HELP!!! AAAAHH my stupid computer..!!

[Kazbadan]

I kno wthat its silly to ask this because a computer its so complex that only a a specific analyse to it will reveal its problems.

Anyway i would like to know if you ever had such  problem too.

maybe in that way i can see better my problem.

Here goes: sometimes i am on the net, playing PC, reading a doc, etc and the computer just stops. Welll, not exactly the computer (you still ear the fans working and the normal noises) but the image freezes and and the computer the programs itself get blocked. YOu cannot do any ctrl alt del or nothing likde that because it will not work.

I think that the graphic its not th eproblem because when i am hearing music and the problem occurs the music stops in the middle..you know when you hearing a music CD thats not good and suddenly the music repeats itself the last frames of seconds..its the same here...so i think that the problem its not the graphic card.


Secondly, when i restart my computer it will not reeinitiate the system. The image gets black and you will hear the normal sounds of the computer working (fan etc) but the computer will not restart. Sometimes i repeat the restart, to see if iam get lucky but its just dont get started. So, if i wait for some long (maybe 10 minutes) it will restart. Sometimes it will restart at the 3rd try.

Do you have any ideas about this?


thanks

[JKK]

might be running too many programs? or an insane amount of spyware lol

[Froglet]

if you're running windows, how old is the computer? and when was the last time windows was installed?  I might also go with the whole spyware thing too.  but myself I like to reinstall windows after so long.

[paint1]

My brother had the same problem.The guy who fixed it found 2 trojens & a lot of spyware. Try Spybot and or House Cleaner, both free.

[Psan]

Looks like a heating problem to me. Your CPU fan is jammed. Just open the covers and let it run, see if the fan _on top of the processor_ is running.

[Kazbadan]

the fan its ok i think

the computer is quiet good with one of the bests graphic cards, power supply very very good, etc.


i dont think trojans can do that and i have some good protections agains many things like anti virus, zone alarm firewall and ad aware antispyware.


thanks anyway

[CaCoDeMoN]

What is the configuration of the computer?
Maybe you could try to reset all BIOS settings to default and it would fix the problem? If the problem will still occur, install Linux and this should fix it if it's a software program. If not, then try replacing graphics card.

[Wronski Feint]

you may have too many programs running in the back ground.

you may have too much stuff on it, try a system restore(read the manual, its the thing where you wipe everything off your computer and restore it the condition you bought it in). DO THIS AS A LAST RESORT!

Your graphics card has nothing to do with perfromence while on the net or stuff like that.  You may have memory issues. or processor issues.

delete all cookies (this helps alot)

defragment the c drive

dont leave it on all night, if you do.

use compressed air and blow the dust off the fan

Delete any un used programs.

[Adun]

I've seen that before, caused by overheating (it makes sense since the temperatures have been high lately). I maybe wrong though...

[Kazbadan]

i will do that tips, thanks..maybe its something with bios. something its saying me that its bios or the hardrive needing a formating.

even so i will take the PC to the shop and see what the technicians say. i asked help here because it will take a month before i can deliver the pc in the shop ( i really need the PC until middle of July...for work).

[Smilodon29A]

It may be overheating. Check the cpu temperature in BIOS.

It may be that the hard drive is failing.

But first of all try system restore, and if that doesn't work reinstall windows.
There is no need to go to the shop before that.

[Froglet]

I agree with smilodon

[patapouf]

Oh yeah, I know what it is when the computer freeze; especially when your typing an essay due in 1 hour and you loose almost 4 pages because of that. It is extremely frustrating (but the stress that goes with it is even worst). I had an old computer that was doing that and it was freezing when I was trying to type things with Alt or Ctrl. We got a new one pretty quick after that.... But to reinstall windows is probably a good solution, don't had to many useless programs, especially if you do not have a lot of memory and if it is an old computer. Anyway, computers are cheap nowadays, you can have a P4 for less than 500$ easily.

Take care,

[Kazbadan]

lol! its not 1 hour...more like 15 minutes..! and its horrible!!

[Seeker of Matter]

I have build my own compute (ordered the parts and put them together myself) and when things "f*ck up" i am forced to deal with them myself and sometimes things f*ck up even more.
when i go into the bios and give my RAM modules some more volts in the believe of that it will bring stability to the system.... that actually just brought a black screen to the system, but that is not important

but if you have bought your computer at a store, i beg you. send the problem to them, then THEY can deal with it and if they f*ck something up it is their responsibility and you can just lean back and do nothing

but if you take pride to fixing everything yourself then you can try this:

if the problem was not there in the beginning (the thing where it will not start up) then you can do what cocademon said, reset the bios. that should fix alot.
at least it sounds hardware related when the computer refuses to start up, that has nothing to do with spyware and unnecessary programs installed on your hard drive, because at that point the harddisk is not even accessed.

so i would recommend to check if the power cables are firmly inserted (especially on your motherboard).

then, if you have two ram modules, try to take one of them out and see if that does anything. in my experience ram modules can by very faulty and cause instability. i have lowered the timings on my RAM modules because otherwise they are unstable.


and then i will recommend you to go to a REAL computer g33k site, as far as i know this is a spiritual forum and i doubt that people fiddle much with computers
sitting around the computer meditation and sending "positive energy" to it will not do much hehe, computers are cold and hearthless

but again, send the annoying thing to the store.

[CaCoDeMoN]

when i go into the bios and give my RAM modules some more volts in the believe of that it will bring stability to the system.... that actually just brought a black screen to the system, but that is not important

You are lucky that you didn't destroyed your RAM modules by that. They are designed to a certain voltage, and when you raise voltage level they will overheat or won't work at all. The same with processor.

