Prelude
So this computer has quite a bit of story behind it. It's 12 years old, has survived a lot of manhandling, got an upgrade from pretty much across the world from a friend and after about 5 years of just sitting there I decided to finally check and see if I can get it running again. At first repair was a simple affair - changed SATA cable and replaced the CMOS battery. After thorough and very careful dusting i turned it on and it was working perfectly fine with a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit.
This PC was originally packed with windows xp which has long been deemed obsolete so i got a pirated Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 32 bit and for about a month everything worked perfectly until i had to finally get an activator somehow. This was usually something my sister handled (we're twin girls with no actual background in any sort of PC-related stuff, except for maintenance and this and that, but we have picked up a few things over the years). Anyway, she said she'd do the activator thing but she never did and I ended up botching the entire process and had to reinstall windows again. And that, folks, is the prelude to the beginning of my problems, which have been going on for about 2 weeks or so.
First off, here are my PC's specs.
Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.2GHz
4x512MB (2gb)RAM
Gigabyte Radeon HD 4650 AGP 1gb video card
Abit ic7-max 3 motherboard
If there is anything else of relevance to the topic, I will look it up and add it as needed. I've never really posted anything like this type of thread before.
The problem is that it freezes/hangs up completely whenever i run anything like Youtube or Bitcomet and that windows update isnt working.
When I start up the PC, it loads up normally, works fine right up until i try to go to youtube and watch a video or try to download anything that takes more than 5-10 minutes. Bam, instant freeze, like, 100% of the time. I can't play any games on this anymore as well.
I will try and explain what's going on in detail.
First off, I want to say that I am resuscitating this PC to give it to my mom for her new office to stay there at all times. It will be used mostly for documental work, maybe some youtube, facebook, etc. so the bare minimum of what I am trying to achieve, is to get it to the point where it won't stop working in a crucial moment like writing documents for court (she's a lawyer). My second goal is to get it to run games again, mostly because I don't know when her new office will be ready and because my notebook overheats pretty quick when i try to run WoW Legion on it and i get solid 50-60 fps on this PC on lowest setting, no overheating or crashing. I will be getting a nice gaming rig soon, but that is neither here nor there.
I've checked pretty much anything I can on the hardware that I could come up with.
HDD: There are no sounds coming from it, at least nothing discernable. After switching the SATA cable it stopped crashing randomly as it used to. I've ran Chkdsk so many times in the last month and a half and nothing shows up. It's been defragmented, nothing there either. Windows in general, when not doing a hard reboot after a freeze, takes about 10-15 seconds tops.
Graphics Card: It's old enough to be considered legacy and i had really tough time finding the proper driver for it. Don't know if the problem comes from here, but I can't decide if I should use the original driver from the manufacturer CD or if the driver from the manufacturer website is a more feasible option. Occasionally i get "Display driver has stopped working" but it resets pretty quickly. I read somewhere that the graphics driver is what might be causing the freezes but I don't think that's the case when I've had that problem before and other than being annoying and somewhat unpredictable, it isn't what's happening with my PC.
CPU I regularly clean dust and fat hobo dust bunnies from the PC, especially around the processor. I have 3 cats at home, 2 of which are persian and any dust buildup is usually accompanied by a substantial amount of cat hair because, lets face it, cats love computers, whether it's sleeping on top of it or rubbing against where the fans are at. I live really close to an electronics store so I've gotten myself a small set of tiny screw drivers that I use to open the PC case and I changed the thermal paste last night. I heard somewhere that it has to be swapped every 6-8 months or so. Temperature is around 45-52 degrees Celsius. Hasn't cause any problems, ever, as far as I am aware.
RAM came from a Friend of my sister's that lives halfway across the world. I know it's quite low but given the age of the PC and for what I will be using it, I don't think getting more ram will be needed, unless that is what causing the freezes in the first place.
So, that's about it. Sorry for the really long post, but I am at my wits' end right now and unless I make this PC as fool proof as possible, I don't know if my mum will help me out financially for a new gaming rig. And I'm kinda sick watching the sister hog the only actual gaming rig at home.
