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| Thread ID: 110266 | 2010-06-10 00:47:00 | PC locks up at random intervals | Tony (4941) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1108626 | 2010-06-10 00:47:00 | The PC running my Windows Home Server has started freezing at unpredictable intervals. It started at about once every 24 hours, but is now considerably more frequent. As it is a WHS system, I don't have a monitor attached all the time, so it has been hard to keep track of what might be happening. The event viewer tells me nothing except "the previous shutdown was unexpected" - well duh! Since I have attached a monitor, the only other noticeable sympton is that the sceen is blank. I am leaning toward it being a hardware problem, as it sometimes dies before I see the Windows start up progress bar, and sometimes after a few hours. Sometimes the disk activity light is hard on, sometimes not. When it is going, it appears to work fine - I've managed to copy a large bunch of critical files off to another PC without problem. I have been wondering whether it is the graphics card, as at one point the OS gave me a message saying that windows had recovered from a problem with the graphics card and I should check for updated drivers - but I've only seen that once. The system is fairly ancient, and the card is AGP, and I don't have a spare to try out. |
Tony (4941) | ||
| 1108627 | 2010-06-10 22:06:00 | OK, I don't think it is a memory problem, as I have removed each of the memory sticks in turn with no change to the lockups. I've got a bid in on a cheap AGP video card on TradeMe, so we'll see if that makes any difference. If it doesn't, I guess it is down to the mobo - unless anyone has other ideas? | Tony (4941) | ||
| 1108628 | 2010-06-10 23:41:00 | What is your PSU and how old is it? | Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1108629 | 2010-06-10 23:56:00 | What is your PSU and how old is it?It is a "SuperPower Switching power supply model dr8400BTX" 400w that came with the case. It was bought in Nov 2008. I hadn't considered the PSU. Are there any checks I can make? I do have a spare PSU, so I could try swapping them over. |
Tony (4941) | ||
| 1108630 | 2010-06-11 00:07:00 | Yeah PSUs that come with cases aren't the best... it could be the problem. SuperPower isn't a brand I've even heard of. Probably it's just a rebranded Hyena or something. I ran my Sempron on the 350 watt Colorsit PSU which came with my case, worked OK for a couple of years then started locking up randomly the same as yours. Replaced it with a Corsair 400CX, no problems since. Since the problems are usually caused by noise or high ripple on the outputs there's not much you can check without an oscilloscope. An ESR tester or a visual check could be used to see if the capacitors inside had failed but the quickest test will most likely be to swap in a known good PSU and see if there's any difference. |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1108631 | 2010-06-11 00:14:00 | OK, I might try swapping. The other PSU is 300w, but it should still be adequate I think - and it is a Zalman, so the quality should be OK. | Tony (4941) | ||
| 1108632 | 2010-06-11 00:46:00 | Nice idea, but I swapped the PSU and the problem was exactly the same. So I guess that leaves the graphics card or the mobo - right? As I said earlier, I've got a bid in on another graphics card, so we'll see what happens there. | Tony (4941) | ||
| 1108633 | 2010-06-11 00:51:00 | Sounds like it unless you are so unfortunate to have 2 PSUs with both exactly the same problem... I know you swapped RAM sticks around but have you actually tried running Memtest? Have you tried a Linux CD to rule out a driver problem\OS problem? |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1108634 | 2010-06-11 00:59:00 | . So I guess that leaves the graphics card or the mobo - right? Overheating or motherboard? |
pctek (84) | ||
| 1108635 | 2010-06-11 01:07:00 | Can you see any capacitors on the mainboard that are leaking, blown tops etc? | inphinity (7274) | ||
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