How to tell if your CPU is in good condition

[toronado97]

This may seem like a silly question, but is there any way to make sure your CPU is in good working condition? Cuz i'm having some odd PC problems, have been for quite a while. Had it overclocked for about a year and took it off to see if it fixed them, and it hasn't. I've done multiple reformats etc and they persist. I'm having slow disk access times, basically anything to do with storage. Emptying recycle bin takes quite a while, I dont get the process bar either, it's like it freezes, thinks for 30 seconds, and then starts. Computer doesn't lock up, just that particular task. Opening folders takes ages sometimes, and all icons will be ?'s or whatever until the load in. Multitasking such as loading WoW and opening Firefox at the same time takes eons. WoW itself is performing at a very low FPS, rarely breaks 30 with the setup in my sig which shouldn't be happening. Just lots of little niggly things. I have seen several people with the same mobo I have complain of similar problems after reformats, and I've gone through several HD's and the problems don't go away. I would like to nail it down to one thing, but I can't seem to and money is tight, so I was going to replace mobo/ram/hd and see where that got me. Unfortunately that still doesn't eliminate the CPU, is there any way of doing so?

 

[AstroManLuca]

Run prime95 and see how long it takes to encounter an error. If you get an error, then maybe it is the CPU.

Otherwise, the only way to be sure of the problem's source is to eliminate components one at a time.

Sometimes it's something unexpected like the power supply causing problems. That might be a good place to try - there are a ton of second-rate power supplies out there but getting a decent replacement isn't too expensive. And a bad PSU can cause all sorts of random problems if components aren't getting enough power.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Sounds like your hard drive is failing. That's what happened to me on my old IBM 30 gig

 

[toronado97]

Well the HD is a practically brand new drive, barely a year old. Same with the PSU. Using a 550 watt Ultra X-Finity, not a Corsair to be sure but it's also not a rinky dink case PSU. The problem with running Prime95 is that it's stressing the entire system, so encountering an error can't only be attributed to the CPU correct?

 

[yh125d]

Originally posted by: toronado97
Well the HD is a practically brand new drive, barely a year old. Same with the PSU. Using a 550 watt Ultra X-Finity, not a Corsair to be sure but it's also not a rinky dink case PSU. The problem with running Prime95 is that it's stressing the entire system, so encountering an error can't only be attributed to the CPU correct?

Run the small FFT test, this will be almost entirely CPU stress

 

[Fayd]

my first check is almost entirely memtest, unless i can pinpoint something else right off.

CPU's dont generally fail like that.

 

[techmanc]

Sounds to me like a hardware compatibility problem check all you connections esp hard your drives for power and drive cables. Make sure your shut of all your non essential items in BIOS like sound and ports not being used. Have you added more hardware to system recently? If so what was it?

 

[toronado97]

All of my problems happened a few reformats ago actually, and led me to taking my then system drive out completely because it had a crapton of bad sectors and was causing Windows install to bluescreen. I've added no hardware, i've not even had the box open except to blow out dust. All my connections are fine, and the bios has been set to factory defaults. This system is exactly as it was when I built it 2 years ago minus the GPU which was put in after these problems started occurring. I would say the most likely culprit is the HD as well. Also my floppy drive no longer works. It's like the file system bits of the motherboard are screwed up or something.

 

[techmanc]

So the hard drive that in your system now I having a hard time telling how old it is and whether its still the one with the bad sectors? Have you checked the event viewer to see if any problems showing there?

 

[toronado97]

I used to have a 60 GB maxtor as the system drive. It went kaput. The current WD is approximately a year old, and as far as I know is fine.

Edit: Event viewer is showing 4 errors relating to disk, all happening on the same day, 9 seconds apart from each other. 1/25/09, regarding a paging operation. Nothing else regarding disk, some TCPIP stuff, and W32Time.

 

[dust]

You could check the HD just in case. Google and dl HD Tune and run the tests. Or if you have another drive, try replacing it and see if the issue remains.

 

[toronado97]

http://i41.tinypic.com/sbmz5z.jpg

That's an HD Tune.

 

[dust]

What abt the Health/Error scan?

 

[Tweakin]

I'd also try the WD Lifeguard tool. You can select your drive from here and then download the correct utility.

I had a 320aaks that started to act really strange...similuar to yours. Ran the utility and found some issues, sent the issues to WD and they rma'd the drive for bad firmware...

 

[techmanc]

I would get Hiren's BootCD. It has most hard drive utilities and can be run from CD and check your hard drive for problems.

Link to Hiren's BootCD

http://www.hiren.info/

 

[toronado97]

The error scan showed 0.0% damaged blocks. Seems fine.

 

[techmanc]

I still think your hardware conflict where IRQ or memory resources are bumping heads. Are you using ide devices?

 

[toronado97]

The WD is an IDE, yes.

 

[techmanc]

So i am assuming its your only ide device and your optical is using sata then you should make sure its set to master or try cs and even if samsung drive is optical it should be slave or try cs. Also when you said you reset your BIOS to default settings it leave usually leaves your ports on like parallel and com and if your not using onboard sound you should disable these device and any other devices you see that are not being used like firewire or extra ethernet. Once that been done just power your machine off for 10 sec or so to clear any problems.

 

[toronado97]

Both drives are IDE, the DVD burner is set to slave, the WD is set to master, so I don't see that being an issue. I use the onboard audio so that's enabled. Everything else is set up correctly in the BIOS.

 

[techmanc]

Are your video audio and and chipset drivers updated to newest versions. Are there any BIOS updates that may help available?

 

[toronado97]

Can't flash the bios because the floppy won't work, and I can't get it to flash off of a USB drive, even after creating a boot capable flash drive and making sure I did it step by step correctly. Video drivers are always updated, but legacy drivers don't help, and chipset driver is the latest available version from Gigabyte.

 

[techmanc]

Can you run just you system drive and remove cable to other devices and see if problem persists?

 

[toronado97]

Running just the HD atm, floppy and DVD are disconnected. Computer is acting the same as it always does.

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

The CPU would be on the bottom of my list of suspicions. I suppose you could have odd performance issues if one of the two cores was faulty, but I've never personally experienced a CPU problem where the CPU isn't simply toast. It usually either works or it doesn't. I would suspect RAM, HDD, mobo, PSU, in that order.

1. You mentioned a paging error in the event viewer -- this is an operation between memory and disk. It doesn't rule out other components, but I would start here. Run memtest86+ for several hours to see if you get any errors.
2. Since you already ran HD Tune and did a check for bad sectors, maybe your HDD is ok. I'd still run chkdsk to be sure, and also any diagnostic utility from the manufacturer.
3. Visually inspect your mobo and look for any burst or bulging capacitors, or any other physical damage. Find a way to update to the latest BIOS. I'm pretty sure you can make a bootable CD for this, since you don't have a working floppy or flash drive.
4. If you have a digital multimeter or PSU tester, make sure you're getting good output from your PSU. You could also use CPU-Z and/or SpeedFan to check what voltages are being reported. Try another PSU if you have one.