Things looking grim for my PC.....

A554SS1N

Senior member
May 17, 2005
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This morning when i booted up i noticed the system time hadn't been updated (or barely) since switching off last night. thinking nothing of it, I've been playing Tomb Raider Legend today and it's been goiing alright for a while, but then the system locks up, so I press restart - nout happens, and the fans spin widly with the hard disk like glowing full on, pressing reset doesn't help nor does the power button, so I use the switch on the PSU to turn off, and then turn back on again.

Restart, all is well and dandy again - try a game like UT2004, things looking fine, temps all look fine really, if just a little warmer due to it being quite warm in my room today. Then while at the desktop, messing about with the MSI temperature monitor, I think I double clicked it too fast and things locked a little - mouse was still fine but when I tried to open task manager to close the apps I probably just made things worse. Anyway, I press reset, and same thing as before happen - fans full on, hard disk light full on (usually it gives a very slow flicker) and I have to turn off at the back of the PSU again. This time though nothing works, it keeps doing the same thing so I turn it off, take the plug out and open up the case, slight dust but nothing to bad, anyway, I turned the rear fan up one notch (Antec Tri Cool) and put it all back together and started up and it worked again.

My PC Spec is:

AMD Athlon64 3800+ AM2
2GB DDR2 667 MHz RAM
160GB Maxtor IDE
Leadtek GeForce 7900GS
MSI K9N Neo-F 550 MCP
Onboard Realtek ALC883
Antec 380watt

Things I did today include formatting a partition on my drive that had previously unallocated space.... I doubt that is the problem though as It doesn't explain the problem when resetting.

Anyone have any ideas?

I'm guessing it could be anything right now, but I'm slightly suspecting the PSU.... with motherboard a close second, although I can't rule out hard drive or graphics card for causing issues, but it does seem like a PSU/mobo prob to me. I haven't really got anything I can start swapping for testing.

I was hoping it was just down it being a hot day, and with the rear fan turned up a bit more, maybe less hot air will be hovering near the PSU - CPU was only hitting 43C ish though. :/ Voltages reported by the MSI CoreCenter app seemed what they usually are, nothing different in that regards. The system losing the time though (i.e. not moving forward, clock staying at value it was when turned off) seems a bit odd too though, which made me think of the motherboard

However, It's just crashed again at the desktop for no reason - the bar at the top went greyed out, then the mouse pointer still moved, but nothing worked, then it started a long beep - I reset and it's back in window again :/

Then it crashed within two minutes of loading windows, at which point I turned it off and left it off.

When I think about it, i did get a crash 3 days ago while playing Tomb raider legend that resulted in an auto-restart, so maybe the signs were starting to show then.
 

goatjc

Senior member
Oct 25, 2006
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My guess would be the same as yours, mobo or PSU, although, I'm leaning towards MB. I just dealt w/ a computer today that was acting all sorts of crazy (random crashing, not starting, not wanting to power off until I turned PSU off, fan going apesh!t crazy etc) and my initial response was the power supply, then I opened up the case, and about 3 capacitors had blown their top.

I'll also note I ran other diag's on it first, the usual memtest, chkdsk etc.
 

Bill Brasky

Diamond Member
May 18, 2006
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That definitely sounds like a bad psu, mobo, or ram. Really, you just need to start swapping parts, starting with the psu. If you don't have one handy, try to run memtest while you get one.

Are you overclocking or have you modified the voltages on any of your parts?
 

A554SS1N

Senior member
May 17, 2005
804
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thanks for the reply, just been running memtest - I had given the PC a couple of hours of off time to calm down. Memtest seems fine - I stopped at 161% as it seems to be pretty much not memory.

The system clock is out 2 hours though. Could a shorting motherboard battery cause issues after the crash? I.e require the PSU switch to be reset, or is it more likely just a result of a fault with the motherboard in general. Seems weird why the time suddenly doesn't get kept anymore after the PC is off.
 

A554SS1N

Senior member
May 17, 2005
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Just noticed the new post - I haven't overclocked anything, in fact I have my card underclocked slightly (doing it as a test to lower power load) and my memory is running only 600mhz due to the silly AM2 divider on my 3800+ (667Mhz rated memory).

I'll add that while things would stop responding at first, the mouse cursor still moved ok (until it completely went).

Currently been on for around an hour (most of that time with memtest) and it's still ok.
 

grohl

Platinum Member
Jun 27, 2004
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I have had so many more PSU failures than MB failures I always suspect the PSU first. That would be my guess.