PC Lock Ups

[Britboy]

This problem has existed for several months on my Athlon 1600.

At random the PC will lock up cold, cannot use the mouse and keyboard ie no CTRL-ALT-DEL, All I can do is hold the power button to turn it off.

Hard drive light is always on solid when lockup has occurred. Lockups are random - anywhere from 10 minutes after bootup to 1 week or more. I have been present for a few of them and at the time of the lockup a 'clicking' sound can be heard. I have tried 3 hard drives and a new IDE cable. After dozens of lockups the HD's start to give bluescreens (I/O errors I believe) and then will not recognize there is an OS installed on bootup.

With each new HD install has been a fresh install of Windows XP. I run bittorrent (latest azureus client) on it almost 24/7. Could it be this constant writing to the HD? It has failed when bittorrent is inactive though.

I also read that a dodgy PSU could be at fault. I've got a 400W Enermax which should be more than adequate for this system though right?

Any ideas on what is causing the problem? It's driving me nuts!

Thanks guys!

 

[Fern]

Yeah, PSU could be it. Download Motherboard Monitor 5 and use the "sys log" feature to keep a record of the PSu's output on it's rails (12 volt etc). Go back after a lockup and see if they were going crazy/out-of-spec.

Just for the heck of it, I would run Memtest86 to check your ram too.

Good Luck with it.

Fern

 

[Britboy]

Thanks a bunch, I'll give them a try!