Freezing and Blue Screens of DEATH!!

[nickd22]

Hi everyone, thank you in advance for reading this and helping out if you can.

<b>Brief history:</B> Last winter I got blue screens ALL the time, until one day it finally shut off and didn't work anymore. I figured it was the power-supply, so I upgraded to 450w and it has been OK until recently.

Recently, my computer slows down to a crawl sometimes, and even freezes completely when I do something that demands high performance (most notably, counterstrike). Even when I just have a few things running, it freezes on me. Even if I only have a few programs running, my CPU usage jumps to 100% in my task manager. Occasionally, I get blue screens of death randomly.

Now, when I shut down my computer by just holding the button, waiting for a little bit, and then turning it back on, sometimes it turns on like it would normally for about 4-5secs, then just turns off without any signal being sent to the monitor at all. If I try the same routine(not waiting more than a minute or 2), it keeps on repeating the same process. I can only get the OS to finally boot if I give it a good 5-10 minutes to "cool off."

Anybody have any ideas what it could be? It is super annoying, and I'm afraid that once again I'll have to replace my damn power supply, or something worse.

<b>SPECS:</b>
-450w powersupply
-Asus A7N8X motherboard
-2 harddrives
-2 sticks x (512mb) of DDR ram = 1Gb total
-nVidia geforce 4 mx440 8x 128mb
-some cheap soundblaster sound card
-windows XP pro

THANKS EVERYONE!!

 

[Mondoman]

Sounds like it could be an overheating problem. A good first step is to open up your case and vacuum out all the dust/fluff, especially from heatsink fins, such as on your GPU, CPU, etc.
Check your various temps at idle and while gaming to see if you are getting temps that are worrisomely high.

 

[nickd22]

Great, just did that, thank you.

Is there a way(i'm sure there is) to monitor my temps in windows? I only know how to through bios.

anyways thanks a lot for replying

 

[GSTe]

Download either Coretemp or Speedfan to monitor temps through windows. Let us know what they are please

 

[nukemaster]

get Speedfan or MBM5(no longer supported but works with that board), core temp does not work on socket A boards as there is no temp sensor in the CPU.

EDIT
also you can strap a 40mm fan on that chipset. Chip sets from the days of hot socket A(Model 6 chips ran VERRRRRY hot | half the heat went right over the chipset cooler) tend to get crappy(laggy and freeze) when hot. This tended to affect SIS chipsets more but it never hurts.

 

[nickd22]

Hey guys thanks for the replies.

In response to one post, I don’t know if this is what you’re talking about, but I have an aluminum heatsink on my processor already, and a fan attached on top of that. I cleaned out a lot of jammed dust that was in there, so hopefully that will help my temps. Anyways,

I downloaded SpeedFan. It’s a pretty sweet program, yet I have no idea what to make of all these readings. Does anyone know how these temps look? Should I adjust the speed of the fans somehow?

1) First image is at idle speed with very few/no active programs:

2) this image is while running AIM and after just starting up Counterstrike:

3) This last image is after playing counterstrike for a few minutes, heat up a little?

Also, is this detecting my hard drive or my processor? I want my processor right? not sure if it is doing it.. BTW I erased the serial number of my HD where I put <HD name here> just out of paranoia.. I don't know what you guys are capable of *shivers*

thanks for helping

 

[nukemaster]

Well all your temps look to be within the limits.

From the top(best guess)
Temp1: 42 (CPU Socket)
Temp2: 23(Case or board)
Temp3: -1(No sensor connected, disable/ignore it)
Temp4: 25(Another case or south bridge temp)
Temp1: 61(CPU Thermal sensor, while AMD had them it was up to the board to read them.)
Temp: -1(no sensor or you have a dimensional gateway in your case?)
Temp: 23(Same as Temp2)
HD0: 36(Hard Drive)
HD1: 31(Hard Drive)

Now to make sense of it all
AMD specs those chips for a MAX of 90c its a good idea to keep "Temp1: 61" under 75.

If you want to heat it up and see how hot it can get under the worst case you can get a program called StressPrime2004(Orthos)

Run it in small TFT to make lots of heat and large to test some of your ram.

If you are still getting blue screens, you may want to check the ram. This can be done with Memtest86. You can also get the Ultimate Boot CD which comes with a load of testing tools.

Also if you get a chance grab CPU-z and post a screen of the main page or just look for if its a model 6 or 8 CPU. For a 6 your temps are normal for 8 its a bit hot

Hope this helps