Comp. freezes/locks up and cannot restart (1 Viewer)

[Lord Ac]

Hay guys, my brother's comp faces a new problem:

Starts up normally. You get into windows and do whatever for certain amount of time (around 10 minutes). At this point the whole thing locks/freezes. Cannot type or move mouse, etc. At this point when I restart it looks like a normal boot for about 30 seconds and then the monitor just goes blank, as though it is in sleep mode. The tower lights still stay on though. At this point I cannot restart or do anything until i pull out all the plugs and start again.

What have tried:
- running anti-virus and regestry mechanic (nothing found, if they can get completed)
- running error check at restart (makes it up to around step 4 before freezing)
- changing monitors: still does the same thing (so its not the monitor).

Comp. statz:
- 1+ gig ram
- windows xp home
- 2100 Ghz AMD System
- Gigabyte Motherboard (k7 triton)
- not overclocked or anything like that

Any help welcome. Think its a hardware problem or software? I guess I could always format, but that is a serious pain in the butt and will stuff up my network ...

Ac

 

[LoneShadow]

I had almost exact same problem with my comp. After different test for sources of problem, figured my motherboard was fried.

Mine used to sometimes even freeze during boot-up. Sometimes after windows had loaded. When I started it in safe mode, it worked though, but of no use.

It happened after installing Windows XP SP2.
The funny/weird thing was that I could run windows 98 for a while, before that stopped working too.

One of those "bumpy" things under the CPU had melted in my case. Weird!!!

 

[MedNez]

I agree with that analysis, although I'm inclined to think it might also be the hard drive rather than mother board. To be safe, I'd back up everything now.

Try 'chkdisk /f' on the hard drive (from the command prompt).

Does booting in safe mode give the same problems? This could eliminate software conflicts as most drivers aren't loaded in safe mode.

 

[MuffinMan]

would any of your computers be AMD? That might explain the problem of your motherboard being fried!
my amd motherboard got fried too, and it kept on restarting until one day it didnt boot up at all
now im using a p4

 

[King Tut]

I had a similar problem to what you have, which gradually grew worse until the computer couldn't start up anymore. I soon found my motherboard was fried so i just bought a new motherboard and wallah! Good as new.

 

[AntiHyper]

Yeh even the comp engineering lecturer says that intel makes the hottest cpu's. Their latest one apparently radiates out 300 watts of heat.

Imagine holding a glowing 100 watts light bulb and multiply that 3 times. Not only that, the surface area which this heat must be taken away from is considerably smaller than a light bulb.

 

[p-unit]

Yeh even the comp engineering lecturer says that intel makes the hottest cpu's. Their latest one apparently radiates out 300 watts of heat.

Imagine holding a glowing 100 watts light bulb and multiply that 3 times. Not only that, the surface area which this heat must be taken away from is considerably smaller than a light bulb.

that fucking amazing
didnot know that
are you at usyd

 

[insert-username]

Yeh even the comp engineering lecturer says that intel makes the hottest cpu's. Their latest one apparently radiates out 300 watts of heat.

That's not true. The hottest Intel CPU has a total system power usage of 293 watts, not an individual CPU usage of 300 watts. Still, it draws 70 more watts than an equivalent Athlon 64 FX-60 system, so it's quite a lot of heat.


I_F

 

[MuffinMan]

well i still have my p1 166mhz in the garage and i still works fine after all those years (lemme think approx 10? )

 

[Lord Ac]

Hrmm ... ok. Now it wont even turn on at all.

I think I will be taking it to the shop ... what new motherboard should I get??

Ac

 

[Lord Ac]

wow! I opened up the computer and guess what I found:

the FAN from my 9800Pro graphics card had come OFF and was just lying there near the hard disk ...

Do you think this means the card is now stuffed or can it somehow be reattached and made all good again?

Cheers,
Ac

 

[Templar]

Fans don't generally fall off graphic cards. Something must broke for that, so it's best if you obtain another heatsink/fan.

One of those "bumpy" things under the CPU had melted in my case. Weird!!!

A MOSFET melted? That would definitely explain it...lack of stable electricity to the CPU.

The hottest Intel CPU has a total system power usage of 293 watts, not an individual CPU usage of 300 watts. Still, it draws 70 more watts than an equivalent Athlon 64 FX-60 system, so it's quite a lot of heat.

A Pentium D on 90nm has a TDP of 130W, the max I know of a home CPU. If the system had a X1800XTX crossfire that would be an additional 250W at full load, which could come to 500W including inefficiency of PSU.

 

[bscienceboi]

Fans dont genrally cause any problems on a graphics card. They can be reattached/removed and replaced with different fans if you wanted to.

 

[Lord Ac]

i dont really think so ... how would you reattch it? Super glue, cause it looks like it kinda snapped off its holdy-thing somehow.

And when the graphics card is put in the comp. doesnt work ... so it appears to be a goner ...

Ah well.

Ac