I really need help with this computer that is locking up on me.

[myronman]

Currently, the computer has the following equipment:

AMD TBird at 1.4ghz
512 megs of ram
2 160 gig hard drives
1 40 gig hard drive
64 meg AGP video card
Soundblaster Live Sound Card
2 NICs

Before this current build, I had the following:
5 40 gig hard drives
1 160 gig hard drive
and the rest of the equipment was the same.

With the old system, after about a few days of running it, the video card burned up (too much heat, waay too much with 6 hard drives and no real good cooling case). So I replaced the video card and all was good. Untile I ran system restore in windows xp. After I ran system restore, the computer began locking up on me. I then un-restored it, and the computer continued to lock up on me. This was the point that I figured the head was the cause of the problem. I put in the current configuration as stated above and started the computer up (I replaced the video card again to the one in the above system specs).

Now my problem is this, the computer will run for a while and then it will freeze. I still get the windows screen, no blue screen or error messages, the computer just locks up. I have replaced the power supply. Stripped it down to one known good ram chip. Taken the sides off the case, and I am still getting system lock-ups. I am at my wits end on this one, becuase it makes no sense at all. I am using the utility vcool on the computer so that I can see what the processor temperature is looking like too. One thing that seemed funny to me was that the temp went from about 37C and then when I rebooted after a lock up, the temp was at about 53C when the computer tool started again. Could I need to replace the fan on my computer? Or remount it? I don't see how this could have happened, but it's either the cpu or the motherboard, becuase I have replaced everything else that usually causes a problem in this situation, and according to other forums that I have seen on here.

HELP!!

One last thing, the computer locks up during Idle time/when I'm not running programs in the background or anything.

[ktkendall]

Sounds like a hardware device is causing the problem. Have U checked event viewer to see if it is logging anything in there under system, or applications that may give you a clue??

[Cricket]

Are you running the computer with the case side on or off?

How many case fans does your computer have?

What kind of background programs do you have running on your system?

Cricket

[myronman]

Okay,

Background programs that I'm running:

Serv-U Ftp server
Mcafee
Msn Money 2004

Those are the major ones. All of these programs worked fine before I added the hard drives in the computer though, so I don't know if that can be an issue.

One other thing that could be the issue is that I ran a system restore and it appeared that the problems started happening when I did that. Could it be a ms windows issue? Something that got broken when I did the restore? I've checked the system heat in the bios and the processor heat never gets above 47 degrees celsius. Should I try to wipe the os and re-install it? At this point, I'm ready to replace the motherboard and the processor and case and rebuild, because that's the only thing that I have not tried. I'm at my wit's end on this one. It seems to me like a hardware issue, but I could be mistaken. Any other ideas what it could be? This morning I turned it on, and it lasted a few minutes before it froze up on me. I have the case sides off of the computer, so when it froze up, I smelled the distinct smell of very hot silicon. It could be heat related, or I could have burned up the motherboard and it's doing something odd too.

[geeman]

So what happened? I'm in the same sort of boat. Just be cruising along and get a freeze up. Doesn't seem to matter which program. I'm leaning towards a disk wipe and reinstall everything...don't look forward to it, so if you've got any tips they would be appreciated.

[Cricket]

Originally posted by geeman So what happened? I'm in the same sort of boat. Just be cruising along and get a freeze up. Doesn't seem to matter which program. I'm leaning towards a disk wipe and reinstall everything...don't look forward to it, so if you've got any tips they would be appreciated.

Start a new thread to get help with this problem.

And post your complete system specs, the OS you're using and any background programs you have running on the system.

Cricket