noodles

ok so i have two computers, a desktop and a laptop.
both are now broken in some form and since i'm not quite experienced enough to diagnose properly and apply correct fixes, i was looking for some input.

problem 1) my laptop suddenly developed a problem about two weeks back. i'm a gamer and i was playing WoW. i'd been playing for two solid hours very smoothly with no problems when suddenly there was a lot of choppy video and my laptop suddenly powered down. no reboot. it was like i held down the button to force it to turn off, but i didn't. i've had overheating problems in the past and i don't believe this to be the (direct) cause. usually when i reboot after a overheating problem, i get a message about it. since i had the problems a long time ago, also, i purchased a cool pad which is just a pad with fans to help cool down the laptop. no problems since i bought and used it. i have absolutely no clue about this one -- dell won't help me since my warranty ran out. its not just a WoW problem because it happens on anything which requires intense memory access or processing like watching DVDs and such.

problem 2) one day a long time ago my desktop fan gave out. i'm running an AMD and they run hot. i wasn't around at the time, so apparently it kept going for like 2 days and didn't power itself down. now the slave HD isn't working properly (it used to), things are running very slowly in general (mostly the OS -- random programs will run fine but swapping processes and doing simple things like looking at the start menu are slow and balls) hough there's nothing else running (i'm certain), and it also randomly powers down like my laptop does. i'm almost positive its just a processor issue, but i'm low on the $$$ and i don't want to buy a processor to find out its not just that. i'm thinking of buying a lower grade AMD and another stick of ram anyway. any comments? could the motherboard have been affected? or the HD?

any help would be appreciated. and you don't have to talk down to me in case anyone feels like they need to, just because i'm asking opinions doesn't mean i don't know what i'm talking about

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MooseMan3000

Well, with both cases, I was immediately going to point at overheating...

Since you ruled that out for the laptop, however, have you considered your power source? And by that, I mean from the wall. Do you have the laptop in a power strip? If so, what else is on it that might cause a surge? Big things like refridgerators drain a lot of juice when they flick on, and that's been known to cause that sort of problem. I wouldn't think this would be an issue with a laptop, since it has a battery, but it might not switch to battery immediately. Could also be power surges in the building. Something to look into, maybe.

As for the desktop, I'm actually leaning towards the motherboard rather than the processor. While I would think the processor would run into problems before the motherboard in your case, the symptoms you're describing sound more like a mobo that's on its way out.

Or it could be your power source (this time I mean the one in the computer). Have you tried, for example, switching the molex connectors between the slave and master hard drives? Or unplugging some optical drives, etc... I'm not sure exactly what you have running, but I've seen power sources go bad and cause issues like that before.

It could also be the hard disk, but if that overheated, chances are you wouldn't be able to access it at all. I think you would know if you were having a hard drive failure.

noodles

yeah, its possible there's a short right where the source plugs into the laptop, but would it really happen only at peak useage? it seems kind of odd that it only happens when i'm using things at max performance, and then it goes for a while and then cuts off. yes, its on a power strip. and i'm pretty sure if it was power just going out, it would switch to battery. i've had surges and outages in the apartment and the thing went to battery immediately.

its possible, i suppose. but this is the part that i was talking about -- i don't particularly feel like buying a new mobo and having the processor be the problem and i don't have any spare parts (cept a HD) to test with, unfortunately.
i have no real reason to suspect the power source. the only thing that i have plugged into the computer when it powers off is a keyboard. it doesn't do it at any predictable moment -- it could be idle or it could be in the middle of some serious processing and file i/o.
i can access the one with the OS on it, but the storage one (it was cheap) appears to be busted. or somehow majorly corrupted. i'm going to reformat it to see if i can still use it soon.

thanks for the quick response, btw.

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Dilbert1234567

The laptop, the CPU may not have overheated, but the GPU may have.

Just a dumb question did you run check disk on the drive? And there are some programs designed to recover data, give them a try too

Get data back is one and bad copy pro is another, get data back has a free trial where you can’t retrieve the data but you can search to see if it is there.

