PC freezing during games

[Lee]

My PC has been randomly freezing during games over the last week. If I horse shut down my PC, which is what was originally doing, I don't get any picture back on screen when I try to boot up again unless I leave it off for a while first. I was also getting some post beeps but they didn't seem to resemble any particular pattern, just a constant beep beep beep. I just discovered yesterday though that if I leave my PC alone when it freezes instead of horse shutting down it'll unfreeze after a minute and be fine again for a while.

Originally I thought it was a heat problem, my CPU was reaching around 90C under load so I opened up my PC and noticed the heat sink was full of dust and so cleaned it all out. That dropped my temperatures under load to 70C and boosted my frame rate in games since it must've been throttling before. 70C still isn't brilliant but I think its probably ok for a Pentium 4, Intel say 65C is the optimum so its not much higher than they recommend. My graphics card is also reaching around 70C under load which is fine afaik for a 7900gs.

After cleaning out my CPU and dropping its temperature however, it's still randomly freezing during games and I can't figure out why, anyone have any ideas?

One thing I have noticed is that MSI PC Alert is reading the 5v rail on my PSU as fluctuating between 2.98v and 3.01v and sounding an alarm when it does, might that be causing the problem?

[Dr. kitteny berk]

off the top of my head. could be drivers, could be memory (memtest, as usual), could be something hammering the shit out of your cpu (malware, or an app/driver gone crazy)

I'd try to see if your CPU use changes during the freezes, and what causes it.

process explorer might be handy for that, dunno if it'll do logging though, if not, just use the taskmanger.

[HereComesPete]

One thing I have noticed is that MSI PC Alert is reading the 5v rail on my PSU as fluctuating between 2.98v and 3.01v and sounding an alarm when it does, might that be causing the problem?

The 5v rail should have a voltage of around 5 volts no? This does sound stupid as I write it, but I was under the impression that a rail was meant to stay as close to it's stated rating as possible, regardless of whether it was under load or not, and I assumed that until I started to reply. If this is the case, then your psu needs replacing, the 5v rail helps with stabilization of the cpu on newer cpu's and may run ram, on older motherboards it powers the cpu, which you may fall into the category of.

[buzzmong]

Try drivers, mine was doing that on standard windowz drivers for this SB Live card.

Updated and all was fine.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

The 5v rail

Correct, see also the weekly lectures about good PSUs

[deject]

One thing I have noticed is that MSI PC Alert is reading the 5v rail on my PSU as fluctuating between 2.98v and 3.01v and sounding an alarm when it does, might that be causing the problem?

This is very very bad. Even if it isn't causing the lock-ups (which it probably is) it can slowly kill anything that is using your 5v rail.

[Lee]

I have a 3 year guarantee on this PC which is valid until the 25th of this month so I'm going to get them to replace the PSU. I might aswell see if I can get a new hard drive out of them aswell since it was clicking a few weeks ago and is probably on its way out, don't want that to happen after the guarantee expires.

Hopefully that'll fix it, if not then I'll have to figure out what the real problem is

I did just try memtest and there wasn't any errors but it took about 1 hour and 20 minutes to do one pass. Is that normal for a P4 3.4ghz with 2gb of PC3200 DDR? The ram isn't the stuff that came with the PC so if there's a problem with that I'd have to find out if it has its own guarantee.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

yup, memtest can take fucking ages.

I'd suggest hassling them to replace what you can (obviously, if you're gonna try to get a new hdd, back your important stuff up beforehand)

The problem with your current problem is that it could be many things, but i'd probably work back from recent changes.

[HereComesPete]

Correct

Thought so, I just had one of those moments of, hmm, is what I've thought and presumed for a long time actually wrong? It can't be surely, I've messed around with psu's too much to be that silly.

I wasn't that silly.


Get a new pc, tell them yours is totally fucked and it'll be easier for them to give you a new one if you strategically fuck some other bits up.

[Lee]

They're going to have an engineer phone me back to arrange a time for them to replace the PSU and hard drive

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Woo!

once you have him there, ask about the freezing issue

[Lee]

Woo!

once you have him there, ask about the freezing issue

Well the guy on the phone said thats most likely due to the dodgy rail voltages. The 12v rail is also only operating at 10.8v so thats two rails not working right.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

yup, that's a fuxxed PSU that is.

[deject]

I wouldn't even turn it on at this point, actually.

[HereComesPete]

That, with jangly xmas knobs on (:?) it's just not safe for everything else, did they tell you to not turn it on? I think they should have.

Also, if you happen to turn it on and off lots, you may get a new pc, just remember to disconnect the hdd first!

[Lee]

Yeah, I shouldn't've been playing caek wars and cod 4 on it really

I've took out all my upgraded bits and put the original ones back in incase it decides to blow up and also because I have no idea if the guarantee allows upgrading.

I'm backing up all my stuff now and am going to leave it off until it gets fixed. I'll tell the engineer that the dodgy PSU may have damaged other components and that they should give me a new core 2 PC

[Lee]

Still waiting for this to be fixed

First I had to wait 10 working days for an engineer to phone, I had to phone them on the 10th working day to complain that he hadn't and then he phoned a few days later saying he'd come this thursday. They just phoned today saying they're waiting for the parts to be delivered and it'll be another week, I bet they'll say the same thing next week...

[HereComesPete]

28 working days for repairs my man, if they fall outside this, full refund tiem is go. So hope they drag their heels a bit, then you can ask for your monies, they'll have to give you what you paid originally I think, so that will get you a kickass new system.*






*may be wrong, but I'm about 75% sure on this.

[Lee]

Well they sent an "engineer" this morning while i was at uni and gave him a laptop hard drive to fit to my desktop pc... He told my parents he doesn't really know anything about computers, he just knows how to put parts in. He did change the PSU though which made things worse. At first it was booting up at 800x600 in 4 bit colour and rebooting itself in under a minute and now its just not turning on at all. When it was at least getting into windows I managed to check the voltages of the new PSU, they were almost as bad as the old PSU.

I've emailed them asking for them to either send out an experienced engineer to fix it or they can pick it up to repair or replace the PC, since the engineer also said that the Medion support hotline costs 50p a minute yet they don't tell you, it's probably cost us more than the crappy psu they gave us

[Dog Pants]

Note to self: keep building and supporting my own machine.