Computer Problems

[whotheheckami]

Help!

I am having problems with my Home PC and here are the symptoms:

1. About 2 weeks ago, the PC started reporting that one of its disks had developed a fault and would automatically drop into SCANDISK on startup. SCANDISK reported no problems and the PC ran fine.

2. 2 days ago the PC started crashing for no apparent reason and would not switch back on until the power cord had been removed and reinserted a couple of times and Power switched on and off. It crashes at seemingly random times from startup to after a couple of hours of normal operation.

3. Anti-virus checker went out of licence some 2 months ago (Roundtoit job)

4. Cooling fan is working fine

I suspect the power supply, but I am open to suggestions

Comments

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Sounds about right. Fingers crossed :)

Re:

[whotheheckami.livejournal.com]

I trhought so, becuuse it's not behaving like any virus I've heard of.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Are you running XP? Are you running software - in particular drivers - that is not XP specific?

This is exactly what happened to me when I tried to use Win98 drivers to run hardware on my XP laptop. When I uninstalled it all the laptop started to behave again. Then I tried similar with the main machine and had the same behaviour.

Re:

[whotheheckami.livejournal.com]

hmmm - no, I'm still on Win98

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

1. This is usually caused by the computer not being shut down properly (i.e. after a crash), and not usually anything to worry about (especially if no errors reported).

2. Try holding the power switch in for about 3 secs, which has the same effect but is less hassle than removing power cord.

3. I'd get that sorted, but it doesn't sound like your problem here. You can download AVG for free, and it's pretty good.

4. Are you sure? Most modern PCs have any combination of power supply fan, case fan, processor fan, northbridge fan, and graphics card fan, so it can be hard to hear if any one stops working. However the power supply fan is easy to check by just putting your hand over it to feel the airflow.

I think it could be any of the following:

1. Power supply: not enough power. If the power supply is unable to deliver enough power to the system, this could result in random crashes. This could be because you've added too many components to the system and need a bigger supply.

2. Power supply: unstable voltage. The power supply could have developed a fault (dodgy capacitor or something). It's generally cheaper to get a new PSU than try to get it fixed.

3. Motherboard: something on the motherboard could be fried. If the machine was hit by a lightening storm this could be the result. However, if this was the case it's much more likely it would consistently fail rather than intermittantly.

4. Faulty Windows Component: either a file could be corrupted, or a badly written driver could be causing the machine to fall over. Sometimes a well meaning program can "update" system files with ones written for a newer version of Windows, which might have unexpected side effects. If you can locate the fault you could replace the affected file, or uninstall the driver, but this can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Often the only option is to reinstall Windows.

5. Hardware/software combination. Every so often I come across a card that refuses to cooperate with a particular motherboard. Or two cards which will work perfectly on their own but fall over if you ask them to share the same system. Or a driver which refuses to work with a particular version of a system file. However these quirks will generally bring the computer down consistently, so probably not your problem here.

6. A virus. I don't think this is very likely, but important to eliminate.

Of these, I think 4 is the most likely.

Have you added any new hardware recently? Or updated any drivers? Or installed any new software? The first thing would be to undo any recent changes.

If that doesn't work, your cheapest next move is to reinstall Windows. The clever way to do this might be to install a bare-bones setup and gradually add drivers and software, testing for a few hours between, however this might not be pracitrcal. It would tell you if a specific driver or component is causing the problem.

The other option would be to borrow a power supply from a working system and testing if the problem goes away. If you have access to a spare PSU, try running your system off that for a few hours (and you could try running the other PC off your PSU and see if it starts playing up). Find a friend who won't get too upset if you fry his/her PC. :-)

If you post your full hardware specs someone might be able to offer more specific advice.

Hope this helps!

Re:

[whotheheckami.livejournal.com]

Thanks a whole heap - I'll start by re-reading this a couple of times and then set to work when I get a quiet evening.