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noodles

i don't really think thats an issue either, with the GPU. the thing has the ability to shut off within 30 seconds of me doing stuff. or i could make it longer. today i was playing wow for 15 minutes before it shut down on me.


also, i don't care about the data on the slave hard drive. in fact, i'm reformatting the thing now to see what'll happen.
i'm just looking for one computer or the other to play wow on with minimal $$$ invested

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noodles

update on the desktop: been trying to play around with it and it's been working fine-ish. suddenly it freezes, i reboot it and it tells me the CPU fan isn't running. it is definitely running, i'm staring at it twirling right now. i load and it shows me a BAD_POOL_CALLER error. i'm gonna run memtest86.

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noodles

trying to reboot to create a kernel dump file and i get a PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA error.

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MikeSty

I think your desktop mobo is having issues. People don't realize how bleeping hot it is right off the surface of the mobo! I don't really know how else to diagnose memory and HDD problems :-/

noodles

well i've run memtest and my ram came across 1461 errors. i'm no expert on the size of ram problems, i don't know if this is a "huge" problem, one that would cause my issues. but i do know that bad ram is something that can cause some of the problems i described. i'm going to test out the laptop next.

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noodles

re-ran memtest several more times and i've come up with 0 errors every one of those times.
thinking mobo now also.

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MikeSty

OK, if you got 1400 errors the first time around, I'd say something is up?

noodles

it could concievably have been a motherboard glitch, or even a cpu glitch. i mean, it basically said all addresses past a certain point near the end were bad and then stopped running. this time around its not hit any errors and has circled around re-testing 13 times so far. only did it once last time.

also, my cpu fan kind of sputters sometimes, makes weird noises. slows down and speeds up. but its working just fine right now and has been all day.

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noodles

17th full iteration of the memtest86 turned up 7510 errors -- right at the same time that the fan started going nuts. and just like before, it was at the end of the end of the memory addresses, from one point on until the very end. and it froze at this point, also. never finished the diagnostic cycle it was on.

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noodles

i was playing with it again today and it was doing the usual stuff, except after one of the power downs, the power supply never game back on. i couldn't turn the machine on in any form for about 5 minutes and then i could again.

i've found someone who's selling spare parts, thinking about buying one at a time to figure out what the problem is.

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WillyPete

Have you been adding drives or cards over the past year?
If so you may have exceeded the power supplied by the PSU.

AMDs are famous for needing a lot of power and going wonky when you add one or two extra cards or upgrade your video card.

Try unplug some of the cards and drives you don't need.
Get a decent fan for the CPU. (Zalman, Gigabyte et al)
Check you bios to see if the fan is set to variable - ie: changing speed to meet higher temps.
And set it to a static speed and learn to put up with the extra decibels.

noodles

no. this is a problem that arose out of nowhere about a year and a half ago. no upgrades or changes or extra cards at all since i built it. since then i haven't touched it.

ran the desktop for a solid year and a half without upgrading it (it was top of the line for a while) or adding anything new or having overheating problems or having PSU problems.
:-/

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Martian

I'm almost certain that this is a motherboard issue. Since you're able to monitor your fan speed in the BIOS (or so I'd assume based on above posts) the fan is also probably drawing power from the board. If the fan goes all wonky at the same time that you start getting crazy memory errors, your northbridge may be cooked. If that's the case you'll need a new motherboard almost for certain.

What sort of board do you have? If you aren't running it already get motherboard monitor and that way you can get an idea what sort of temperatures your cpu and mobo are putting out. Anything under 60 on the CPU is peachy, although I don't like going over 50 myself. For the motherboard 65 is really your outer limit, but heat isn't generally an issue on them.

Finally, have you done any overclocking? It should go without saying but make sure everything's running at default speeds and voltages.

EDIT - also, that would cause drive issues, since the drives go through the southbridge, which connects through the data bus to (you guessed it) the northbridge. All in all, I'm highly suspicious of your motherboard right now.

And as far as the laptop goes, your hardware will overheat in seconds without proper cooling, so don't rule that out. Do you get any other issues, or is it just constant shut downs? That can be hard to narrow down without hands on testing.

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noodles

i think i'm going to buy a nice new mobo off of a friend for $50 or so for testing purposes, i think.
no overclocking, haven't run motherboard monitor but i will asap to check it out.

the laptop gets really sluggish after a while. i've just gotten through doing some cleanup and fixes, i haven't gotten the chance to test and see if i've fixed anything yet.

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