Damn problem PC

scotty365

scotty365

scotty365

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25 Nov 2009
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Rotherham Need: GHz
I built a PC over a year ago for a friend at work and had problems with it coming back over and over again.

It was built from new except the GFX card.
It had the mobo RMA'd 2 months ago (BIOS problems)
I put a new HD in 2 weeks ago. (after windows corrupted repeatedly)
It's been tested and all components swapped out over the last 14 months.

Problem is that windows keeps checking for file errors during start-up, also reporting corrupted files. Everything can be fine for a few weeks then suddenly it starts hanging/stalling and doing checks which gradually gets worse resulting in failure to boot 9 times out of 10. Sometimed random BSOD's occur.

I'm at a loss as to what can possibly be wrong - I suspected user induced problems but it seems unlikely owing to the nature of the issues.

Can anyone suggest anything that I might be missing?

Thanks
 
'all components swapped out'... does this include RAM? I think the problem is the random BSOD's as this can effectively corrupt the Windows installation if it happens too often so I would look at this first. Have you looked at the event viewer? Perhaps even disable auto restart so your mate can note down the stop code. Have you set the voltages and timings manually for the RAM as 'Auto' can be a little hit and miss at times. Also what type of PSU is it running and have your Overclocked it?
 
viruses? what software is used on the machine, and what is the machine used for?
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The computer is just for browsing and not over-clocked. No software installed except Kaspersky (KIS). It has had no virus problems detected and AFAIK he only visits autotrader, ebay and facebook!

'all components swapped out'... does this include RAM?
Click to expand...

Not exactly! The RAM has been stress tested for hours but I'm going to set the voltage manually (Timings are as rated). You may have hit something there as the rated vDIMM is 2.1v on the sticks and was getting 1.8v on auto - I would have thought the RAM stress tests would have highlighted any problems but it's worth a shot.

The PSU is a Silver Power 500W (probably not much better than a generic) I've got my multimeter out now doing a few tests - I have done this before and found no problems with voltages but a multi-meter can't detect all possible problems anyway (Oscilloscope might help but it will take time). I'm going to drop a different one in and see how it goes.

As the mobo did have a serious BIOS problem before RMA, I guess I need to go through everything again as I can't be sure which problems were caused by what.

Have you looked at the event viewer? Perhaps even disable auto restart so your mate can note down the stop code
Click to expand...
I didn't think to use the event viewer and I have done a fresh O/S now, I'll remember that and try to get the stop codes (although I have never found the codes much use in the past it must be worth a try).

Only thing to do now is wait for it to fail - this can take weeks sometimes!

Thanks for the suggestions :)
 
If you get BSODs it's best to dive into the system settings in windows and stop it automatically restarting. That way the BSOD will stay on screen and you can see what it is without going through the logs.

It's possible its memory related and if the machine is crashing constantly files can get corrupted this way. If you can post what the BSOD says we can help further
 
Well, I just had something of a breakthrough - I was working on the machine when I suddenly locked up. Intuition keeps saying its a memory problem and so after rebooting I gave the slightest of touches to the first memory module and it locked up immediately.
I have swapped them into the other slots now and can now touch the modules without any problems....

After all this time it may well be dodgy RAM
 
try booting with only 1 stick in each time and run memtest to verify each stick of ram, i recently had a problem like that with my new ram, each stick worked, but the mobo wouldnt support all the sticks in the slots at the same time
 
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