Confirmation on the fault needed

doran1801 · 27 Jul 2006 at 13:03

my mate brought his pc to me me yesterday saying that it kept on freezing and turning itself off at random times so i had a look and it had so many op system errors i decided to format/reinstall xp after cleaning all dust out inside
but upon doing this it kept on crashing at the point of starting windows in the setup screen every time. i have moved his hd and memory to another pc and it worked fine. my only problem is do i tell him to buy a new cpu or can something on the mobo cause this?

t31os · 27 Jul 2006 at 13:09

If you have another PC you can test with, just test 1 thing at a time, you've tested the RAM and HDD already so thats 2 down, several more parts to go....

Otherwise its speculatino at the moment, which could be pretty much a lot.

Pookie Bear · 27 Jul 2006 at 13:34

My second machine had a similar problem (constant freezing and problems with reformatting) until I popped in an old graphics card and the crashes stopped. No idea why it happened, but the new card worked, so........

Mr Mister · 27 Jul 2006 at 13:53

maybe run memtest as memory errors can cause random crashing.

doran1801 · 27 Jul 2006 at 15:19

sorry to mention that i ran mem test for a few errors with no probs at all. Also i would have tried the cpu in another pc but it is a socket a and i only have 939's in my home so cannot test it but as i said everything in his pc apart from his cpu/modo has been installed on another pc and is working fine

t31os · 27 Jul 2006 at 15:58

Reapply thermal compound and reseat the cpu.

Worth a shot, gives you a chance to see if the cpu looks ok to.

cobxx · 27 Jul 2006 at 15:59

Have you tried another PSU? IT could be that the other one is dying and not able to supply enough constant juice. Assuming you've got a half decent branded PSU, try that and see if it helps things out.

Check the rails in the bios as well to see if any are miles off.