PC Bluescreening every now and then

chabsey

I have a self build Pc running XP SP2 with all updates applied. I built it about a year ago but in the last few months it's started freezing, crashing, rebooting or most commonly blue screening for no apparent reason.

I thought it might be the RAM, was originall on 1 gig (2 X 512) so I bought 2 gig more and added them into the mix (i know I should remove original RAM to isolate possible problem but so far have not). Now it may be my imagination but I *think* the crashes are less frequent now so my guess is that maybe now with 3 gig of RAM the potentially dodgy RAM is accessed less often thus causing problems less frequently...not sure if that's a possible explanation though.

So question is, does anyone know of any software that I can use on my sytem to perform tests on hardware (RAM, HDD etc) to try and isolate where my issue actually lies? I'd hate to be focussing on the RAM while the CPU or something is actually the problem.

ethernet

You can try Memtest86 for testing your RAM.

If it's randomly turning off, I'd be inclined to pin that on over-heating, especially the processor. Did your motherboard come with any utilities for monitoring temps? There might even be such a feature in your BIOS.

GreenHell

Sounds like it could be a number of things, graphics card, over heating CPU, buggered CPU, ram or corrupted XP.

Had a similiar problem a while back, convinced it was ram, then thought it was graphics card - the gfx card has some addition software with it that was screwing it up. In the end the problem turned out to be poor ventalation.

chabsey

Thanks for the replies guys. I went into the BIOS, not sure why I didn't do this before but there was three health checks I could turn on. Overheating Check (based on a temperature), CPU fan and system fan. I turned on them all, system beeped like mad. Turned off each progressively and was left with a system fan failure alert.

Question is, what's a system fan? Is it the PSU fan? And is such an alert always 100% accurate in terms of identifying the problem?

Thanks again for all answers.

ethernet

My mobo gives info about the temp and the fan speed for 'system' and 'processor' and a third one [HDD, methinks]. Just look at the tiny writing on the mobo for each fan connector, such as HDD, system and processor.

Don't enable the check there's not a fan connected to 'system' or else the beeping won't stop as it will think there's a failure.

chabsey

ethernet wrote: »

My mobo gives info about the temp and the fan speed for 'system' and 'processor' and a third one [HDD, methinks]. Just look at the tiny writing on the mobo for each fan connector, such as HDD, system and processor.

Don't enable the check there's not a fan connected to 'system' or else the beeping won't stop as it will think there's a failure.

Good call, there is indeed no fan connected to system. The case is open now as I type this and it's a Gigabyte mobo. It has a bit of software that runs in the background called EasyTune for overclocking. At the moment I'm not overclocking anything but the readings it has for the CPU fan is 854 RPM with a warning symbol beside it and for the system fan it's 0 RPM as I don't appear to have a system fan.

Question is, does this lack of a system fan sound plausible as a reason for the reboots? I can pick one up in Peats for a fiver this weekend but don't want to waste the time if it's not going to do anything.

My PSU fan (a Sharkoon PSU) seems to be working fine.

ethernet

I also have a Gigabyte mobo. I used EasyTune for a while. Horrible interface -- I preferred the info in the BIOS.

It's worth buying a fan to see if it solves the problem. Make sure you have space for one and know what size you're looking for, e.g. 80 cm. I have two of these on the back of my case, along with one on the side of the case and then the PSU's fan. It's quite loud but temps case temp stays around 20 deg C. Be sure to buy a ball-bearing fan.

If your power-supply has a switch on it for controlling its fan speed, try using that as well. It may be on automatic so try changing it to 'high'.

chabsey

ethernet wrote: »

I also have a Gigabyte mobo. I used EasyTune for a while. Horrible interface -- I preferred the info in the BIOS.

It's worth buying a fan to see if it solves the problem. Make sure you have space for one and know what size you're looking for, e.g. 80 cm. I have two of these on the back of my case, along with one on the side of the case and then the PSU's fan. It's quite loud but temps case temp stays around 20 deg C. Be sure to buy a ball-bearing fan.

If your power-supply has a switch on it for controlling its fan speed, try using that as well. It may be on automatic so try changing it to 'high'.

Righty, will pick up one, maybe two system fans. 20 degrees? Wow, mine seems to be constantly at 35 degrees C!

ethernet

chabsey wrote: »

Righty, will pick up one, maybe two system fans. 20 degrees? Wow, mine seems to be constantly at 35 degrees C!

Still in Pentium 4 land here