Computer problems in my home built system

I hope this is in the right section, but I didn't see a technical support section. I haven't been to these forums in a long time.


I have a pretty big problem with my computer.

I have an intel dual core E6600. 2.4ghz.

Anyways, I was using System Mechanics Professional to do a thorough defrag on my computer overnight, when there was a power outage. I do have a Surge protector.

I turn on my computer and after right clicking on windows security alerts the computer kind of freezes up and makes these weird sounds repeatedly in my headphones. Then it stops for 2 seconds and I can move mouse and stuff, but starts again, and the computer restarts on it's own.

Some kind of system error with a driver restarting the computer.

Now the computer is restarted and everything is kind of fine. I update my antivirus program because that's what the security alert was about. I go onto the internet and my screen turns black all of a sudden and makes a beep. I manually turn it off and on and I get this recovery from a system error message again. Apparently, it has something to do with my graphics driver or something from the error report. It says to either turn off hardware graphics accelerator or update to the latest driver. I thought I had the latest driver so I'm checking temperatures.

I have an 8800GTS graphics card. It's running at the same temperature it usually does which is 67 degrees. Which on the Nvidia control panel says it's in green, because I know those video cards run hotter than others.

So I go to windows update. I see there is a SP3 for Windows XP. I'm installing that right now, but I notice my dual core temps are fluctuating at the mid 60's now and that's bad. I don't know why it's doing this all of a sudden. It use to be around 50 on idle and 55 when running stuff. I applied this Arctic Silver to the heat sink and chip a year and a half ago. I think it's a little weird I'm having temp problems all of a sudden. I checked them last week and they seemed fine.

I can always remove the heat sink and reapply a new thermal thing to the chip which I'm going to try, but I'm thinking this could be a bigger problem with the errors and stuff. Any suggestions on all these errors?

What it was doing temp wise was going up to mid 60's for a few minutes then back down to mid 50's for a few minutes, right now it seems to be at a solid 60 degrees for the past few minutes.

Actually now it's in the low 50's. What the hell is going on. The only thing I'm doing is installing the service pack right now. Nothing else.


I updated the graphics driver. I also took the heatsink apart and reattached it. I noticed when taking it apart that half the round part on the heat sink had thermal paste on it, while the other half didnt. There was also barely any on the chip. I'm guessing something happened where it didn't work anymore. I reattached it by using a little more paste to try and make sure the chip and heat sink got enough paste this time. After reattaching it and getting the computer on finally, I decided to do a torture test with Prime 95. I took a look at the idle temps, and they were like 40 degrees. When running the torture test, my temps went up into the 60's though which I know is too hot. After 5-10 minutes though, they went back down and have been hovering around the mid 50's for the past half hour.

So my question is did I do a torture test too early? It seems like you're suppose to wait 200 hours according to the arctic silver website before the paste works fully.

I should note that I check my temps pretty frequently. My old temps were like upper 40's idle, and when running torture test, mid 50's or if I'm running something else mid 50's.

I'm just trying to understand why all this stuff happened at once and I think it has something to do with the power going out last night. There wasn't a storm or anything and it went out for 15 minutes. Not sure if it was the block or not. It happened around midnight and I was half asleep.

Also if someone could suggest decent heatsinks for a E6600 dual core processor. I'd appreciate it, just in case this doesn't work out and I need a new heatsink, because I've had troubles with this one in the past, and it's so damn hard to install properly.
Thanks in advance for any help.

You would think this would be obvious, seeing as he lost power while defragging. A cpu running 5 degrees hotter in the summer is normal...becuase its hotter in the summer.

Well everything seems to be working now. I haven't had any problems with anything not working except something I screwed up earlier, but that was my fault.

If the data is corrupt, why would I back it up and reinstall everything? Wouldn't it be best just to get rid of the possibly corrupted data and not use it? Are you saying I have to backup data onto another hard drive just to wipe the one I have clean and stuff?

I guess I should be more clear about the temps at the time. They were fluctuating mostly in the mid to upper 60's. At about 70 I think Intel starts limiting the cpu so it doesn't damage it. Although it did go down to the lower 50's a couple times, but it was for the most part operating at higher than normal temps by more than 10 degrees. I wasn't torturing it when it was going into the 60's. It was just running some scans and updating which only uses like 20 percent of the dual core cpu.

I don't have money for another hard drive right now. But I am interested in a new heat sink. One of the pegs isn't really working properly I think. Right now it's running cooler than it ever has, but I'm not sure the thermal paste won't come off again in another year or more and I'll need a new heat sink by then, because this one is ****. I had it installed properly and half the paste was gone on it when I removed it. Something is wrong there.

This is just a total shot in the dark. but sp3 could be throttling the cpu differently which would result in the drastic temp changes you've been seeing. I hear the newer intel chips are actually good up to about 75c so I wouldn't worry about the temps your seeing at that range.