PC Random Lockup Problem

GreenMint

GreenMint

GreenMint

Soldato
Joined
11 Dec 2003
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Hey guys, i built my gf's uncle a pc a while back for his photography, and the books that he's writing:

Sempron 3000 on Abit NF7-S board
1gb Geil Value DDR PC3200
60GB HDD
His old PCI SCSI & Parallel Cards (3 printers & SCSI Scanner)
Antec Sonata case w/ psu that came with it
Basic ATI 64MB gfx card

Basicaly a week ago he had a massive HD crash, still trying to recoup his data, but i fitted him a new HDD, went for a 160GB Samsung Spinpoint, nice & quiet!

The main problem is, that he is now experiencing random lockups, just every now & again, word will pop into not responding, then the pc will freeze & lockup, i've been looking around and heard something about NF7 northbirdge fans causing issues, i admit when i was rebuilding it it did seem a little...stationary, so i gave it a blow, got all the dust out and it spun up and toggled off on its merry way, is there a chance this could be happening again though and be attributed to his problems? Wasn't sure how hot the NB on that system would get (80mm fan front, 120mm back, stock AMD cooler) but is there a chance this could be causing it, it twigged to me it would be that or the memory? But what annoys me is the amount of testing i put the system through before giving him it and now its happened within 3 days of him having it, and much more than once apparently.

Help me OcUk, you're my & his only hopes! ;)
 
Ivan Drago said:
Help me OcUk, you're my & his only hopes! ;)
Click to expand...
Hi Ivan (lol, "I will break you"),

Looks like decent kit you got there. Could be a load of possible reasons for the problems, hmm. . . .

1) Northbridge overheating, replace it with the blue Zalman passive
2) Memory Problem
3) Overheating CPU
4) Failing PSU
5) Etc. . .


I would run a few diagnostics, like an 8mill Super-PI, a bit of Prime95, Memtest (from floppy/CD) Hard disk diagnostic etc

get your fingers inside the machine and have a feel for anything burning hot and let us know how u get on . . Patience, you will get it sorted! :)
 
Thanks mate, yeah i have a coule diagnostics things ready for next time i go down there (Wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't pretty much a 50 mile round trip) i loaded sisoftsandra and cpu temps wern't going over anything silly, i think under 45c at all times, The only thing i know right now is he wants to lose the SCSI & parallel cards and finally buy a scanner made within the last 15 years (Not kidding, some giant hp scsi scaner, bigger than A3 but scans A4) i have a spare nforce 2 board sitting in storage at home, not sure whether to just lash that in there quickly to see how he goes with that, or convince him to buy a mac and get him out of my hair for good! (Although the £200 cheques each time are nice)


The PSU seems fine, i had it on for a day or two here and it seemed fine, i ran some diagnostics, thought of every program he'll use, opened 3 of each tabbing through them all and it all seemed fine, he just seems to enjoy calling for help! lol, so i'm passing the buck this time! ;)
 
Ok, well, as an update, i'm pretty sure his NB fan is buggered, and he called this morning saying he went for a phone call for an hour, came back and it had frozen and needed a restart, only thing i'm not sure about is the amount/location of AS5 needed to get a cooler on the northbridge working fine. I guess i'll take him some extra RAM down too! :)

Also, his crashes do seem to be whenever he leaves it unnatended, which is making me think memory or that bloody dodgy N7F-S NB fan :) If anyone has, again, any advice on how much AS5/where it needs to be, just so i can be sure, would love to hear from you! :D
 
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Zalman ZM-NB47J Northbridge Cooler
SY-007-ZA_400.jpg


Overclockers.co.uk are out of stock of this atm, but you should be able to pick one up if u look around! It will perfectly on the NF7 but it helps if you take the mobo out the case while fitting it. . .

But to be honest I can't imagine that a failed fan on the stock NB-HSF could crash the pc, something like that would hold back an uber overclock maybe but locking the PC up? :confused:
 
Yep, i have a heatsink v similar to the zalman that i took off another unused Nforce2 board chipset, so if its good enough for that and then i can head down tomorrow and help out asap :)

I know what you mean though about thinking that may not be the thing causing it, which is why its worrying me as i really want him to (obviously) have no hassles, he's i think 77, pretty pc literate and thats nice to see, just hate for him to have hassles with it all, i guess i'm just trying to work down from the most obvious problem (failed fan) etc..

I'm thinking a 300/350W psu should be ok for it all, there's nothing overly powerful in there then i can run down with a batch of spares (RAM, mobo, NB passive cooler, PSU) And try to get something sorted for him.

:confused:
 
Just a quick update, instead of going for a new board he decided to spent £450 on a new system for me to build for him *Jealous of the old man with dual core* So i have the pc here and am just trying to figure it for the hell of it, removed the NB fan, cleaned it, put some AS5 on, and checked, spinning, check, system boot, check, works fine, check, leave the pc doing nothing for 5 mins, crash!

Absolutely baffling, if the NB was overheating then surely it would definitely crash when doing something, but it is locking up when idle, Screensaver off, power saving off, hibernation off, i'm just really confused as to what is going on with it, tried shifting memory, ||X Crash |X| crash, trying XX| right now and...no crash yet but i'm sure its coming!!

This is so confusing!
 
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