Computer help

[David]

In that situation, I'd definitely say it's the motherboard. Do you think it overheated?

I am not sure, but it was working all day. This was at the end of the day, so it could have. I found one on eBay and it comes with the same processor, so I bought it. I guess I will be out of my own computer for some time.

[Hermskii]

Crap! I was going to say it is the power supply. They have testers you can buy for them for around 15 dollars at electronic stores. The problem is almost never the mobo. It is always the power supply or unseated ram or wrong ram. Can you cancel the purchase? I just saw this post tonight.

[David]

Crap! I was going to say it is the power supply. They have testers you can buy for them for around 15 dollars at electronic stores. The problem is almost never the mobo. It is always the power supply or unseated ram or wrong ram. Can you cancel the purchase? I just saw this post tonight.

Well it was an eBay purchase and they already marked as shipped so...... nope. I guess I will see what is bad. The auction is for the motherboard with the processor. So.. I will be able to swap out the motherboard and the processor if needed, and if they don't work, then it is the power supply. If it is the motherboard, then I will have a spare AMD Athlon 64X2 .

[David]

I got the "new" motherboard today. I plugged in the bare essentials to see if it would power up and it did. That is good. I then decided to take the "new" processor off and use mine (which is the same type of processor) but I wanted to verify that my processor was still functional. I then put in my processor on the "new" board and it booted up. I then put the computer back together and it is working. . I am grateful that I have my own computer again. So it was the motherboard and I was able to find one that would work. That is nice.

[Hermskii]

And there it is then. Hmmm. Odd.

[David]

Well since the "new" motherboard came with the processor and heatsink, I decided to try the heatsink, which is a stock heatsink for that processor.

AMD-AM2-4200.jpg

I ran the computer with the stock heatsink for most of the day, but I decided to replace the stock heatsink with the heatsink I bought years ago when I built my computer, back in 2007.

Zalman.jpg

The Zalman heatsink keeps the processor about 20 degrees cooler than the stock heatsink. I am sticking with the Zalman. Just fyi, the Zalman information is the following: ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835118019

But again, I am just grateful that I was able to find the same motherboard and the computer is up and running again. After I pay off some bills, I plan on getting a newer computer.

[Hermskii]

That fits in a case? really? Cool!

I have a ATI 9800 Pro video card in a friends PC. That PC has a crazy looking cooler too.

[Dr.Flay]

If you are seeing random colours, lines or blocks, this is most likely over-heating or hardware failure.
Always try removing and cleaning and replacing the RAM and GFX card first.
Can you get the temperature of the GFX card/chip ?
Are the RAM sticks matched pairs ?
Check they are running at their correct speed.
"Auto" setting in the BIOS often makes the BUS speed and RAM speed the same.
Sometimes it is better to set the frequencies and timings manually.
Use PC Wizard to inspect your RAM and check what speeds they are rated for.
http://www.cpuid.com
You could also use the RAM test, while you have it open

Speedfan is my choice of monitoring software. I can even have it lower the frequency of my old 32bit desktop if the temperatures raise above my limits. It currently just changes the fan speeds (it can do both together).
http://www.almico.com
It also has a "DELL" switch that allows it to function on DELL notebooks.
Speedfan can log your voltages as well as temperatures and fan speeds.
You can watch the graph of your voltages and watch for any wild variances.

BTW. DirectX 9c is not the "final" version as such. They released many monthly 9c versions for a long time.
Several media-players require you update to a newer 9c distro, and will actually tell you, rather than just fail (the first time many people realise they need to update).
https://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=35

Also you can over-ride the allocated GFX RAM on those awful onboard intel chips (you should have been able to enable 128 MB), either in the BIOS or via the control panel app.
NOTE! intel disabled some OpenGL HW functions years ago and still don't switch them on.

NOTE. On any PC that is repeatedly failing, you must minimise background tasks and services you use, or you will keep getting disk errors.
Disable drive indexing and any desktop search tools and google services.
A very handy little tool to manage the startup entries can be used to disable, delete or move anything you think may regularly access the drive.
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

Ultimate Boot CD contains many diagnostic tools you can test the hardware with, without risking corrupting the drive.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com

[David]

Sometimes I get tired of using old, worn out, unattended to computers at my job so sometimes I will try to do some minor cleaning on them to help them out. I will uninstall outdated program or programs we no longer use, check the startup task, I will run malwarebytes scans, and basic stuff as that. I then will defrag the hard drive towards the end.

Well, this one computer has been neglected for a long time. After I did some cleaning I tried to use the Microsoft disc defrag (standard tools on XP), but when I saw how S....L....O......W the defrag program was loading, note it did not fully load the graph. I decided that I will install Auslogic Disk Defrag, a program I use on my family's Windows 7 computers. Normally Auslogic is QUICk, but ......................................

a.JPG

6 HOURS and 20 MINUTES later on a 250 gb hard drive it was finally done. That was crazy. The computer was not being used during that time.

My kids computer has a larger hard drive and Auslogic completes that scan within 3 minutes. I know my kids computer is a current computer is 10 better than the one I am cleaning, but dang. My computer is an older computer and I have 750 gb worth of hard drives and XP defrag completes both of my hard drives under 6 minutes.

I just thought that it was crazy. I Know the XP defrag would have taken longer than Auslogic, but to me that was unexpected.

[Dragon]

Well could be the cpu too
Once they get real hot they shut down
One way to check is is take all the hardware out, like the except the vid card.
and if you have another HD swap with the one you got in there and see what happens.

and if that's a real old MB then maybe it is time for that to be replaced
just trying to help hope you figure it out good luck

[Hermskii]

Maybe it hit some bad sectors. I'd always run a scan-disk before a defrag. Runn ccleaner with default settings unless you know what you are doing before the scan-disk for that matter. LOL