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Any computer techs wanna help?



My PC started f'in up on me last night. Bad.

Basically, the thing locks up after anywhere from 10-30 seconds. I thought it might have been thermal issues, but I was able to get into my ASUS's hardware monitor and it showed good temps (unless the processor already got cooked). Then the BIOS froze. Everything is freezing, its not limited to being in Windows. The last thing I saw it do in Windows was this strange flickering of the all the desktop icons.

Now when I can get it to boot it brings up a Hardware Profile selection, all it shows is "Profile 1" - I select that (if it hasn't locked up by then) and it seems it boot into Windows.

I've been teching for about 10 years and this is a new one to me. Not sure why, but my gut is saying the processor got hot and cooked or something (AMD 64). If it was a hard drive issue it would be different symptoms. A vid card problem shouldnt freeze the whole PC. A motherboard issue could. I am doubting controller.

I guess its time to start pulling cards and what not. Fuck. Any ideas, or anyone seen similar?

Bad power supply and bad memory are usually the causes of strange and unusual errors in my experience. Bad memory can really do some funky things.

If you have more than one stick of memory in your PC I would start there since its easy and free. Just pull a stick out at a time and try them in different combos to see if you get better results.

After that try a different power supply.

You're right; most of the time, a failing or burned out vid card shows graphic tearing, but doesn't necessarily lock up. But not always, and in your case, with you reporting that at one point your image on screen is acting up, its worth swithching it out.

If I were to have the problem, I'd try stuff out in the following order:

Memory
Vid card
PSU
hard drive (could be a faulty controller)
motherboard/cpu

You shouldn't be able to fry an A64, unlike the Athlon XP, since it has a thermal protection circuit. However it will shut itself down if things get too hot. Open up the case and make sure the fan is still spinning and the heat sink isn't loose for some reason.

Ahh, thats good...I wasn't sure if they did or not.

I can't believe I didn't even consider memory. Most weird issues I've had were caused by it. Most the time though, the memory problems I have had have been straight out of the box problems. DOA memory, not usually memory going bad on me. I'll mess with it, reseat some things, pull my old SB card, and maybe look at getting a new PSU before I cook down the whole thing. Its an older Antec, but the sucker has been damn good to me.

Thats how I would look at it. A bad harddrive shouldnt be freezing you at BIOS. I would definetly say  RAM, or possibly Mobo. Have you opened your case and fired it up and see if all the fans are running. If one isnt, then you might know where to start looking for a burnt out piece of hardware.

Whats the number one enemy of a PC?


Heat. I cleaned out the entire box and found the heatsink and fan for the processor to be completely clogged. So basically, the processor repeatedly was shutting itself down, so I was kinda right :)

Glad you got it fixed.

My Razor Diamondback has died on me.  It cuts out on power every few mins.

I plugged in a ghetto ball mouse I had laying around.  I weep.

My condolences. Nothing more ghetto than a ball mouse :)