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Computer is dying

H

hawkeye_wx

Junior Member
My desktop computer is a very old athlon xp(barton slightly overclocked to 2 GHz) with 1 GB ram, geforce 3, a couple seagate hard drives, cdrw drive, antec 350W psu, case fan, and fan controller. I'm using windows xp.

Starting a few weeks ago, I think, I began getting random reboots(even when just browsing or doing nothing at all). At first they were few and far between. In the last week it has become an almost daily occurrence. Also in the last week I've been getting random freezes as well(again, even when idle). Both the reboots and freezes have continued to increase in frequency. This evening my computer became unusable due to constant freezes. The system is also sometimes getting stuck in reboot loops before even getting to the bios screen.

I reseated the ram and video card this morning, but it obviously did not help. The fans are all working fine. This evening there were some strange noises coming from the computer. It was almost like a very subtle peppering of beeps or clicks. Also, periodically it almost sounded like the cdrw drive was very briefly spinning up, but again it was very subtle. I tried to lift my computer off the floor so I could open it up and find out where the sound was coming from, but by the time I opened it the sound was gone and the computer was in a blue screen of death and then in a reboot loop. I then tried booting from the other hard drive, but that did not help, either.

Any ideas? I may have some spare ram I could swap in, but I'm out of spare video cards and power supplies.

I was not prepared to buy a new system this past holiday season so I missed the good deals. I was hoping my computer would last until next holiday season. For now I will have to use this laptop.
 
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My old XP system gets funky at times.

If you can't afford to upgrade you might try reseating the CPU. I see you already did the RAM and video card...

When my old XP/AMD 4000+ system gets funky I reseat everything (RAM, video, SATA, CPU) and it works fine for another 6 months to a year.

Couldn't hurt to try, costs you nothing except maybe a tube of heat sink compound.
 
If we can't get your system fixed I can send you some old parts. I'm married now and don't need 10x computer systems laying around.

What socket is your CPU?
 
Could be mobo caps, video card caps, PSU, maybe even HDD. Could be difficult to fully diagnose without donor parts. Price-wise, that system is junk. You might consider buying a refub DC7900 with a Core2Duo and 2GB of RAM off of Newegg for $100-150.
 
I finally just got my laptop back online. It has a bad video cable that causes the video to go in and out with only a light touch. It took me all day to get it in a stable working position.

Anyway, my old dying computer is indeed using an Abit NF7-S motherboard. I'll have to take a look at it to see if there are any obvious problems with capacitors, etc. If the motherboard is the problem, I do have a spare motherboard that should work with the athlon xp cpu. I think I would just have to run my 200 MHz ram at a lower speed, if I can do that. The mobo is currently inside an old duron system collecting dust in the basement. All my old computer parts have saved me a lot of trouble on numerous occasions. One issue I have is I don't have any thermal grease newer than about 12 years old. I'm guessing it's not good anymore.

My reason for not upgrading yet is not about the cost. I just have a tough time pulling the trigger on new purchases if I'm not exactly sure what I want. I tend to use things until they stop working. I've wanted a better computer for years, but since I mostly just use it for a browsing machine now I've been able to live with the slow, low-resource computer. Last November was when I should have upgraded, but I had been out of the loop and didn't have a list of parts ready to buy when the deals were there. Also, at this point windows 7 is getting old and I don't want windows 8, so I'm kinda in OS no-man's land. I was hoping my old system might last until windows 9.
 
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hawkeye_wx said:
My reason for not upgrading yet is not about the cost. I just have a tough time pulling the trigger on new purchases if I'm not exactly sure what I want. I tend to use things until they stop working. I've wanted a better computer for years, but since I mostly just use it for a browsing machine now I've been able to live with the slow, low-resource computer. Last November was when I should have upgraded, but I had been out of the loop and didn't have a list of parts ready to buy when the deals were there. Also, at this point windows 7 is getting old and I don't want windows 8, so I'm kinda in OS no-man's land. I was hoping my old system might last until windows 9.
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I used to run machines until they died. I was blissfully happy with my systems, and largely ignorant of the performance improvements coming down the pipeline from both Intel and AMD.

You managed to completely miss out on one of the biggest performance leaps to come out in a long time - the Core2Duo and especially the Core2Quad. Also very overclockable, if you're into that sort of thing.

You're almost going to miss the next big performance improvements, SSDs.

Get an AMD A10 APU rig with SATA6G, USB3.0, and a decent SSD, and 8GB of RAM, and don't look back.

Edit: Windows 7 64-bit is still a safe choice for an OS, it will be supported until 2020.
 
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My first guess when I read "AthlonXP" was also "Abit NFS-7"...

Then I read the rest of the thread and it turns out I was right. It's definitely the friggin' motherboard. Those delicate sounds you mention? yeah, those are capacitors slowly dying. Junk that motherboard, it's done. Either move the CPU to a new board, and squeeze some more life out of it, OR just cut your losses and cannibalize the parts for a new build.
 
10 years is quite good for electrolytic capacitors. That being said, the power consumption and lost productivity from that old machine probably would cost you a budget box. Idle power under 50, even 30 watts is the norm these days for many systems and CPU processing power has increases quite a bit. SSDs eliminate most of the lag that comes from navigating the OS.

I would not wait for Windows 9. Who knows what else is made incompatible as it is newer than 8. 7 is what you want if you want old-school. Although, 8.1 can be "De-Metro"-ed via an option to boot into the desktop in the Start Menu customization menu and an program such as Start8 or Classic Shell.
 
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AnitaPeterson said:
My first guess when I read "AthlonXP" was also "Abit NFS-7"...

Then I read the rest of the thread and it turns out I was right. It's definitely the friggin' motherboard. Those delicate sounds you mention? yeah, those are capacitors slowly dying. Junk that motherboard, it's done. Either move the CPU to a new board, and squeeze some more life out of it, OR just cut your losses and cannibalize the parts for a new build.
Click to expand...

I think it is better for the environment if he can find a scrapper to dispose of them or find some use for such an old board. Or, perhaps he can find some legacy computer fanatic is will to do the required repairs with a soldering iron or simply wants the board for a personal "museum". Even if the solder doesn't use lead, mobos still have chemical that are still toxic.
 
Agreed, that's what I'd do as well. Hell, I'm all for repairing and reusing, but there are also moments when it's just time to let go and recycle altogether.
 
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