- Jan 22, 2014
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- 10,510
I have a Dell Dimension E521 that was purchased new in 2007. I bought it with 1GB of RAM and immediately upgraded it with four Crucial 1GB DDR2 667 (CT12864AA667). A year later, I replaced the hard drive so I could load Windows 7 Pro without risking any data.
The only other change we made was the addition of a Zotac PCI Express x16 video card about two years ago (to add DVI functionality).
About 2 months ago, the system began freezing (no mouse or keyboard actions recognized) and then shutting down or restarting randomly. There are no signs of the action in the Event Log.
I have performed Dell Diagnostics and all components passed. I used my Antec power supply tester and it passed the test. I swapped to another hard drive and loaded a fresh OS and the issue followed it. I disabled the onboard NIC and installed a PCI NIC with no improvement. I installed Core Temp 1.0 and the CPU cores are running between 29 and 35 degrees Celsius. Case and Power supply fans are running.
I see no obvious bulging capacitors or overheated visible components on the motherboard.
In short, I ran through a bunch of diagnostic tricks and have found nothing. Sometimes just talking it out reveals something, so does anyone have any additional suggestions?
Thanks,
Steve
The only other change we made was the addition of a Zotac PCI Express x16 video card about two years ago (to add DVI functionality).
About 2 months ago, the system began freezing (no mouse or keyboard actions recognized) and then shutting down or restarting randomly. There are no signs of the action in the Event Log.
I have performed Dell Diagnostics and all components passed. I used my Antec power supply tester and it passed the test. I swapped to another hard drive and loaded a fresh OS and the issue followed it. I disabled the onboard NIC and installed a PCI NIC with no improvement. I installed Core Temp 1.0 and the CPU cores are running between 29 and 35 degrees Celsius. Case and Power supply fans are running.
I see no obvious bulging capacitors or overheated visible components on the motherboard.
In short, I ran through a bunch of diagnostic tricks and have found nothing. Sometimes just talking it out reveals something, so does anyone have any additional suggestions?
Thanks,
Steve
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