HELP! Computer is randomly freezing. Even in safe mode, or booted to USB Flash drive, linux
Computer was built in November of 2011, except the PSU was purchased in June 2007.
It used to hard free maybe once a month,if that. Always assumed it was windows but wasn't frequent enough to bother with. Recently it became once every couple days, and now its less than an hour uptime.
What I've done to try to find the problem:
1st tried the RAM sticks. Ive got 2x4gb so I tried each stick individually in each of the 4 slots. Didn't seem to make a difference.
When I was doing the RAM sticks, I noticed half my harddrives were no longer recognized. I've got a 256 samsung SSD with Win 7, a 1TB samsung for storing files, and 2 250gb drives I used to have RAID0 prior to the SSD but now no longer use. So I unplugged all the case fans and lights and the 2 250gb drives.
The OS drive seemed to always recognize but the 1TB storage drive was hit or miss. It would sound like it was trying to spin up and fail, try again, and fail, etc. for a dozen attempts. Also my DVD drive wouldn't always work. This started me thinking it was a PSU problem.
But I wanted to test out that it was not a HDD problem 1st. So I booted to Fedora on a USB Flash drive, and the freezing behavior was unchanged.
Last night I went and bought a new PSU, connected it up and my HD and DVD drive operation problems went completely away. The random freezing has slowed down but its still occurring multiple times a day.
I don't know if it means anything, but completely discharging the computer (Unplugging PSU/flipping switch on PSU and waiting a little while) seems to drasticly increase the uptime between freezes.
Three things I have not switched out are Video card, Motherboard, and CPU. I think its the motherboard having a bad capacitor/voltage regulator somewhere. I visually inspected the motherboard and didn't see any obvious blowouts or anything.
Specs:
AMD FX-6100
GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3
2x4GB Grill
PowerColor Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Samsung SSD 830 256gb (Windows 7 64bit Pro)
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s (File storage)
TOPOWER X3 Series ZU-550W 550W ATX12V Version 2.0
CyberPower CP1000AVRLCD 1000VA 600 Watt UPS
Computer was built in November of 2011, except the PSU was purchased in June 2007.
It used to hard free maybe once a month,if that. Always assumed it was windows but wasn't frequent enough to bother with. Recently it became once every couple days, and now its less than an hour uptime.
What I've done to try to find the problem:
1st tried the RAM sticks. Ive got 2x4gb so I tried each stick individually in each of the 4 slots. Didn't seem to make a difference.
When I was doing the RAM sticks, I noticed half my harddrives were no longer recognized. I've got a 256 samsung SSD with Win 7, a 1TB samsung for storing files, and 2 250gb drives I used to have RAID0 prior to the SSD but now no longer use. So I unplugged all the case fans and lights and the 2 250gb drives.
The OS drive seemed to always recognize but the 1TB storage drive was hit or miss. It would sound like it was trying to spin up and fail, try again, and fail, etc. for a dozen attempts. Also my DVD drive wouldn't always work. This started me thinking it was a PSU problem.
But I wanted to test out that it was not a HDD problem 1st. So I booted to Fedora on a USB Flash drive, and the freezing behavior was unchanged.
Last night I went and bought a new PSU, connected it up and my HD and DVD drive operation problems went completely away. The random freezing has slowed down but its still occurring multiple times a day.
I don't know if it means anything, but completely discharging the computer (Unplugging PSU/flipping switch on PSU and waiting a little while) seems to drasticly increase the uptime between freezes.
Three things I have not switched out are Video card, Motherboard, and CPU. I think its the motherboard having a bad capacitor/voltage regulator somewhere. I visually inspected the motherboard and didn't see any obvious blowouts or anything.
Specs:
AMD FX-6100
GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3
2x4GB Grill
PowerColor Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Samsung SSD 830 256gb (Windows 7 64bit Pro)
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s (File storage)
TOPOWER X3 Series ZU-550W 550W ATX12V Version 2.0
CyberPower CP1000AVRLCD 1000VA 600 Watt UPS
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