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PC crashes/freezes after being on for a few minutes

T

talyn00

Golden Member
My problem currently is my pc freezes after 8-10 minutes after me turning it on. I am able to get into Windows, but after a few minutes of use, the entire machine freezes and I get some abnormalities appear on the screen. (sometimes its random characters appearing). I tried running a chkdsk upon my next bootup and it freezes there too, usually at some random percentage, and random characters appear on my screen in random locations, my hard drive activity light also stops blinking at this point. All of this started occuring yesterday. Could this entire thing be caused by my video card overheating? or is it a hard drive issue? or something else? and how to fix it

Update: its definitely the fan on my radeon that's causing this

My system info:
Dell Poweredge 400sc 2.8GHz
512 MB PC3200 RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Hitachi Deskstart 40GB HD
Seagate 200GB HD
NEC 3540A DVD burner
 
It definitely sounds like a video card burning up. Pop off the side of the case and check your video card fan. The 9800 Pro's are notorious for having flaky fans.
If that fan is running fine check your other fans also, make sure they are all spinning.
Is this a new system build? Has it been running fine up until now?
 
This is not a new system build, its been running fine for nearly a year, until yesterday. The fan on the 9800 seems to be spinning pretty slowly, even though its fairly clean of dust. The heatsink on this thing gets super hot after only a few minutes of running. Would overheating cause your system to fully freeze? cause i just thought I'd see artifacts on my screen or some other graphics distortions before my entire system dies, but it seems to occur at nearly the same time.
 
Well I gave it some more thought and even if your fan on the card is acting wonky you shouldn't be stressing it running CHKDSK at reboot.
So now I really wonder about the CPU. Are you running any utils to monitor your CPU temps? If not DL a copy of Motherboard Monitor and see what your idle temp is.

And you say 8 to 10 minutes... can you boot right up and drop into a large game (BF2, HL2, etc) and make it lock up before 8 to 10 minutes?
 
i'll try downloading MBM when i get home. and i'll also see if i can make it lock up sooner by starting up HL2 just to make sure its the vid card causing this.
 
hrm after installing MBM, i find my temps are 42 C for CPU, i'm not exactly sure if that's a normal number for idle usage. Not exactly sure if my radeon 9800 has temp sensors, and how to access them. I also found that my BIOS battery is running low, could this cause fans/temp sensors to act funky? I am 99% sure this is my video card overheating, as after adjusting to lowest resolution, it takes longer for my comp to freeze and i see artifacts a few minutes before my computer completely freezes (instead of the same time).
 
42C for cpu is a good temp. Anything below 50C is definitely nothing to worry about and a few degress above that is ok as well.
 
so would my low bios battery affect temp sensors and/or fans? How can i cool my video card so it doesnt crash my entire pc? its still using the stock heatsink and fan, and its lasted me a year
 
The fan on my radeon must be dying, it spins extremely slow, and in some instances it doesnt even start rotating until i slightly nudge it. Does anyone know how to fix a fan? or a good place for replacement fans?
 
yeah, those 9800 Pro fans die pretty often. You could pickup a stock fan in the BST forum here or on ebay.
I would reccommend getting a aftermarket one from xoxide though. should run you about $15 - $20.
But you better either not run the system or use a different graphics card till you get this sorted out. It is easy to burn up the core on your card. It may already be a bit damaged or have had it's life shortened by a bit.
 
Yea i noticed a slightly odd smell coming from it, so chances are it might already be damaged. Any chance I can get ATI to replace this, since I did buy it from them about a year ago.
 
Originally posted by: talyn00
Yea i noticed a slightly odd smell coming from it, so chances are it might already be damaged. Any chance I can get ATI to replace this, since I did buy it from them about a year ago.
Click to expand...

Heck yeah, if it is under warranty let them replace it 🙂
As long as you didn't overclock it or anything they should honor the warranty.
 
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