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Pc Freezes Or Reboots Every Week Or So


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#1
superstar

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For some odd reason my computer will either freeze a few minutes after booting up, or during a manual reboot [ie: when I personally restart via XP's "Start" menu]. I can't understand why this is happening and would like to know what could potentially be the root cause of this.

The funny thing is my computer will work for a week or more and not even show any of these signs... I thought it could have been some sort of virus but my pc isn't infected when scanning with the ESET AV I subscribe to, or Trendmicro's Housecall. I have backup images of my hdd I made with Acronis, so I was thinking about rolling back to an old hdd image. Than today I go to boot my pc up and it froze during the bios screen which goes to show me that it doesn't have anything to do with my OS/Data hdd, or so I presume.

There are only two things I can think of that can be causing this.

#1 My PSU which is an Antec Earthwatts 500 model... Less than a year old.
#2 My ram which is a few years old

I've tried reseating every card on my motherboard a while back and making sure all connections are tight but that still didn't show any improvement. This has been an ongoing issue for over a month. I haven't asked about this online because I thought it would go away for some stupid reason. Just a couple of hiccups is what I thought, but now this problem is nagging me and I can't risk my pc shutting off or rebooting itself anymore. It's bothersome and can potentially harm my hardware by letting this continue.

There are no hums, no clicks, no pops, or anything weird coming out of my pc, psu, or hdd's. I see no swollen capacitors on my motherboard, or any signs of damage. What's STRANGE is the fact that once is freezes a couple of times or reboots itself [always within the same day once a week or so] it will run smooth without a glitch. & I can leave my pc on for days on end without it doing that. I'm scratching my head. I'll be running Memtest on my pc all night tonight to see if I get any bad results and will post a reply.



Thanks for the help my fellow friends!



P.s.
I have no grounding in my electrical wiring at home. That means all my wall outlets are ungrounded. I usually unplug my pc from the wall if I check the weather when I wake up and notice that there will be a lightening storm while I'm away for the day. Another odd thing I notice is that it usually happens when I plug the pc back in after it's been unplugged for the day. Not always but kind of funny that it's more so... I dunno I could just be paranoid but it is interesting to know that.

Edited by superstar, 08 September 2010 - 07:37 PM.

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#2
Alzeimer

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After you checked your RAM and if it is ok, try to run a test on your Hard Drive, download the utility software from your HD manufacturer and burn it unto a CD as a boot cd (usually they have bootable iso image to download and burn) or do a chkdsk /r on your HD


One thing you might check is the settings of your Master/Slave on your HD (if not SATA) and on your CD/DVD Rom if you have more than one.

Also did you check in your BIOS for any HD setting (if you have SATA HD) like run as ide mode ect.

One other thing is your graphic card, check your drivers and your card, your behavior might be caused by a faulty card or bad drivers.
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#3
superstar

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I hate troubleshooting... If it's not one thing it's another. I didn't get a chance to test my ram but than again common sense goes to show that my ram must be good since it can run for a week without a glitch. I'll still test it when I sleep tonight but I'll bet it's ok.
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#4
superstar

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I hate troubleshooting... If it's not one thing it's another. I didn't get a chance to test my ram but than again common sense goes to show that my ram must be good since it can run for a week without a glitch. I'll still test it when I sleep tonight but I'll bet it's ok.

Somethings telling me it could be the psu. But darn this thing is pretty new and has only been used for less than a year. Any more advice would be useful...
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