Hardware stuff

[kippies]

Im posting this in windows though it is applicable to any set up- its a hardware issue.

i do the maintenance thing most of the time- run adaware/spybot/virus checker etc but recently my older (Athlon 2800XP) rig became usntable- BSOD, locked up Xp etc...

Having run every scanner I now of it was still an issue- adaware kept balking and I was fairly convinced I had some software nasties. Pandascan locked the system after about 20% of a check . i was tearing my hair out.

Then I noticed that it was processor intensive tasks seemed to be locking the system, I regularly clean the system of physical crud (in fact the side is off to allow more regular cleaning)- however after inspecting deeply I found the heat sink attached to the processor had a fan blowing air through it and down onto the heat sink. Never thought of removing it before now 5 mins and a screwdriver later..... - when I removed the fan it had about 1/4 of an inch of crud on the heat sink- preventing the fan circulating air round the CPU- cleaned it out, rebooted and its been running for 5 days solid ever since- before it was crashing out after an hour and taking 20 mins to reboot- crashing on flash anims, crashing when encoding DVDS etc....

CLEAN YOUR FANS/HEAT SINKS PEOPLE ESPECIALLY ON OLDER SYSTEMS

:icon_thum

[Mels_Smileys45]

Good observation. I cleaned a few of my fans off about a month ago after I noticed a lot of dust clogging up two of them. I have five fans total on my rig, lol. I like to keep it as cool as possible. I have two small fans sucking in air on the front of my pc and they blow right across the hard drive, the cpu fan - which has a funnel vent that sucks in air also, a large fan on the back that sucks out air and a fan on the GPU. I don't count the fan in the power supply that sucks out air too. If that doesn't keep it cool then screw it!

I guess its good to check the CPU temp from time to time if your PC is running like hot poop down a wet wall. Way to go in solving your problem!

[kippies]

Good observation. I cleaned a few of my fans off about a month ago after I noticed a lot of dust clogging up two of them. I have five fans total on my rig, lol. I like to keep it as cool as possible. I have two small fans sucking in air on the front of my pc and they blow right across the hard drive, the cpu fan - which has a funnel vent that sucks in air also, a large fan on the back that sucks out air and a fan on the GPU. I don't count the fan in the power supply that sucks out air too. If that doesn't keep it cool then screw it!

I guess its good to check the CPU temp from time to time if your PC is running like hot poop down a wet wall. Way to go in solving your problem!

yeah if id have checked the CPU temperature i would have saved myself a world of hurt. I thought my rig was cooled but the crud on the heat sink screwed that :icon_cycl- best to monitor the CPU temp for spikes-