PC crashing all of a sudden!

mattyfez

mattyfez

mattyfez

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Joined
12 Apr 2007
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Hi all, any Ideas with the below?

My Pc (in sig) has been running fine for months and months, and it crashed last night. I was playing need for speed shift, when I Alt-tabbed out to burn a CD with nero, after the disk finished. I forgot about the game running and was surfing the net when it happened.

The screen just went black, Pc still seemed to be running, lights and fans still on. Now it keeps crashing in the same way after about 10 mins of running, weather just ideling, surfing net or playing game. I cant boot into safemode either, it hangs on the checking screen!

I did get an overclock failed POST message a few times (not all), so I reset to a lower clock with no joy and then to factory default (forgetting that my ram voltage would have been reduced to default, mines rated at 2.1 iirc) - same crash after a few mins in windows.
So then I put the overclock back on (had it saved as a bios profile) and it ran fine for a while, I even played NFS again for about 10 mins and then- you guessed it - crash!

Anyway, I was getting annoyed by this point so I left it and thought I'll deal with it tomorrow. I thought I would try and test the ram first, any ideas anyone?
 
Thanks, I cleaned it out not long back, I wont be dust, and I doubt its a temp issue -although ive not actually run any temp checks since it crashed - will put this on my list of things to check.
 
I'd check Temps first & if they are Ok then I would run Spyware scan etc.
If temps & no spyware/virus I'd start pulling my Ram out & trying a stick on its own.
 
Lets hope not Fred!! :(

ok well im on it now, running at 3ghz, running a full array of security scans,
Hijack this has come up clear apart from the other scans it has detected - malware bytes, avg and spybot. I ran Ccleaner last night also.

Temps are a little warm for this clock speed, hottest core is 50c, but I am running 3 scans. the temps on the GPUs are sitting around 50-60c so thats fine for what is essentialy idle.

PC has been running for a good half hour now... bloody thing!

now I wait for the scans to complete... :(

On the plus side I can get into safemode now... dunno what was going on with that last night!
 
Last edited:
Oh dear, it looks like fred might be right.

Im on myback up PC now, as the other one crashed in the same way as described above before the scans could finish.

This time when it crashed, i noted the GPU fan was spinning fast, out of curiosity i removed the DVI cable, and the fan immediantly span down to idle, then a replaced it, and it span back up again. Then I rebooted with the DVI cable attached to the other DVI-out on tha graphics card - wouldnt even boot up, just lots of rowdy fan noise.

I swapped back again to the DVI out that i always use and when rebooted I got a BIOS error beep: dash, dot, dot, dot.

A quick google reveals:
1long, 3short. No video card or bad video RAM. Reseat or replace the video card.

This card has onboard power supply indicator lights, which are still green as they should be, and the mobo's PCI indicator LED is not lit up red indicating no PCIE fault - have seen it red before when card not sat properly.

Ive re-fitted the card and checked internal connections etc, nothing seems wrong.

What do you reckon guys? FUBAR video card?
 
If everything is running ok, then I would try running another game or a graphics benchmark to see how it gets on.
 
Well thats the thing, it wont even boot now, ive tried a good number of times :(
pc lights and fans come on, but the fans just keep spinning fast, no display at all.

Strangely I only got the bios error beep twice, now nothing.
I really need to swap out the graphics card I think, unfortunatly my spare machine is AGP, I will have to try and sweet talk a friend into lending me one I think :(
 
Looks like I wrote that too quick :(

My 8800GTX that is currently on RMA - the card physically looked like it was running ok (fan running etc..) however on bootup I would get no display at all until it got into windows, then it would have bad artifacts and cause lots of os issues. Got a few blank screen issues too, such are you describe.

Its almost like these cards fail to cool properly once they age a bit, I found running it at 100% fan speed when I was playing games added to the life a bit, however its finally given up and on RMA.
 
There could be something in that - when I was testing this morning, GPU-Z was consistently displaying one GPU was at about 50c and the other was at about 60c over half an hour.

This is strange because this card has always had temps of about 70c-80c regardless of idle/load once its warmed up from a cold start.
 
fastwunz said:
reset the bios - just try it
Click to expand...

Thanks for all the help so far...

Well, just done that, after intital joy, (it worked for a few mins) I got into windows fine, got onto internet and window update decided to rear its ugly head (how does it always know to bother you at the worst time?)and then it crashed in the same way. :(

Rebooted and got the error beep again -...
 
Thanks for the help guys,

Turns out it is the graphics card, I borrowed an 8600gt from a friend, and no crashing,
I did some testing with 3dmark 06 - the 8600 was fine, my gx2 crashed halfway through, with the same GPU error beeps on reboot.

Currently sorting out an RMA with BFG - I wonder what replacement card they will supply? any ideas how they work these things out?
 
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