Help me solve this

[hoppa]

I've had nothing but trouble with this build. Flash (player) and photoshop are always crashing on me. Lots of slowdown when I feel like there shouldn't be.

But just now, I downloaded the new Bioshock demo. It was running much slower than I feel it should (was forced to low graphics settings at 1680x1050 w/ 7600 GT, 4200+ X2, 2 gigs), and more importantly, after about 15 minutes of playing, my computer shut down cold. No warning, no nothing. When I opened up the case, everything was fine temperature wise except the CPU... when I touched the heatsink I nearly burned my finger. About 3-4 minutes later when I could finally boot up w/o auto-safety shutdown -- and another minute to get to BIOS because I forgot the first time -- the CPU was at 50 C.

FWIW, I ran prime95 the other day both in torture test and blend for over 3 hours each w/o any errors.

For whatever else its worth, again, this build has given me nothing but trouble. Just to get the whole thing running w/o crashing I went through 5 or 6 RMAs w/ newegg, sending back RAM, mobo, mobo again and getting a new model, VC twice, new PSU...



Any guesses as to what it could be? Should I just throw in the towel and get a new mobo/cpu?



I don't ever bluescreen. But software quits out a lot, especially intensive tasks in flash and photoshop. The whole is unbelievably frustrating. I just want a working machine. Also worth noting is that the software crashes get worse and worse. I can usually make it a good while before flash stuff starts crashing. But then it does it faster, and faster, and faster, to the point where I can't even go to any flash thing at all (or compile a flash movie) w/o a crash. Then I have to reboot.



Virus scan, spyware scan and hijack this turn up nothing.


Mobo is DFI Infinity NF Ultra II M2 (nForce 4). Memory is GSkill PC-4300 2x1GB (running at 246 mhz, apparently). 450W PS (Fortran AX450-PN). Video card drivers are latest.

 

[hoppa]

Sorry to bump this. I really need help with this, so if anyone has ANY ideas...

 

[Tarrant64]

What brand/model is your PSU. I doubt it's the issue though.



Have you loaded your OS yet? The fact that your system shuts down cold could be an overheating issue. However, AMD's normally never get that hot, so you should probably be checking to make sure you have good contact between your heatsink and CPU.

 

[hoppa]

Fortran AX450-PN

Loaded OS? Do you mean reinstall? No, I have not, but I don't think it's that. It really seems like a hardware thing to me. I get banding when viewing flash movies, too.

The overheating thing, though, I honestly feel like the fan may have not actually been running when I was playing that demo. When I turned the comp on after it shut down the fan started up at an enormously loud rate, and it certainly wasn't doing that before it crashed. It may be the temperature sensor on the mobo. I've had a somewhat related issue for as long as I've had the mobo, sometimes when I turn the computer on (after being off for a good while) after a few seconds the overheat alarm will sound and the comp will shut off even though it's clearly not overheated. The one time I was in the BIOS checking temp when this happened the temperature readout was jumping between 30C or whatever and 90+.

What I can't figure out though is how this would cause flash and photoshop crashes. Perhaps they are two completely unrelated issues.

 

[Tarrant64]

With the software crashes, that's why I was wondering if you reloaded the OS.

It does sound like you may need to replace the motherboard if it's freaking out over temps. Another step to take first though would be to make sure you have all the latest BIOS updates for that mobo. Outdated drivers may cause these problems.

With the banding or whatever during flash, could be the video card. You could try reseating all the hardware and see how things run. Uninstalling drivers and reinstalling is another step as well, making sure you have the latest ones.

(In the past with ATI, I've actually had to go backwards with drivers to ones that don't crash, and with my nvidia 7900 with Vista I can't use the latest drivers or else I lose display).

Also, for photoshop you may want to try deleting all your temp files as well. You can do this through dos or manually navigate to the folder.

Ex:

cd C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp
dir Photoshop
del Photoshop* /f /q