So this computer has quite a bit of story behind it. It's 12 years old, has survived a lot of manhandling, got an upgrade from pretty much across the world from a friend and after about 5 years of just sitting there I decided to finally check and see if I can get it running again. At first repair was a simple affair - changed SATA cable and replaced the CMOS battery. After thorough and very careful dusting i turned it on and it was working perfectly fine with a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit.
This PC was originally packed with windows xp which has long been deemed obsolete so i got a pirated Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 32 bit and for about a month everything worked perfectly until i had to finally get an activator somehow. This was usually something my sister handled (we're twin girls with no actual background in any sort of PC-related stuff, except for maintenance and this and that, but we have picked up a few things over the years). Anyway, she said she'd do the activator thing but she never did and I ended up botching the entire process and had to reinstall windows again. And that, folks, is the prelude to the beginning of my problems, which have been going on for about 2 weeks or so.
First off, here are my PC's specs.
Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.2GHz
4x512MB (2gb)RAM
Gigabyte Radeon HD 4650 AGP 1gb video card
Abit ic7-max 3 motherboard
If there is anything else of relevance to the topic, I will look it up and add it as needed. I've never really posted anything like this type of thread before.
The problem is that it freezes/hangs up completely whenever i run anything like Youtube or Bitcomet and that windows update isnt working.
When I start up the PC, it loads up normally, works fine right up until i try to go to youtube and watch a video or try to download anything that takes more than 5-10 minutes. Bam, instant freeze, like, 100% of the time. I can't play any games on this anymore as well.
I will try and explain what's going on in detail.
First off, I want to say that I am resuscitating this PC to give it to my mom for her new office to stay there at all times. It will be used mostly for documental work, maybe some youtube, facebook, etc. so the bare minimum of what I am trying to achieve, is to get it to the point where it won't stop working in a crucial moment like writing documents for court (she's a lawyer). My second goal is to get it to run games again, mostly because I don't know when her new office will be ready and because my notebook overheats pretty quick when i try to run WoW Legion on it and i get solid 50-60 fps on this PC on lowest setting, no overheating or crashing. I will be getting a nice gaming rig soon, but that is neither here nor there.
I've checked pretty much anything I can on the hardware that I could come up with.
HDD: There are no sounds coming from it, at least nothing discernable. After switching the SATA cable it stopped crashing randomly as it used to. I've ran Chkdsk so many times in the last month and a half and nothing shows up. It's been defragmented, nothing there either. Windows in general, when not doing a hard reboot after a freeze, takes about 10-15 seconds tops.
Graphics Card: It's old enough to be considered legacy and i had really tough time finding the proper driver for it. Don't know if the problem comes from here, but I can't decide if I should use the original driver from the manufacturer CD or if the driver from the manufacturer website is a more feasible option. Occasionally i get "Display driver has stopped working" but it resets pretty quickly. I read somewhere that the graphics driver is what might be causing the freezes but I don't think that's the case when I've had that problem before and other than being annoying and somewhat unpredictable, it isn't what's happening with my PC.
CPU I regularly clean dust and fat hobo dust bunnies from the PC, especially around the processor. I have 3 cats at home, 2 of which are persian and any dust buildup is usually accompanied by a substantial amount of cat hair because, lets face it, cats love computers, whether it's sleeping on top of it or rubbing against where the fans are at. I live really close to an electronics store so I've gotten myself a small set of tiny screw drivers that I use to open the PC case and I changed the thermal paste last night. I heard somewhere that it has to be swapped every 6-8 months or so. Temperature is around 45-52 degrees Celsius. Hasn't cause any problems, ever, as far as I am aware.
RAM came from a Friend of my sister's that lives halfway across the world. I know it's quite low but given the age of the PC and for what I will be using it, I don't think getting more ram will be needed, unless that is what causing the freezes in the first place.
So, that's about it. Sorry for the really long post, but I am at my wits' end right now and unless I make this PC as fool proof as possible, I don't know if my mum will help me out financially for a new gaming rig. And I'm kinda sick watching the sister hog the only actual gaming rig at home.
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