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Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : My first question for this board... WHY DOES MY PC KEEP FREEZING?


Trey
12-30-2000, 04:41 PM
Ever since about 3 months ago, my PC kept freezing like crazy. It locks up about 10-12 times a day (no exaggeration). It always happens when I do certain things like go to certain websites, or play winamp, etc. It also locks up a lot at random.

This didn't start after any major changes, it just started happening. I reformatted and did a fresh install of 98, hoping to get rid of the problem, but it still happens. At first, I thought it was my video card. Its a Voodoo3 3000 PCI, the card known for its heat. The card was so hot, when I grabbed the corner, it would almost burn my finger after about 5-10 seconds. So I installed 3 extra fans in my case to help cool it down. One of them was a cyclone blower, which sucks air from the inside and blows it out the back. I have this placed directly under the video card. The second fan is at the bottom of the front right next to the speaker, blowin air in. And the third fan is actually 3 small fans. It is intended to just lay in front of your hard drive to keep it cool, but I put this in one of my extra bays at the top of the case, blowing air in. So I have 3 fans to help keep it cool, and one of them blowing air right from under the processor on the Voodoo card. This did not help at all.

Next, I thought it may be the RAM. So I bought another 64 stick and put it in, took the other stick out (I only had 64MB to begin with). That did not help, same thing. So I stuck the old stick behind it (total now 128), and everything started working fine... for about 4 hours. Then it went back to locking up again. But it doesn't lock up now when doing certain things, it now just locks up all the time at random. And it seems to have gotten worse, now locking up about 1-3 times per hour.

Now I have no idea what the problem is. This is why I plan on building a new PC in the very near future, cause this one is a P.O.S. I bought it from Quantex, who was rated #1 in tech support at the time. Well, so much for that.

Anyone have any ideas? All is appreciated. I'm running a Celeron 500 with (now) 128MB Ram.

Thanx,
Trey

wedor
12-30-2000, 06:01 PM
Sounds more like a CPU heat problem.

c3p0-11n
12-30-2000, 06:13 PM
maybe the fan on the heatsink is getting weak. Are the RPM's down? What Mother Board?

Trey
12-30-2000, 07:10 PM
The RPMs on the CPU fan is 5357. And I am not sure about my motherboard, I lost my motherboard book a couple months ago (yes, I know that was ignorant). Is there a way I can find out?

randy48
12-30-2000, 07:14 PM
Trey, what make mobo do you have? Most manufacturers have the mobo manuals in PDF format on their web sites free to download http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Trey
12-30-2000, 08:36 PM
I don't know what brand it is. I don't see a name anywhere on the board itself. I bought this system from Quantex last year when I knew literally nothing about PCs.

Buji
12-30-2000, 08:42 PM
Update your Vid card drivers and see if that helps. I used to get alot of freeze ups that were solved by new drivers. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

frankpel
12-31-2000, 07:36 AM
To find out the make of your mobo and other parts in your system, download a program called SiSoft Sandra. It comes in two flavors, standard and professional. I think the standard version is free. Check out their website. http://www.sisoftware.demon.co.uk/sandra/
good luck.

ck42866
12-31-2000, 09:17 AM
It may be a dying power supply. Especially after you installed new fans and the lock ups are more frequent. Try a new PS and see what happens. Double check your voltage on the chip too. Make sure you are not too high.

And you may want to try switching video cards.

Also, you can try going into device manager to see if there are any conflicts. Maybe something is trying to share resources. Try this first.

Give these a shot.




[This message has been edited by ck42866 (edited 12-31-2000).]

psychmike
12-31-2000, 10:32 AM
My new Rage Pro card caused lockups until I d-loaded a newer driver. If you don't have that option, another thing to check would be to check device manager in Safe Mode - interestingly, in Safe Mode older drivers will show up as still installed -- so you might look under display device and see your old driver still in there, while it won't show up if you're not in Safe Mode! Weird. Delete the old driver.

daveleau
12-31-2000, 10:53 AM
Your fan may have come away from your CPU. Make sure it is totally bound tot he cpu with no daylight in between. It does sound like a heat problem all the way.
Dave

I also hate to say it, but Quantex is out of business now.

[This message has been edited by daveleau (edited 12-31-2000).]

randy48
12-31-2000, 11:00 AM
Here's a good site to find what mobo you have! http://www.motherboards.org/
Good Luck http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Trey
01-02-2001, 03:32 AM
The solution of a bad power supply makes sense, because I am also having trouble when turning my PC on. I usually just leaving it running all the time, but whenever I turn it off for a while, and go to turn it back on, it keeps getting about halfway through the boot process and then just goes dead. I have to start it up about 7 times before it actually makes it all the way through. Sometimes I have to use a boot disk. I'm at work right now, so I can't look at it from here. When I get home I'll post what motherboard I got if I can figure it out.

Thanx http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif