Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

[i386]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

Is there any chance that it's the video card freezing up due to not enough power?

Yes, or lack of steady, clean power, or other hardware problem.

I just don't know what to do!

See post #5

 

[waterinthefuel]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

I called the tech support line for my video card. He said that card requires a 400 watt power supply, mine is 500. All he asked was what I changed and when I said I simply installed some drivers that I have since erased and I'm still having problems, he then asked for my email address for contact info to mail me a new card, no other questions asked. He doesn't even want my old one back!

 

[i386]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

I hope the new card works.

While you're waiting on your new card you may want read this article about power supplies:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power,745.html

It will explain how the wattage means almost nothing by itself and sheds some light on why Xcuseme wanted you to look at the rail voltages early on. I think you'll find the article enlightening.

 

[waterinthefuel]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

Ok, now it's really really bad. Now it's freezing about every 30 seconds, but it doesn't stay frozen. I'm watching voltages with speedfan and two are all over the place, but in talking to the power supply tech support they say software is not accurate, and to use hardware to monitor voltages. They will replace or fix it, but I'd be without a computer for weeks while they did that. That would be a last-ditch effort.

The two voltages that are all over the place (at least on speedfan) are:

VRAM
Vchipset

 

[Tail_Gunner]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

Have you run the everest program, that will identify what type of system you have. During the launch of the 6800 series of nvidia cards it was fairly well establsihed that a psu should generate at least 500 watts..and as I-386 state not all psu's are created equal.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/atx-psu9.html

Im quite sure you will find plenty of info there but to properly diagnose your power rail's you will need to run that everest progrm...it should give you a pretty good picture of you hardware...But i truly believe you have a software issue.

Opps almost forgot there is a power rail dedicated for the vid card...386 i have ummm misplaced the memeory.. do you know which one....it is important if you have a high end gaming card and most psu's will state how much power they deliver to each rail...

 

[i386]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

Opps almost forgot there is a power rail dedicated for the vid card...386 i have ummm misplaced the memeory.. do you know which one....it is important if you have a high end gaming card and most psu's will state how much power they deliver to each rail...

Well, I believe the video card uses the 5V rail. In your example, that power supply has one 5V rail. There's not one dedicated for the video card. So all your 5V devices have to share that rail. You may have a lot of cable strands and plugs, but they're all soldered to the same place. Other things that also use that rail are hard drives, cdrom drives, pci cards, agp cards, USB devices, etc... Yes, most of your goodies are going to be on the 5V rail. Most of the wattage of your whopper power supply is on the 12V rail. While that's good for braggin rights it not sufficient enough info to decide if you have what you need to run all your stuff.

On my Enermax 460W PSU I have 5Vx35A. So even though the total wattage is less than yours, mine has more power where it counts (on my system). Not knocking your power supplly btw.


I don't know the model of waterinthefuel's video card or power supply. But he could easily get an idea if it's sufficient for his system if he's willing to look a little deeper than the overall wattage.

WTF needs:
a good working video card
sufficient power to every component of his system
clean power that doesn't fluctuate

If any one of those 3 things are not in order the symptoms WTF described could occur.

I am inclined to think his video card or power supply is bad because it hangs during POST. Even a crappy power supply will usually let you boot. It's not until the power supply can't keep up with the demands that you normally see problems. Running a game for example, will require more power to the video card than just surfing the internet.


Now here's the part that really sucks. It's rare but it happens. His power supply could be bad. It could wreck every brand new known good video card he plugs it into. Just like a bad motherboard can fry every brand new processor you put in it (and vice-versa). It doesn't happen that often but it has happend to me before. With the power supply, I avoid getting into that situation by using my tester. With CPU's I guess I'm just screwed.


Some other stuff to play around with. Unplug stuff... hard drives, cdroms. Take out cards like network and sound. That'll give you more power on your 5V. Troubleshoot. Make the system consist of very few parts. If it doesn't fail, add parts back piece by piece.


If he's got an extra power supply laying around, he could give that a try and see if that changes the symptom. It should at least boot.

 

[Tail_Gunner]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

:redface: I thought is was the 12v rail....with at least 25-30 amps..oh well.. anyway WTF this program is more accurate than the other.....It will display your entire system software components and the dreaded and suspected power rail...speed fan is not running right on your mobo as indicated by the memory voltage..good luck..

http://majorgeeks.com/SiSoftware_Sandra_Lite_d4664.html



You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, ODBC Connections, USB2, and FireWire. You can save, print, fax, e-mail, post, upload, or insert into ADO/ODBC databases reports in text, HTML, XML, SMS/DMI, or RPT format. This version supports multiple sources of information gathering including: remote computers, PDAs, smart phones, ADO/ODBC databases, or saved system reports. All benchmarks are optimized for both SMP and SMT (Hyper-Threading), up to 32/64 CPUs depending on the platform.

 

[i386]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

:redface: I thought is was the 12v rail....with at least 25-30 amps..oh well.. anyway WTF this program is more accurate than the other.....It will display your entire system software components and the dreaded and suspected power rail...speed fan is not running right on your mobo as indicated by the memory voltage..good luck..

http://majorgeeks.com/SiSoftware_Sandra_Lite_d4664.html

Nah don't :redface:.

I built my system about 4 years ago. Most of my stuff is on the 5V and my fans are 12V. I don't normally geek out on hardware until it's time for me to build a new one. I'm not 100% sure that new stuff isn't doing something different.

 

[waterinthefuel]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

Either here or on another forum, someone suggested I try yanking out some RAM. Well, I did. In addition to putting the power LED plug back where it went and getting my front LED back and working again, I yanked out 3 of the 4 sticks, or 6 of the 8 gigs of RAM that I had in there, and the computer is working, as of right now, perfectly. No hang ups, no lag, and it loads the mack daddy game I play just as fast and smooth as before. The computer is working like it did when new. If this did fix the problem, what do I do? Call Corsair and tell them what happened and tell them to send me 3 new sticks because it's not job to try each stick individually to see if they work? Or is it because it was too much RAM for XP? Or was it too much RAM for my power supply?

Thanks for your continued help with this!! Ya'll are great!!

 

[i386]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

Either here or on another forum, someone suggested I try yanking out some RAM. Well, I did. In addition to putting the power LED plug back where it went and getting my front LED back and working again, I yanked out 3 of the 4 sticks, or 6 of the 8 gigs of RAM that I had in there, and the computer is working, as of right now, perfectly. No hang ups, no lag, and it loads the mack daddy game I play just as fast and smooth as before. The computer is working like it did when new. If this did fix the problem, what do I do? Call Corsair and tell them what happened and tell them to send me 3 new sticks because it's not job to try each stick individually to see if they work? Or is it because it was too much RAM for XP? Or was it too much RAM for my power supply?

Thanks for your continued help with this!! Ya'll are great!!

You made the symptom change. That's great. Now if you really want to feel solid about what you found, put that memory back in and see if the symptom returns. If so, then you can do some more swapping to find the bad stick. And I hate to harp on this, but Xcuseme's suggestion to run a ram checker would have caught this way back there.

 

[waterinthefuel]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

If that's what it is. I ran memtest86+ already and it found no errors. I may not have ran it long enough to check all 8 gigs though.

To me, this makes more questions than answers. I mean...is it XP destabilizing with more RAM than it can handle? Is my power supply unable to handle the demand with 8 gigs? Is my mobo unstable with 8 gigs? Is one of the sticks of RAM bad? I mean, to me, this doesn't help much other than stop the screen freezes but it didn't tell me WHY it happened. I have 6 gigs of very expensive and nice RAM sitting in an antistatic bag now and I'm not crazy about that.

I think it would be a real pain in the azz to have to switch out each of 4 sticks to check to see which one is bad. That's a lot of BS for a problem that is no fault of mine.

 

[i386]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

If that's what it is. I ran memtest86+ already and it found no errors. I may not have ran it long enough to check all 8 gigs though.

You definately need to run the entire test. I use mem86 too. Good stuff. BTW, it's not always bad ram. Sometimes reseating it does the trick.

To me, this makes more questions than answers. I mean...is it XP destabilizing with more RAM than it can handle? Is my power supply unable to handle the demand with 8 gigs? Is my mobo unstable with 8 gigs? Is one of the sticks of RAM bad? I mean, to me, this doesn't help much other than stop the screen freezes but it didn't tell me WHY it happened. I have 6 gigs of very expensive and nice RAM sitting in an antistatic bag now and I'm not crazy about that.

I know that RAM uses power. But it's not the first thing that comes to mind in a situation like this. As long as you can reproduce the problem during POST, forget XP, drivers, software, spyware, virus, and any of that crap as it hasn't come into play yet.

I think it would be a real pain in the azz to have to switch out each of 4 sticks to check to see which one is bad. That's a lot of BS for a problem that is no fault of mine.

That's called troubleshooting. It's a machine and doesn't care how you feel about it being broken. In some ways, it's a lot like troubleshooting an outboard. That is unless your PC is a Chrysler then all bets are off.

 

[waterinthefuel]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

Ok, lots of things to update here.

