OT:XP crashes

[ejbengine]

I know this is off topic , but thought someone might help.My XP box crashes randomly but very frequently(sometimes up to 4 times a day).I've noticed this happens when I try to do some stuff that demand more resources from the machine...like unzipping large files or scanning for spyware ,etc.I have 1G of RAM and and an AMD Athlon 2000+ processor.Is there any logs I can check?

 

[mancombseepgood]

How does it crash?

Blue screen or just reboots? Blue screens are usually faulty RAM, reboots are often faulty drivers / software. Make sure EVERYTHING is up to date. Run MSCONFIG and remove all programs in the startup tab... test for a bit like this, then if it is OK, using a process of elimination, add a few progs at a time until you find the offending one.

Logs are under control panel, administrative tools, event viewer. Pay particular attention to system and application logs.

 

[Spindrift]

The other day one of my computers started to repeated reboots itself. Prior to that, it would do something similar to what you described - whenever I try to do anything resource intensive (mine was video editing), it just reboots just like that.

I thought I should just make sure all the components are sitting properly etc so I opened up my case. Thats when I noticed that my CPU heatsink was really hot, it was all clogged up with dust. There was about 5mm layer of dust on it. After cleaning this up, and also the dust on the case fan - everything seems to be working fine now. Maybe you could also have a look to see if any component is overheating due to dust etc.

Hope this helps, good luck

Spinz

 

[mancombseepgood]

Yeah - this can definately be a cause - check the temp of the cpu in bios setup

 

[ejbengine]

The other day one of my computers started to repeated reboots itself. Prior to that, it would do something similar to what you described - whenever I try to do anything resource intensive (mine was video editing), it just reboots just like that.

I thought I should just make sure all the components are sitting properly etc so I opened up my case. Thats when I noticed that my CPU heatsink was really hot, it was all clogged up with dust. There was about 5mm layer of dust on it. After cleaning this up, and also the dust on the case fan - everything seems to be working fine now. Maybe you could also have a look to see if any component is overheating due to dust etc.

Hope this helps, good luck

Spinz

Hmmm...I opened my box yesterday before I even saw your response message..and guess what.You're right...the cpu hit sink was clogged up with dust.So was the one on my nvidia gpu.Did a lot of cleaning.Went on to test the RAM using memtest86+ and have seen some errors reported.Right now I took out one 512 module and am running on one 512 module.No reboot so far.Will put the other one back and see what happens.