PC rebooting / hanging

[Grimspoon]

Hi Guys,

I don’t seem to having much luck at the moment with pc's

Anyway here is my problem...

AMD sempron 2400 + 512 MB 266 RAM Nvidia FX 5200 & a 60 gig HD.

Problem is the PC keeps freezing and then I loose all display and have to manually reboot. Now I have swapped out the ram, changed hard drives and switched over to the on board graphics still keeps happening and I am now stumped. If I boot in safe mode, no problems works like a charm.

Sometimes I can boot, it will go into windows and i will open Outlook for example, the screen will click off and instantly come back on, and its cool. When it does this i have noticed some where on the screen it leaves a black block which goes away if you refresh. Weird! Other times I will boot it up, and 20 seconds later it hangs and screen goes blank! It can do this 10 times in a row and all of a sudden, it will work no problem for hours. Dam its annoying! Any help / advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance

Grim

 

[|tera|]

Power supply unit

 

[sn3rd]

Psu?

Edit: Beaten to the punch by teraside

 

[Grimspoon]

Serious!?

Was the last thing i thought of...Im not sure what PSU i am running, but i have a spare that i will throw in and see if that is the problem.

 

[|tera|]

Psu?

Edit: Beaten to the punch by teraside

Serious!?

Was the last thing i thought of...Im not sure what PSU i am running, but i have a spare that i will throw in and see if that is the problem.

I had the exact same problem on a friends pc, I knew it was the PSU, but after swapping it I decided to do a system overhaul and afterwards it was sorted.

PSU is usually the last thing that gets checked, but is usually the culprit

 

[Grimspoon]

Ive just checked, and it is a 350W psu, the spare i have is a 250w

 

[|tera|]

250W should do the trick still on that system

 

[Grimspoon]

Nope not the PSU, Its still doing the same thing


I guess the only thing it could be now is a faulty motherboard.

 

[|tera|]

Could be the graphics card as well, but I would've bet it's the PSU

 

[hj2k_x]

Or a faulty RAM chip?

 

[Grimspoon]

I have removed the GFX card and reverted to the onboard, same story....RAM i have swapped out with different chips, once again same story.

Only thing that comes to mind in my hour of depression is *dustbin*

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Do it one step at a time.

What happens if you run memtest86+?

Is the CPU cooler seated properly on the CPU? (it must rest flat on the CPU and there must be no gaps).

Does this happen randomly, or during a specific operation?

What happens if you boot up with a Linux live CD (such as Knoppix or Ubuntu)? Does the PC reboot then?

 

[Napalm]

Could be CPU thats overheating, or even South-bridge cooling, Or possible Faulty Power supply (can't keep the power constant)

 

[wcoetzee]

did you say, when in safe mode its fine?

 

[Grimspoon]

I have checked the CPU, it is in place and seated properly... I wonder if it may need some thermal paste. Maybe it is overheating; it is an AMD after all.

It happens randomly, I can be reading mail, or even posting on this forum, and BAM screen switches off and that’s it, hit the reset button

I do have a knoppix live disc lying around; I will give that a go!

 

[Thestealth]

wcoetzee - are thinking "virus", like I am at the moment....?

 

[Grimspoon]

did you say, when in safe mode its fine?

Yeah in safe mode it was fine, didnt play up at all. But then again i was only in safe mode for about 20 mins or so, but who knows it could have been pulling my chain and playing nice, thus selling me the dummy! Bastard computers!

 

[wcoetzee]

get a clean hdd, load winxp on and see if it happens again.
if it runs fine its a virus or maybe driver issue on your original hdd

 

[The_Unbeliever]

get a clean hdd, load winxp on and see if it happens again.
if it runs fine its a virus or maybe driver issue on your original hdd

am thinking the same.

chances are it can be a corrupt device driver as well... or even the swapfile residing on a bad block on the hard drive.

 

[Grimspoon]

get a clean hdd, load winxp on and see if it happens again.
if it runs fine its a virus or maybe driver issue on your original hdd

Yip, one of the first things i did, got a clean HDD, and installed XP....Same thing happens.

As i said, the only thing left is the mother board itself.