PC will not fold now?

oceaness · 1 Nov 2006 at 16:18

I have a PC here that has been folding at stock speeds for ages and now all of a sudden it's started crashing when Fah is running. It's still at stock.

Temps seems to be ok. It's an Athlon XP 1800 I think or something similar. I Can get exact CPU details if it's relevant.

One thing I have noticed is that when I stop the Fah service, task manager shows System Idle Process @ 99% however the task manager graph actually shows it jumping around above 50% and Speedfan also shows between 60 and 70% CPU usage. :confused:

Any ideas?

Joe42 · 1 Nov 2006 at 17:39

Run sp2004 on it to check stability, see if its a folding problem or a general stability problem.

Check something isn't cooking due to being gummed up with dust or dead fan bearings or something.

SiriusB · 1 Nov 2006 at 22:28

Might want to do the customary Anti Virus/Spyware scans too. Maybe something is lurking.

SiriusB

oceaness · 1 Nov 2006 at 23:00

The machine is clean. No dust.

I think it's probably general stability cause theres clearly something wrong even when folding isn't running. It just happens to be the only CPU intensive program thats ever run on it so it just looks like it's that thats causing it to crash, but I don't think it is.

I suppose there could be something on there that shouldn't be.

Will start a scan.

If I can't find anything then I'll probably just reformat it.

Thanks

Joe42 · 2 Nov 2006 at 00:39

Did you try sp2004/prime?

That should tell you if its a software problem or some flaky hardware on its last legs.

Edit: Happens to the best of us i suppose.

My turn for some problems. This hardware must have been working for at least a month now, new it couldn't last.

Berserker · 2 Nov 2006 at 17:15

If it's that old it may just be that - old. I'm worried about my XP1700 board doing the same as it's already given me some PCI bus grief when I re-cased it earlier this year.

/starts saving for a C2D board to go in my Linux server.

oceaness · 2 Nov 2006 at 19:03

Joe42 said:
Did you try sp2004/prime?

That should tell you if its a software problem or some flaky hardware on its last legs.

Edit: Happens to the best of us i suppose. My turn for some problems. This hardware must have been working for at least a month now, new it couldn't last.

I haven't run Prime or sp2004 it crashes when playing videos lol let alone anything more CPU intentsive

Berserker said:
If it's that old it may just be that - old. I'm worried about my XP1700 board doing the same as it's already given me some PCI bus grief when I re-cased it earlier this year.

/starts saving for a C2D board to go in my Linux server.

Yeah but I thought processors generally lasted longer when not overclocked. It's not that old probably 5 or 6 years at the most. :confused:

rich99million · 2 Nov 2006 at 19:25

fire up MBM5 or a similar monitoring program and have a look at the voltages - could be a failing PSU possibly

Joe42 · 2 Nov 2006 at 22:56

oceaness said:
I haven't run Prime or sp2004 it crashes when playing videos lol let alone anything more CPU intentsive

Yeah but I thought processors generally lasted longer when not overclocked. It's not that old probably 5 or 6 years at the most.

Overclocked or not, things do fail as they get older. Try sp2004 to test the cpu, memtest to test the memory, and rthdribl to test the gpu.
Watch respective temperatures when running cpu and gpu stress tests and see if anything is cooking.

Could easily be dieing gpu ram, that's a common one. Gpu cooling fans also have a habit of dieing.

You may find that you simply have to raise the core voltage, i've heard of processors getting old and needing a little more voltage to stay stable, although this may not be very likely if its never been overclocked.

SiriusB · 3 Nov 2006 at 00:21

rich99million said:
fire up MBM5 or a similar monitoring program and have a look at the voltages - could be a failing PSU possibly

I think this should be the first thing you try since it seems to be hardware related rather than software.

PSUs of old were never that great to be honest, and now that it's getting on perhaps it is on its way out.

Get a monitoring program and have a look at all the voltages while your system is stable. Check that they are all within +/-5% of their expected value.

Now do something CPU intensive.. such as Prime95 or similar, see what happens to the voltages. If they are fine try something graphically intensive, such as ATi Tool's Spinning Cube test.

SiriusB

oceaness · 3 Nov 2006 at 23:35

Right lol looks like I've got quite a bit to be getting on with

I'll run through everything you guys have suggested, thanks for the many replies.

I'll let you know the outcome