A few months ago I built my mom and pop an amd 1900 rig. I installed xp etc etc. No problems until recently.
My mom calls and says they are locking up and have been since saturday, she says it's when she uses AOL email (I know I try to talk them out of it but it's easy for them). So when I go over tonight, I install norton systemworks, check the bios to see if anything looks kooky, everything seems to be ok. Then I log into AOL, tool around there for 2 or three minutes, play around on the email...thats not the problem. I minimize AOL click on the little tool bar norton to check the system and it locks up.
reboot
check some stuff in the case, make sure all fans are running etc. Tool around some more with the comp on, then randomly lock up. This continued a couple times at different times of my computing experience.
Check bios - cpu temp is listing at 118 immediately after lock up and boot, so I think maybe it's locking because of heat. I take off the volcano 6 to check it out. I had left the goo that is on the bottom of the heatsink on (the generic heat disapator), I had also originally put a little artic silver on there.
I wipe down the heatsink and look at the chip, it has what appears to be some of that black goo in a small clump on it. So now I am thinking it may have been the heat.
So what do I do? Where should I start? Try a new heatsink? Scrap the chip (although I don't think it's ruined), could it possibly be memory or the motherboard?
any idea, suggestions, or warnings?
Also, how to I "clean" my cpu to get all the original thermal paste off of it?
My mom calls and says they are locking up and have been since saturday, she says it's when she uses AOL email (I know I try to talk them out of it but it's easy for them). So when I go over tonight, I install norton systemworks, check the bios to see if anything looks kooky, everything seems to be ok. Then I log into AOL, tool around there for 2 or three minutes, play around on the email...thats not the problem. I minimize AOL click on the little tool bar norton to check the system and it locks up.
reboot
check some stuff in the case, make sure all fans are running etc. Tool around some more with the comp on, then randomly lock up. This continued a couple times at different times of my computing experience.
Check bios - cpu temp is listing at 118 immediately after lock up and boot, so I think maybe it's locking because of heat. I take off the volcano 6 to check it out. I had left the goo that is on the bottom of the heatsink on (the generic heat disapator), I had also originally put a little artic silver on there.
I wipe down the heatsink and look at the chip, it has what appears to be some of that black goo in a small clump on it. So now I am thinking it may have been the heat.
So what do I do? Where should I start? Try a new heatsink? Scrap the chip (although I don't think it's ruined), could it possibly be memory or the motherboard?
any idea, suggestions, or warnings?
Also, how to I "clean" my cpu to get all the original thermal paste off of it?