Noise/lockup problem

bugler

Hey, me again

Two things giving me grief.

Firstly, my pc is increasingly noisy at start up. I first noticed this several weeks ago, it's asort of grating noise,
like a cd-drive it trying to start up but can't. It went away though, but over the last week or so its back regularly.
This noise was fairly disturbing at first, I was sure it was my new
cd-writer but having disconnected it and every other part possible of the pc for boot-up I can say it's not.
Also, and probably key, is that this noise also only happens when booting up the pc after its been off for some
time(and it only lasts until approx the windows password screen), ie overnight or a few hours. The rest of the time
it's ok. Though it does tend to go through periods of higher general noise at random aswell. I replaced the PSU, that
didn't change anything. Changed the fan on my HS, that didn't either. Looking up close at the mobo and listening during
the boot-up process, it sounds like the noise is coming from the cpu/HSF, or possibly the mobo chipset fan.

Now the second, possibly related problem. Despite the above, the system ran perfectly well and didn't crash or anything.
Today, I ran CS, and about 30 secs after joining a game the pc locked up. I rebooted, and again after maybe 30 secs of a map
it locked up again.
On rebooting I noted the cpu temps, they were 41C and 43C respectively, which to be honest I wouldn't normally be
concerned with, as I've seen it at 50-ish before with no problems.

The hardware concerned....

1.2 gig Duron
128 MB DDR RAM
Epox 8KHA+


Running Win98 SE if it makes any difference..ask if you need more a detailed spec

_CreeD_

Actually it could be your case rattling, maybe there's a loose standoff near your cpu? As it heats up it will expand slightly and this might explain why it stops after a while.
Those temp's should be fine, have you tried changing the clockspeed on your gfx card?

TacT

hmmm I'd say the noise is coming from your gfx card fan. Then because it's grinding and probably not cooling it enough it's locking you up during games. Get down there and check if it is in fact spinning at all, I had this happen to me before, exact same problem. Or it could be the above suggestion. gl with it

Gerry

Yeah, graphics card fan, or possibly chipset fan. Those chipset fans are usually crappy, you can just take it off with no problems. Often I found that the fan itself would become very hot ( ie it was trapping heat ), so taking it off would not increase temps.

bugler

I've had a look at the gfx card fan, and it seems to be functioning ok. also, bit of an update here. I was having some problems with IE crashing etcand a couple of other small windows issues, so I reinstalled, a couple of things to note..

The noise is the same.

I haven't had any lockups since the reinstall yesterday evening, and I've been playing CS all morning.

When I run msconfig it tells me its doing a Selective Startup as opposed to a Normal one. No matter how many times I pick normal it wont do it, keeps reverting to Selective. I'm not experienceing any problems at all now apart from the noise, so I'm not exactly pissed off about this, but nevertheless, can anyone make asense out of these goings on?

Gerry

Did you look at the motherboard chipset fan?

Mutz

Bugler, I am Currently having the Identical noise problem as you for about a Year now. Noise at BIOS Start and when Windows Is about to initialise it stops.

When I put my ear close to the Casing, I thought it was the Hard Drive. So About 8 months later I Replaced the old HDD, (IBM 10gig 7200rpm (2 years old???? I Thought they were only out recently???)), With a new Seagate Barracuda 40gig 7200rpm.

I was dead chuffed when The Noise stopped, but about 5 boot ups later it was back!

I am completely Stumped.

p3 500mhz
256mb RAM(64, 64, 128 all 100mhz) Possible Problem? Mixing Ram?
64mb gf2 mx 200
Mobo Unknown (Crap)
gateway BIOS (Crap)

bugler

Took the mobo chipset fan off and replaced it with one from my old kt7A and at boot up it was quiet as a mouse. Seems the problem is sorted, thanks for the help.

Mutz

Where would I Find that and what does it look like?

bugler

It's most likely slap bang in the middle of the mobo and looks like...a fan It's a small ickle one, will be be screwed down. Provided you have one mind, my old dell p3 mobo didn't have or need a chipset fan.

TacT

mutz, have you cleaned your agp's fan/chipset fan/cpu hsf in those 2 years?

I mean mine sounds like a hoover, but I just made it that way and don't mind it personally
Bugler I hope your enjoying the quiet hum that should be eminating from your case without the grinding

bugler

Hmm. No point starting a new thread, so I'll fire away here..

Since the reinstall etc, i think my performance in hl has gone way down. It could be partially imagination. But I used to get a solid 99 fps in CS, with a slight drop when things got really hairy in game. Now, my fps regularly dips down to the region of 50-60 in open areas and so on. I never ran around watching net_graph 3 before, but it feels alot choppier now. I've reinstalled the drivers, disabled vert synch etc, still no change... Shouldn't a duron 1.2 with a 64 mb Herc Kyro 2 be doing better? (I'm sure it was )

Gerry

Should be getting a solid 99 ok, very strange what you are getting now. Maybe theres some tweak or driver you've forgotten to reinstall?

bugler

That's what I thought at first, but everything is as it was beforehand.I never really tweaked it anyway as such. I tried updating the vid card drivers, to no avail. I even checked if the card had somehow been underclocked, it hasn't. I reinstalled hl, no good. Thing is, when I even drop the res to 800x600 the performance is similarly bad. Dropping to 50 ish during fights. All my hl settings are spot on. Direct 3d gives the same result, it used to be much worse than open gl, which I always used. Could it be my mobo AGP controller?

/me scratches my head..

Fidelis

Did you install your mobo agp drivers? (is that what agp controllers are?). I found a moderate increase in performance after installing my agp mobo drivers.

TacT

strange indeed bugler, I just reformatted yesterday myself (got off 98se ->2kpro) and all running smooth on a duron 1100 gf2 pro and I get 99fps constant with dips to 70. Unless I'm on a 32 player server in which case it dips to 55 at worst...

Try disabling power management options for all your devices, i.e if you have a nic go to it's properties and disable it's power saving features, disable your monitor/hdd power down features and you should be back up to 99