I took out 3 of the 4 sticks of RAM and the computer stabilized bigtime. However, I didn't try playing any games. Well yesterday I tried to play Arma and the computer, after a few minutes of heavy gaming, TURNED ITSELF OFF!!! I was like OMG! It wouldn't do anything when I turned it back on, it would get to the MSI splashscreen and turn itself off again. I called MSI and they told me to reset the CMOS with the button on the motherboard and it should be ok. I did that. It worked until I attempted to play a game. Then it would happen again. I did this over and over. I changed out the sticks. Each one was perfectly stable doing anything but gaming, and on each stick, the computer would shut down after a few minutes of heavy gaming.

The motherboard tech support said since it's happening only during gaming, it's my videocard. Others say that it's my RAM, but all 4 sticks are doing the same thing and I have the RAM set in the bios to the right latency and voltage numbers. I can't figure out what to do. Memtest reveals no RAM errors, even though I didn't let it run that long. I can't do anything with this 1100 dollar machine but browse the web.

One guy said my CPU takes 32amps at 12v and my power supply is only capable of 15v and 14v on 12v 1 and 12v 2. I don't know what to do!!!

Anyone have any other ideas?

Hey ya'll check this out. I decided to shoot for the stars and I google'd "computer suddenly turns off" and on this website http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060629000549AA2kcvm

someone says this: Buy a power supply which with a higher wattage.

Does this happen when you're using a lot of cpu or your playing games?

If the power spikes theres a circuit that automatically shuts off your computer.

That's exactly when it happens!!!!! When I'm playing games, that's the ONLY time it happens!!! What do you guys think? A power supply not strong enough?? It's a 500 watt, but that might not be enough.

 

[tx1961whaler]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

Wi ndows XP Pro will only recognize up to 4 gigs of memory
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx

 

[i386]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

This is my last post on the subject then I give up.

Most of your symptoms point to either your video card, or more likely in my opinion your power supply.

Watts don't mean squat. This has already been thoroughly covered in this post if you care to read the information provided.

When you play games, your CPU and Video card require more power.

Try and find a way to try another power supply.

 

[rwise]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

power supplies are cheap! and everywhere,,,,
This really sounds like the same puter as on another board,,,,,,

 

[waterinthefuel]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

This computer is on at least 3 boards right now. I'm not limiting myself to anything, as many brains working on this as possible.

Good news, at least for now. I found my CPU fan wasn't spinning, a wire had jammed it up. I freed the fan, rebooted the machine, and played games for a long time last night with no problems, and I've had no problems since last night.

Looks like overheating was the problem, but since speedfan can't be seen during gaming, I couldn't tell heat was the cause. I don't think it has anything to do with my screen freezes though. They haven't occurred since I fixed the CPU fan.

Whoever says AMD processors are crap and won't shut down to take care of themselves is full of it. I can tell you that they will shut down just fine, over and over again! LOL

Thanks for the help guys! Ya'll are great!

 

[Tail_Gunner]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

This computer is on at least 3 boards right now. I'm not limiting myself to anything, as many brains working on this as possible.

Good news, at least for now. I found my CPU fan wasn't spinning, a wire had jammed it up. I freed the fan, rebooted the machine, and played games for a long time last night with no problems, and I've had no problems since last night.

Looks like overheating was the problem, but since speedfan can't be seen during gaming, I couldn't tell heat was the cause. I don't think it has anything to do with my screen freezes though. They haven't occurred since I fixed the CPU fan.

Whoever says AMD processors are crap and won't shut down to take care of themselves is full of it. I can tell you that they will shut down just fine, over and over again! LOL

Thanks for the help guys! Ya'll are great!

WTF..........http://futuremark.yougamers.com/forum/


For all your questions problems and future needs...Very good site.

 

[dolluper]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

Geez never checked the fan oh my...time to install some more maybe

 

[waterinthefuel]

Re: Sudden computer freeze...and barely reboots!

No, I hadn't thought of checking the CPU fan because it was working fine before. That was NOT the original cause of the boot issues, that's something else weird I never figured out.

Now the problem I have is when the computer comes back from hibernate, it will periodically freeze for a few moments. It might happen when it comes off of screen saver, when browsing the web or when playing a game. Rebooting the computer and unchecking "load startup group items" seems to solve the problem. (I never tried it simply rebooting the computer, so I don't know if unchecking that has anything to do with it, or if the reboot is whats fixing it.) The CPU fan is fine, but for some reason, my CPU is very hot during heavy gaming. It will get up to 65 C and not even shut down, but nothing I can do brings the temps down. I even took off the side of the case and put a 16" oscillating fan (not oscillating) blowing on HI about 3 inches from the case and it brought down the CPU temps a whole degree C. I got so cold inside the house with all that wind blowing on me I had to shut it off, it didn't help and it was sure making me cold.

Rebooting the computer seems to solve the screen hesitations if they occur upon boot up from hibernate. Any particular reason this might happen? The screen freezes happen when the CPU is anywhere from 35 C on up, so those aren't temp related.