About computer freezing without a reason: I've had such problem when I bought Radeon 8500 card. I've tried replacing every part of computer and nothing helped, it seemed that it was gfx card problem. Guess what? Power supply was not good enough. Neither cheap 400W power supply or old 1000W(?) server power supply could provide voltage stable enough for the card. I bought good quality power supplies(400w for mainboard and 400W for hard dives) and everything works fine.
Also old Riva TNT graphic cards seem to cause much stability problems(especially those that are not cooled propely).

sitting around the computer meditation and sending "positive energy" to it will not do much hehe, computers are cold and hearthless

Not always. 20 gb laptop drive started working again after I sent some healing energy to it.

[Seeker of Matter]

You are lucky that you didn't destroyed your RAM modules by that. They are designed to a certain voltage, and when you raise voltage level they will overheat or won't work at all. The same with processor.

well actually even if i had given them too much power the possibility og me actually destroying my modules is relatively low as the system tends to shut down when the modules become unstable due to the increased power.

when you increase the MHz on a cpu you can do that to a point, then the processor becomes unstable, to get pass that state of instability you add more power (volt) to the cpu, this will make the processor capable of running the specified MHz but it will of course also produce more heat hence the increasing need for better cooling
it is the same with ram. if you have a 333 MHz ram module and you overclock it to 400 MHz, you will (in order to achieve stability) have to increase the volts and a small increase in the volts is something most modules can handle. but they of course get warmer.

most computer hardware is actually pretty hard to kill even if you try to, as i wrote before, the system will either just freeze or restart or it won't start up at all if the settings are too extreme, it will not burn down in a sea of flames - that is a myth.
but of course there are cases of cpu's that have died due to overheating and the same with RAM.

EDIT:

sitting around the computer meditation and sending "positive energy" to it will not do much hehe, computers are cold and hearthless

Not always. 20 gb laptop drive started working again after I sent some healing energy to it. Smile

Hahaha, i simply do not believe you  

[Kazbadan]

lol! you guys are saying complicated things..its better to go back to the shop

i almost can feel it...its hardware...board, cpu or harddrive..i dont  bet on the graphic card.

i will try to do some of your advices (the less "dangerous" ones) and try to "survive" for some weeks....only them i can went into the shop (too bus now and i really need the PC..if it goes to the shop i can be without PC for a week and that cannot happen on anyway because of my work/job).

[RooJ]

Kazbadan,
As you said, computers freezing can be caused by almost anything. I had it happening to my machine not so long back, i eventually found the problem was my cd drive. One of the times it locked up i opened up the pc and pulled the ide cable from the cd drive, instantly started working again.
I would suggest creating a windows 98 boot disk from http://www.bootdisk.com, then booting up with it. If it freezes when your using the boot disk you can count out a software issue.

You can also get lots of free software from www.snapfiles.com including tools to check for memory errors and for general system maintenance.
>RooJ

[Kazbadan]

thanks, i will check that out...but i am still convinced about the hardware...

Edit: btwm why shoul i use the boot of win 98? whats the difference?

[Kazbadan]

At 20 minutes ago i was working in th ePC, suddenly he "freezed" as usual.

Then i restarted and something different happened will rebooting: "Overclocking failed" message was apeearing in the restart.

SO must be that the problem..overclock..althought i dont remember doing anyone! strange...anyway, a friend of mine with a computer almost equal to mine (only different memorys and hard drive...everything else its euql, even the board) will come here withing half an hour and will change the settings.

hope it can get to the normal again.

if that its the problem i will be happy. i will report to you later...if you dont see any  message in AP in the next days its because my computer "booom" .

btw, i am wondering how its possible to change the bios settings with no human intervention...a virus?

maybe it was me and i dont remember.

[CaCoDeMoN]

most computer hardware is actually pretty hard to kill even if you try to, as i wrote before, the system will either just freeze or restart or it won't start up at all if the settings are too extreme, it will not burn down in a sea of flames - that is a myth.
but of course there are cases of cpu's that have died due to overheating and the same with RAM.

Maybe not sea of flames, but there can be a good amount of smoke certainly. Once I've seen an Nvidia TNT2 graphics card with GPU completely melted. Newer cards have auto shutdown system, and just turn off if overclocked too much.
I saw a typical "sea of flames" in my computer only once, and it was a faliure of overloaded power supply.

Quote:

sitting around the computer meditation and sending "positive energy" to it will not do much hehe, computers are cold and hearthless

Not always. 20 gb laptop drive started working again after I sent some healing energy to it. Smile

Hahaha, i simply do not believe you

It's your choice.

[Kodemaster]

Hello, Kazbadan:

Try posting your request on www.lockergnome.com in their help forum (click on the "help" link @ the top of the page). There are a lot of helpful and very knowlegeable people there.

If that doesn't work, as a last resort I would try www.plumchoice.com -- they actually tap into your computer (using a form of VNC) and fix it for you. My aunt used it and it worked out really well. I only say do this as a last resort, as it costs around $75 USD/hour if I recall correctly.

Good luck,

Jeni

[Kazbadan]

thanks, i will try that

[dwhite]

I second or third the overheating thing. I would say that it is due to your graphics card. The newer cards draw a tremendous amount of power and can quite toasty
I would suggest looking to make sure your power supply is beefy enough and that you have enough cooling inside the case. The person who recommended taking the cover off and letting some air circulate had a good suggestion. Give it a try as it is the easiest thing to do.

Rule of thumb when trouble shooting a PC. Eliminate the easiest and cheapest possibilities first.