems could be a faulty fan, the bearings tend to wear out on them after a while.

JohnG

Cheers guys, I'll take a look at the cpu fan etc shortly. I did give the inside of the PC a fairly thorough clean when I put the new HD in but could have missed some areas.
Incidently the SpeedFan is showing the CPU Fan at around 1170rpm??