[smudeagle]

Hi,

My PC has developed an awful habit of shutting down out of the blue. Occasionally it wont boot up, sometimes it will run for 2 hours then suddenly cut out.

I recently installed some extra RAM and a second hard drive; could this be causing the problem? Has anyone got any advice how to stop it!

Thanks so much in advance!

Ali

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Are you sure 100%, you installed correct RAM?

Disable "Restart on error" feature...

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Advanced tab (Vista: click Advanced system settings).
3. Under Startup and Recovery, click Settings to open the Startup and Recovery dialog box.
4. Clear the Automatically restart check box, and click OK the necessary number of times.
5. Restart your computer for the settings to take effect.

You may see some error message. If so, post back what it says.

[Broni]

Are you sure 100%, you installed correct RAM?

Disable "Restart on error" feature...

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Advanced tab (Vista: click Advanced system settings).
3. Under Startup and Recovery, click Settings to open the Startup and Recovery dialog box.
4. Clear the Automatically restart check box, and click OK the necessary number of times.
5. Restart your computer for the settings to take effect.

You may see some error message. If so, post back what it says.

[smudeagle]

Thanks for getting back to me.

I'm sure that it was the right RAM; I went on one ofthose on-line checkers and triple checked it was right.

I'll carry out your advice now.

[Broni]

OK.

[smudeagle]

Turned off 'restart on error' and restarted computer.

It ran for 5 mins then turned itself off again. There were no error messages prior to the shutdown.

[Broni]

1. Try to re-saet RAM.

2. Download, and install SpeedFan: http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php
Post your computer temperatures:



Provide processor info (hold Windows logo key, and hit Pause/Break key to find out).

3. If you have more than one RAM module installed, try starting computer with one RAM stick at a time.

NOTE Keep in mind, the manual check listed above is always superior to the software check, listed below.

If you have only one RAM stick installed...
...run memtest...

1. Download - Pre-Compiled Bootable ISO (.zip)
2. Unzip downloaded memtest86+-2.11.iso.zip file.
3. Inside, you'll find memtest86+-2.11.iso file.
4. Download, and install ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/
5. Insert blank CD into your CD drive.
6. Open ImgBurn, and click on Write image file to disc
7. Click on Browse for a file... icon:



8. Locate memtest86+-2.11.iso file, and click Open button.
9. Click on ImgBurn green arrow to start burning bootable memtest86 CD:



10. Once the CD is created, boot from it, and memtest will automatically start to run.

The running program will look something like this depending on the size and number of ram modules installed:




It's recommended to run 5-6 passes. Each pass contains very same 8 tests.

This will show the progress of the test. It can take a while. Be patient, or leave it running overnight.



The following image is the test results area:



The most important item here is the “errors” line. If you see ANY errors, even one, then you have bad RAM.

[smudeagle]

Thanks. I will crack on with that, it may take me a while with it shutting down non-stop!

[Broni]

No problem

[smudeagle]

Re-seated RAM. Not switched off yet but I'm sure it's a matter of time!

Ran Speed fan. Temperatures below:

GPU - 63 C
System - 33 C
CPU - 89 C
AUX - 52 C
HD0 - 34 C
HD1 - 35 C
Core - 62 C
Ambient - 0 C

These numbers rose steadily whilst I had the computer on. This is the reading after the computer had been idle and they had been rising for 5 minutes.

I have four sticks of RAM in the computer totalling 4GB (the max my motherboard can take according to it's manual).

How should I proceed?

Thanks

[smudeagle]

Re-seating the RAM has not worked. Just after posting computer shut down itself again.

I have discovered that pointing a room fan into the fan socket stops it from crashing and dramatically reduces the Speedfan results, see below:

GPU - 63 C
System 33C
CPU 68C
AUX 50C
Hd0 30C
HD1 35C
Core 62C
Ambient 0C

Any advice would genuinely be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[smudeagle]

When I last turned on the computer the following warning came up:

Warning overvoltage or overclocking failed.

Does that mean anything?

HELP!

[Broni]

CPU - 89C
CPU - 68C

If this is desktop, you're melting your processor.
If it's laptop, you're very close to doing so.

What do we have here?
I asked for processor type...

[smudeagle]

Hey, thanks a lot for getting back to me; even with such worrying news! It is indeed a desktop which sounds like it may be melting as we speak.

I'm at ork at the moment but will post the processor info when I get home.

thanks so much for helping out - I really dont know what to do.

[Broni]

On your way home, get a can of compressed air, and clean the computer case inside. See, if all fans are working.

[smudeagle]

Right, could'nt find any compressed air but when I installed the extra RAM and hard drive (before problems started) I hoovered out most of the dust and it's not too bad inside.

Both the fan on the mobo and intake fans are working.

The processor is Pentium ® 4 CPU 3.40GHz. 2GB RAM.

I've taken out 2GB RAM because otherwise the computer will not even switch on. (It starts up but the monitor displays no data input.)

Cheers

EDIT: It now starts fine with all the RAM installed but only displays 3.37GB or RAM.

Edited by smudeagle, 12 August 2009 - 02:31 PM.