Weird behaviour

[yoshimura]

My system is 2 years old and is home built.

So, some weeks ago my system would sometimes not boot anymore. Fans would spin up, but nothing happens (no CMIOS screen, no beeps, nothing)
Hard reboots would solve the problem.
Some time later, system crashed while ripping a video (cpu intensive) and it would never restart again.

From what I experienced (fans not spinning up to 100%, leds lighting only for 50% from time to time) I was almost sure it was my power supply.

I got a new one, and the system seems to be working fine.
But ... odd things would start happening.

While booting Windows XP, I would get an error that my sound card was not installed and I had to reinstall (as in: sound card physically not there)
Some other time, a random background process crashes.

I usually play games, and I can say that almost all games I play get random crashes. Sometimes with a popup box saying 'error in xxx.exe', sometimes system freeze, sometimes Blue Screen of Death with imminent system shutdown.

What I did try was the windows memory test at startup (no problems found).
I switched memory from one bank to another, have them dual channeled, nothing seems to change anything.
I tried down-clocking the cpu speed, no change in behaviour.
I dont think its my video card (GF8800GTX) since I dont see weird graphical behaviour, fans are working fine on it.


Does this sound familiar to anyone? Is this a motherboard problem? or cpu problem?
or anything else I'm overlooking?

I could of course buy a new mb+cpu+memory, but that's not my idea of 'fixing' a problem.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

2 years old. Have you scanned the hard drive for surface errors to check if corrupted data is causing your crashes. Some of the date might have been corrupted when your PSU was going out.

Did you previously run your CPU on overclock settings? A 2 year old CPU OC'd 2 years straight (not counting the weekly 30 minute experiment) could start the dreaded CPU degradation. By the way, did you buy the CPU new or used? If new and you have the retail box and original HSF, at least you know if the hardware crashes continue you still have the CPU warranty for another year.

 

[yoshimura]

2 years old. Have you scanned the hard drive for surface errors to check if corrupted data is causing your crashes. Some of the date might have been corrupted when your PSU was going out.

Did you previously run your CPU on overclock settings? A 2 year old CPU OC'd 2 years straight (not counting the weekly 30 minute experiment) could start the dreaded CPU degradation. By the way, did you buy the CPU new or used? If new and you have the retail box and original HSF, at least you know if the hardware crashes continue you still have the CPU warranty for another year.

I didnt do a surface scan of the HD, no.
I never overclocked the CPU, it runs at factory standard settings.
All materials were bought new.

I have time till August to return any defective item to the store and get a replacement... but I don't know which item is broken.

 

[yoshimura]

I found the problem:

Core 0 of my Core 2 duo processor is failing.
Steadily between 4 to 5 minutes after initiating a stress test.

Thanks for the heads up.

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