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Faulty CPU?

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I think i may be having problems with my CPU. Never before have i experianced these sort of symptoms for so long. I have wiped my computer several times, installed the latest drivers, tested my power supply, tested my ram, removed my soundcard, replaced both my graphics card and Motherboard, but still it keeps freezing.

Usually, it freezes in wow when maxamising from the desktop. A couple of weeks ago, it would freeze when i logged in, and a couple of months before that, it would freeze on the login page. It also freezes when in oblivion, when i have images loaded in firefox, when i view images in windows, sometimes in word, and even on startup when i havent touched it. A few times it has even froze when it is checking windows for errors from the previous crash, and it has froze once on loading the bios -_-.

The problems are never consistant and often the computer runs fine for a day or two, then just starts crashing and freezing like usual. Most of the time, the view will freeze however i can still use my mouse. After a couple of seconds i can no longer use my mouse. Then a couple of seconds later i can move my mouse again, and this keeps going until i manually restart it. Rarely do i get an actual BSOD and even when i do the computer will not shutdown itself (a couple of months ago i would get BSODs all the time, with errors such as machinecheck exception).

Here are my specs:
2x value select corsair ram 512m
1x Geforce 7600 GT
AMD 64bit Athlon duel core 3800
ASUS A8N-SLI SE (formerly a gigabyte board of the same model)
Antec truepower 430watt



Please help, i dunno if this is the right forum or not, but this seemed the most appropiate.

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I wouldn't think that your CPU is faulty.
Can you provide us your HDD specs ?

Try to check the HDD and Memory.
Try to reseated the Memory or move it to another slot then bench it with memtest.
Try to see the HDD connector and power supply connector.
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Quote:
i had the similar problems a couple of years ago with xp home, i went pro and it cleared it up.


It is probably the fresh install that fixed it.

A fresh Install may fix the problem.




It may b the motherboard is with faulty capacitors. Check the voltage to ur CPU and other components and see whether it fluctuates a lot.

Quote:
a friend had an hp p4 3.0 out of nowhere it would lose drivers and freeze in logout. installed pro and its been fine since. i just think home is junk.


home and pro are based on the same kernel...except that PRO has better networking feature, user account management..

Quote:
i know fresh install always works good, but i seems that a while its going to slow down especially with home.


I've had XP Home Edition (upgrade) installed back in 2001 or 2002 (:oops:  can't exactly remember). Never reinstalled it, and it runs the same the day it was installed.

Although, I'm not the type that would install all kinds of software on my system.

XP Pro is actually the buisness product rather then home user product.

And I agree with Pat on the features, which are more based on security then anything else XP Home lacks.

Quote:
I think i may be having problems with my CPU.
Usually, it freezes in wow when maxamising from the desktop. A couple of weeks ago, it would freeze when i logged in,

The problems are never consistant and often the computer runs fine for a day or two, then just starts crashing and freezing like usual.

After a couple of seconds i can no longer use my mouse. Then a couple of seconds later i can move my mouse again, and this keeps going until i manually restart it.

Rarely do i get an actual BSOD and even when i do the computer will not shutdown itself (a couple of months ago i would get BSODs all the time, with errors such as machinecheck exception).



I'm actually one of those rare individuals who has had a CPU go bad, a Slot 1 P3-600 in my case. (possibly it was damaged by static during a storm) Anyway one salient feature was that the errors, usually a Bluescreen, always happened during the same specific actions, opening Media player for the second time in a session, opening three applications is a certain order, that type of thing. RANDOM errors are unlikely to be a CPU problem.

As others have suggested it DOES sound like possibly failing capacitors on the MB, or a hardware resource conflict. And yes a power supply problem, use a multimeter to check each of the Rails while using the system.

Slicessoul: I will post my HDD details later, however I had the system running on a 80g Hardrive before which i have used for many years without problems up until the day I installed the new hardware. I did a fresh install, and it still didnt work, so I decided to switch to the 180g which I bought not only months before, and had previously had working in another machine.

Grimmy: I do not use XP SP2 at all. I dont have the software for the cool-n-quiet option as I had no idea what it was. I believe its disabled also in the bios. In the bios, it says that my ACPI suspend type is [S1&S3] and that ACPI APIC support is enabled.

13thmonkey: I have tested the ram. There is nothing wrong with it.

BustedSony: As I said before, I have replaced the motherboard (even with another brand) and still have the same problems. Also I placed a higher voltage power supply in the machine however it did not change anything.

Cheers for the respones guys. :) 

only 2 things could be causing the problem:
1. RAM
2. HDD

1. RAM is faulty, you have to check which module.
---Solution: Replace it!

2. HDD has a lose power connector.
---Solution: Change it!

Well I would assume that the bios is compatible with duel core chips since the motherboard is. Dunno bout the patch though, is it seperate to the motherboard drivers?

zarooch: It isnt the ram, so Ill check the fittings later.

Windows XP comes with 'processor patches' - some kind of files that tell it how to perform better on some specific architectures (I know there's one for K6 and one for K7). So my guess would be that a K8 patch would be akin to adding those optimizations. Now I'm only guessing.

However, don't mistake motherboard drivers with CPU drivers! They are not the same. Mobo drivers come either from your mobo manufacturer and usually drive things such as chipset and integrated peripherals (network, AGP when applicable, etc.) while CPU drivers usually come from the CPU maker himself - here, check AMD's website for the latest version.

There is also a specific problem found with AMD systems (I don't know if it's the same with C2D) where some 3D games would lose sync between threads on 'real' dual core systems (this would not happen on 'fake' dual core systems such as hyperthreading P4s).

