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Okay, last night after PF my comp went BSD and said it had a memory dump in progress. Never seen anything like that before so I figured it might be because I was playing f4 then PF, too much on the memory or something. No idea, shrug. Today, I'm playing F4 with Kodiak and the computer shuts off all by itself and emits a high pitched squelching noise. Not sure if it is hardward or software, I suspect hardware. Perhaps HD? Good thing Steel sent that replacement if so.

I go to cleanup my disk and the computer failure occurs again!! now I'm pissed and nervous. So I run chkdsk and no bad sectors, nothing wrong? Ok...now I'm running defrag and I intend to run cleanup again afterwards. I've already run two adware progs and got rid of the adware. Any other ideas? Is my HD failing? I'm also gonna update my vid drivers. As most of you know my sound drivers are already updated. Any ideas would be helpful. thanks.

to me, that sounds like a hardware component that is over-heating. Could be video hardware or CPU ... is it getting warm in your computer room?

Yes, another very simple idea for cooling is placing your computer on the floor - if you can bear it, remove the side cover (temp measure), and also if possible next to a window area, even so much as behind the curtain area. Why? Well you put a thermometer in a position as suggested and look at the temp differences. In my house, between head height and floor is a difference of 5-6 degrees celcius, placed behind the curtain on the floor will benefit me by another 5 degrees or so. Just an idea or two to help.

might also be sound... i recall you reinstalled your sound drivers the other day... have you done windows update recently?

Ok so I uninstall OFP and defrag. Everything is good. I double check bios to make sure the onboard sound card is disabled, and it is. I try cleanup disk, but the computer Turns off and emits that high pitched whine. I re-install winxp on top of itself and try again. Again cleanup SHUTS MY COMPUTER OFF, and emits a high pitched whine until I hit the power button. The computer remains off with the green light on. I'm now preparing to format my HD and reinstall everything. Suggestions before I take this drastic measure?

Grifter, try this. Shut down the computer and remove the sound card. Boot up the computer and try everything that you described above and see if the problem persists. If it does, then you know it's not the sound card.

If the problem persists, (with the sound card still removed) try switching out the video card (If you have an old one) and run the same tests.

If you have (2) RAM sticks installed, remove one, repeat your above steps. If the problem is still there, switch the RAM sticks (Replace the one you removed with the one you left in there). This is a sort of a process of elimination troubleshooting. If none of the above tests work, it could be your CPU or video card overheating and shutting down. Troubleshooting can be a real pain in the ass, but with a little know how and troubleshooting you can usually nail down the problem.

It really sounds to me like some kind of hardware failure, the hard part is figuring out what piece of hardware.

Good luck bro.

Last night I decided to go the distance and stayed up to work on this problem. At this point, I'm not entirely clear what I did. shrug. But, my comp sucessfully finished a defrag, but please note that 8% remains fragmented for some reason. shrug. Then I ran clean disk and I have done so sucessfully six or seven times now. The disk is cleaned up as it can be. That said, I reinstalled OFP but was getting some sound distortions in the background, pretty heavy too. So I uninstalled and reinstalled the sound drivers once more. They seem to be operating fine now; ran some ofp missions in a multiplayer setting (set up a server and played on it by myself with AI) and it would appear to be good. So it would seem to be one of the following:

1. Hardware issue which is still unknown and unresolved.
2. Comp is running too hot? currently: 55 Celsius. THis okay?
3. sound drivers?
4. corrupted xp file, which was most likely replaced when I reinstalled xp over itself.

So now the computer seems to be running ok, but I won't know for sure until I get online with you guys and see how the comp behaves. I ran chkdsk yesterday mind you, and there were no corrupt files or bad sectors. Softball's idea is a good one, but time consuming. So before I start tearing the comp apart, any other ideas now that the comp is "apparently" working? Gawd. shoot me.

Is that the case temp or CPU temp? I'm going to assume it's the CPU temp. If so -- 55C seems pretty hot to me. I run an AMD proc and they're supposed to run much hotter than intel and mine is at 50C. So, if you're running an intel chip, 55 seems on the warm side.

No I'm running a AMD 3200+ Barton chip. Yep, that's the CPU temp. Is that okay?

looks like max temp is 85C, but seems like most are running stable in the upper 40s. I would say 55C is on the high side ... not fatal, but my instinct is that it could be contributing to instability.

