Computer randomly frebooting and/or freezing up

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May 2012

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[Franz]

I'll keep shit as brief as possible:

-Asus P4P800S-X Motherboard
-Pentium 4 3ghz
-250gb Seagate Barracuda HD (replaced 80gb Seagate Barracuda which I thought was my initial problem, not gonna list the slave drive)
-2ghz PNY ram (2 x 1 ghz)
-400W Power Supply (APEX AL-A400ATX ATX12V)
-PNY GeForce 6600gt 128b Video Card

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Minus the 250gb HD, this system is 2 years old. My problem started prior to the drive, starting roughly in September. THE PROBLEM:

My system will occasionally reboot w/o warning. Also, my games will freeze entirely, causing me to reboot. Recently (as of yesterday and today) that would be Team Fortress 2. When trying to install Q4 today, it froze. When trying to reinstall Windows XP after I got the new HD, my comp randomly rebooted again.

I took out both stick of memory (1 at a time) to see if that was the problem. Still froze. Disabled the sound card, still froze. Its not the HD because I've replaced that and still have this issue. 400W should be enough power, but I'm thinking its either:

-weak power supply
-video card corrupt
-mobo's fucked *gulp*

Prior to reinstalling windows on the new HD, I had the most recent BIOS for my ASUS mobo. I've yet to update the BIOS since reinstalling, as I'm still getting the freezing/crashing.

I have a good heatsink fan on my processor, one w/an adjustable dial on the back. I have that cranked somewhat mid-high and have my tower open also, so it can't be a reheating issue.


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Help?



EDIT: When my TF2 last froze, I manually rebooted, and once logged into my desktop the computer froze, unable to move anything such as the mouse. I'm tackling this issue at other places but when my comp last froze I DID hear a whirr-click noise from what sounded like (maybe?) my mobo.

[TheContact]

Just because your powersupply says 400W doesn't mean it's delivering that. Don't believe the hype.

You can check to see if that's the problem by unplugging everything but the bare minimum (graphics card, harddrive, memory).  If the system still freezes, then it's probably the motherboard at that point.

[Franz]

Already did it all. I think I'm on to something and providing I'm right, will let you know by the end of the week.

[kostjan]

It may be a driver issue. When a mobo is bust, the system does not gracefully recover from a crash - it just hangs there.
Run any distro on cd linux for a day or two (or hell, even just windows safe mode) and see if the system crashes. Also you could see and run physical test (boot nto bios, hit the down arrow while tapping gently on the side of the box repeatedly for 2-3 mins)...

Finally, it MAY be your 6600 (again, potentially graphic related)... Borrow another AGP card on ebay and try with that, see if it makes a difference.

PS: P4P800 is a s478 board, right? Must be older than 2 years... at least 4! (I used to have same board 3 computers ago)

[TheContact]

So Franz, what happened man? We're waiting here with bated breath.

[Franz]

Psh, YOU know already, I believe. Yeah I just remembered this post as I was thinking about starting another.

So, I'm 90% sure that the problem was indeed the video card. I got a slight upgrade to a GeForce 7300gt by eVGA. Rebates = super cheap product! Anyway for insurance I also got a Thermaltake 600w PSU. The combination = stable machine. Granted, something went awry and my new 250GB HDD started smoking when I booted up. but after safely (and quickly!) transferring any files to my external drive, and returning the 250GB to newegg, I can say things are great on my original 80GB.

So long, smokey!