To see if it's the case, as soon as you've started the game (here, WoW) press Ctrl+Alt+Del to get the task manager, go to Process, locate the WoW process; right-click on it, and look out for 'affinity'; it should open a menu where you can check the CPU cores the process is affiliated to.

Uncheck all but one (any one) and see if the crash still occurs. If it does on one core but not on the other, then it looks like a CPU core is busted; if it doesn't crash when using any single core, then it's not CPU related, but you may want to go and look for a patch - either for the game or for the CPU.

Quote:
Grimmy: I do not use XP SP2 at all. I dont have the software for the cool-n-quiet option as I had no idea what it was. I believe its disabled also in the bios. In the bios, it says that my ACPI suspend type is [S1&S3] and that ACPI APIC support is enabled.


If you want you can get more info for AMD X2 CPU fixes here:

Dual Core Gaming Fix Guide

Take note that one the hotfix for XP, you do need SP2. (fix 3)

Quote:
...

13thmonkey: I have tested the ram. There is nothing wrong with it.

...

How exactly did you test it? ValueSelect is known for being poor quality and having a high failure/incompatibility rate. memtest86+ is good for a start, but for a better test, run PRIME95 in stress test mode with one copy running on each processor core. That usually does a good job of showing CPU/RAM errors.

Ok ive been trying to the core thing for a few days now, when i switch it to core 0 everything runs fine, but it seems to revert back every now and again. It screws up normally on core 1. I installed SP2 and downloaded the latest drivers from AMD but that still didnt work.

Mondoman: I used a program (cant remember the name of it, probably memtest) to test the ram and also i borrowed a stick of ram from a friend that he knew was working and put it in my machine. Nothing changed.

Machinecheck exceptions are usually caused by a physical problem. CPU seems like a probable culprit.

RAM honestly seems more likely. These crashes sound like RAM related problems, but it sounds like you have verified that it isn't the RAM.

Given your symtpoms I would try RAM, Hard Drive, Mobo, Power Supply, then Processor to troubleshoot the problem.

RAM you have exchanged with a friend's known good stick and it still failed so that pretty much rules that out.

Have you tried replacing or testing the hard drive with the manufacturer's testing program? If so it probably isn't the hard drive.

Mobo has been replaced so thats not likely it.

Power supply you say you have tested, but you havn't replaced it. I'd still be suspicious of a possible failure there. It could just be intermittent and it did not fail while testing it.

So if you can firmly rule out hard drive and power supply then CPU is most likely it.

Good luck.

one test I do on a CPU is make it compute Pi (using superpi and giving affinity to one core, then - but not at the same time - do the other core). This sucka' is sooo sensitive, it's usually enough to rule out a CPU stability problem (on FPU and SSE units at least).

he'd need to test a dual core, since it seems that software starting on core 0 works while software running on core 1 crashes.

It MIGHT be a faulty Hypertransport link (however I doubt that), or faulty L2 cache (see if you can disable L2 cache in BIOS, then bench away).

Try to do so, and report.

I have in fact tested the power supply by using one of my other, more powerful power supplies and it was just as unstable. Like i said before i have had this system on another harddrive which i was just previously using, and the harddrive i am currently using was recently bought and pulled from another machine, where it also worked perfectly.

Mitch074: Actually today i got a machine check exception error (first bsod in ages) whilst using core 0. That test sounds like a good idea, ill have to look into it. Ill also try the cache thing.

Papi4baby: We havent reseated it or borrowed another cpu, so that seems to be the next step in my endeavour. :) 

Thanks for the help guys. Keep it coming. :D 

Ok it wont work on any of the cores now, and seems to have reverted back to old errors like bsod's and crashing when playing the game (instead of when i alt+tab). Also i cant find that L2 cache you were talking about mitch.

Any other ideas? This is getting rediculous.

Quote:
Ok it wont work on any of the cores now,


It seems like you've diagnosed the problem correctly in the thread title.
If you didn't buy it oem, you should have no problem getting a replacement from AMD.

Did you test your system with a friend's CPU? If so then what happened? If not then you might want to give that a shot.

Either way I'd put good odds on it being the CPU at this point. If you can't test it with a known good CPU then contact AMD's tech support and see if they will give you an RMA.

Quote:
Ok it wont work on any of the cores now, and seems to have reverted back to old errors like bsod's and crashing when playing the game (instead of when i alt+tab). Also i cant find that L2 cache you were talking about mitch.

Any other ideas? This is getting rediculous.


Time is precious, go buy the C2D and stop wasting your time on a chip that should've never left the factory.
Anonymous
CPUs Authority

I had a similar problem with an Socket A PC, I changed the graphics card ( from an AGP to a Matrox millennium 8MB PCI), the hard drive, the mem from 2 GB to 256MB, and still Window XP pro would not install and would only copy files into the mem at the installation stage, and would show a BSOD as soon as it atempted to access the drive to install

the error stop code:-
stop: was 0x0000008E (0xc0000005, 0x0799E3892, 0xF959DA1C)

It wasn't untill I replaced the 3GB barton Athlon CPU for a 1 GB duron CPU that windows would install! and will now boot up OK!

Before that I would install winXP pro onto a drive in another PC then would place this drive into the above PC, After the OS had updated its drivers etc, it would run but it would unexplained re-boot while using the PC showing a BSOD for a split second as it did so, also hard drive now and again would be checked for errors at reboots and corrected, also lockups were happening!
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