Anecdotal story: I was using a 2800+ (Palomino) a couple years ago. Had tons of trouble keeping it cool. It was running in the 60s. I kept having what I thought was a sound card issue. GR would crash with funny sounds and then BSD. I moved the whole rig into a nicer case with better airflow/cooling (full tower from a mid-tower) and the temp dropped below 50 (from the 60s) and the "sound card crash" disappeared. I am now a believer in making sure the system is in the right environment (not necessarily water cooling or anything exotic, just don't take the temp/airflow for granted.) In the old days of 1GHz class computers, they ran so cool, you didn't have to worry about any of this. But, with modern AMD procs, you really have to pay attention.

you are well within max tcase spec for the CPU. that is o.k., but you could do with a better cooler... i assume that is also at idle, because you are checking the cpu temp when? if that is at idle, then it is too hot and when running something you are probably overheating...

-check that the heat sink is mounted properly
-check that you have thermal compound between the cpu and heat sink
-check that your cpu fan does not crap out when it gets too hot (leave the case open and look at it while you hammer the cpu
-do you have a fan that exhausts hot air out of the case (other than the power supply fan)?

Gee Gator, your anecdote sounds very very familar. I'm willing to bet that is my problem. I've been running this rig for over a 10 months now with no troubles, strange that I would have trouble now out of the blue. Could very well be heat related. I built this comp in August, but I thought it had handled the hot weather well.


Steel, I assume I need to put another fan in. I do have an extra aside from the power source, but apprarently it is not enough. I'm having a hard time believing it's my sound or video card since they never gave me any trouble before in my older comp. Just to be sure I'm reinstalling my vid drivers to make sure that's not the issue. I'm then going to hammer my comp and see what happens. If it crashes again, I'll know I need to take the cover off until I buy another fan. As for heatsinks and such, yes all that was properly applied when we built the pc, but I'll have to check and make sure that none of it has gone bad in the last few weeks somehow? hmm.


EDIT:

Another point is my computer did not just shut off or lock up while playing games that are sound and graphic intensive, but also quite a few times while running cleandisk. I think this prog is labor intensive? causing a heat issue? Kind of suggests that there may be nothing wrong with my vid or sound card. My HD was free of corrupt files/bad sectors according to chkdsk. shrug.

Not sure why i didn't mention this earlier ... the other common thing is power supply. How many watts? You will sometimes get crashes when one is degrading. Say when your hard disks, video cards (and fans), cpu and it's fan, etc, etc are all running. when you aren't getting enough power, the pc can crash.

I suppose that's possible as well. I think my power supply is a little under powered, but has never caused a problem before. I suppose it would not hurt to upgrade it if this problem continues.

H m mm m m m m . . . .and I know I posted a nice little humourous post here a few hours ago. Am sure I hit the submit button.

Pulled my case cover back and ran PF in high settings with lots and lots of ai planes. No crashes or stutters for nearly ten games straight. I think that indicates a heat problem then? comp reads 52 c in idle now.

Grifter going back to the Power supply unit, what make and wattage is it? and how long have you had it?

I ask only because if it is under powered and of a cheapish make then the strain of running your new system might be whats causing the problem it might have been able to handle it 10 months ago but if it's been straining for that long i tmight be a sign that it's on it's way out and a system freeze or more often than not a system shut down is a very common result if your PSU is about to kick the bucket.

Also have you added any more hardware to your system recently that might have increased the stress on it?

A good replacement would be a Tagan 480 (same as the one i bought recently) rock solid very powerful and cheaper than most Enermax or similiar brands comes very highly recomended by all web site that have tested it and it has all the latest conections for now and the future and you will never be short of a molex connector with it.

http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6835888602

I think this will fit my computer. requires 4 pin. I have one attaced to zip drive, which I can live without. Two black cable, two red in the back of a plastic coupling. This a 4 pin? Dimension is not too big? 111.2 x 90.4 x 21.6 mm. I have a standard case I think.

Unless your PC doesn't have an available full-height PCI slot (doubtful), that will work in your PC. You won't need to lose any drives because that's a pass-through connector. You plug one end into the PSU cable and the other end into the back of the drive. The fan uses little power.

Well, I'm not sure I follow you, but I'm sure it comes with directions. shrug.