Hardware

Ask something
Question Locked

Odd computer issues

0 helpful
10 replies

by chrismerrett

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

Hi,

Currently working on a customers system and have exhausted almost all of my possibilities for fixing this computer. The customer brought the computer in for a new motherboard and CPU as his motherboard had blown caps and his CPU looked suspect. We replaced the mobo and cpu with new products and the system is showing the same issues, we've tested and even tried replacing the ram and power supply. We've even install XP Home on a different new hard drive and it still shows the same symptoms. Below is a link to the picture that we took of the screen, it runs fine all day while doing the burn in testing, when the computer is left over night not doing anything but running the screensaver it freezes up.

Link to image: http://img396.imageshack.us/my.php?image=righilargett2.jpg

EDIT: Computer does freeze sometimes when it is turned on right away, also forgot to mention that all the drivers are installed and updated, with windows updates too.

10 replies

by rob miners

only thing that you haven't tried replacing is the Video card. It can cause these problems. Also try setting it to a lower resolution.

by mjd420nova

I have seen this before and it was the video card/GPU that was overheating after extended power on periods. A little shot of freeze spray on the GPU at the time of the fault would confirm this.

by chrismerrett

even though it is on-board video and the motherboard is not even a month old?

by robo_dev

IF it locks up using a totally different OS, then that proves it's a hardware issue.

by chrismerrett

We have built the computer outside of the case to see if it was possibly a grounding issue, it was not as the system still freezes up when built outside the case. I did however notice that the north bridge was getting hot so i put a small fan on it and I still experience the same problem. I have also tried running with a live linux cd and it still eventually freezes up. We are at our wits end with this computer as we have tested everything, installing new os on a new hdd, replacing power supply, replacing ram with new ram, the computer has a new motherboard and new CPU, even after all these parts are installed the computer experiences the same problems with his old motherboard and cpu. We run burn-in testing on it all day and it runs fine, it usually freezes up during the night. Anyone have any other ideas as to what is going on?

by dumphrey

its the hardware. Just because the mobo is new does not mean its not a lemon...
Try an external graphics card and disable the onboard video.

by dumphrey

it could still be hardware, depending on how the driver is using the vertical refresh/synch and ram on the card.

Also, on ram tests, those need to run a minimum of 24 hours to get any results.

Also, disable on board video and try an external vid card.

Ram could still be flakey, especially that part "reserved" for the video, did you replace all sticks and let it run?

by chrismerrett

It turns out it was not the GPU chip, it was a combo of 2 sticks of bad ram, failing HDD and bad power supply.

by selltekk

Tell the user that it was posessed and that the guts had to be replaced to exorcise the posession.

:)

This discussion is closed to new replies.