Annoying computer issue

Right then this might actually be two completely seperate issues, but I´ll go through both anyway.

First, the DVD drive reads every couple of minutes or so and occasionally opens and closes by itself. When I say it reads, I mean it sounds like it is reading a disc and the light flashes a few times. It will do this for a couple of seconds then be fine. It doesn´t matter if the drive is empty, It will still do it. Right now I have the IDE cable unplugged, but I left the power cable in, and it is still doing it.

The main issue is that the whole computer just freezes every now and again. It takes 3 or 4 reboots after that to get it to work again. there´s nothing in particular that seems to cause the freeze, except that it is normally in the morning and always within a the first 5 minutes of windows starting. Maybe just coincidence? It can work fine for a week or two then other times it can do it everyday. When it freezes, the mouse still works for a bit a you click anything on the screen once (except for minimize, maximize and close) and it will work. For example, when it freezes you can click on the start bar and it will open, but then you can´t do anything, expect move the cursor around.

My initial thought was the DVD drive because of the first problem, but it still did it with the drive disconnected, power disconnected too to the drive.

The only error in event manager (or whatever it is called) is from the UPS software because it can´t access the com port, but this may just be because the computer has frozen? This error is in the event manager everytime the computer freezes.

Details of my computer.

Win Xp SP3 (32bit)
AMD Athlon 64 3800+
ASRock ALiveNF6G-DVI
Kingston DDR2 PC24300 1gb
Nvidia GeForce 7300GT
Creative SB Audigy (soon to be replaced)
320Gb Sata Drive (I think it´s a Seagate, if not it will be a Maxtor)
No idea what the DVD drive is though.

Anybody got any ideas what could be the problem? I don´t know where to start with this one. I´m thinking a format and re-install, but would rather not do so unless necessary.

Thanks...

IT'S ALL BROKEN.

First off, we'll get the DVD drive out of the way. That definitely is broken. If it's reading disks that don't exist and the computer is having no input on the matter (obviously it isn't, given that it's disconnected) then it has reached the end of its life. Just buy another one. They're only £15 (so around €17-18) so just go without beer for half a week. :P

The rest. Chances are that some part of the system is dying - most likely is power supply, motherboard RAM (or less likely, any number of other components... just what you wanted to hear!). But to be honest, before you run out and buy replacements, I'd reinstall Windows just to see how much of it is a software issue (which won't solve the start-up issues, but might give you a usable system). You'd have to reinstall Windows if you replaced the motherboard anyway, so you might as well at least do a temporary install.

But, given the nature of the start up problems I'd put my money on power supply being inadequate, followed by the motherboard.

//edit: I won't be back until the weekend, so I'll let others sort this one out for you. :P

Just let Dave tell you when TurkeyMachine is giving out silly advice.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2009 08:14AM by gav.

Cheers Gav, I´ll get windows re-installed tonight and see if that makes any difference. the DVD drive does actually work, i´ll use it to get windows installed and then unplug it, so not to cause any further disruptions.

Interesting that you say a power supply issue, as the only error i get is from the UPS not being able to communicate. If it still freezes with the new windows installed, then i´ll try running a few days without the UPS. You´ll probably be back before it freezes again, but if anybody else wants to chip in, feel free.

Cheers again.

gav Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> IT'S ALL BROKEN.
>
> First off, we'll get the DVD drive out of the way.
> That definitely is broken. If it's reading disks
> that don't exist and the computer is having no
> input on the matter (obviously it isn't, given
> that it's disconnected) then it has reached the
> end of its life. Just buy another one. They're
> only £15 (so around €17-18) so just go without
> beer for half a week. :P
>
> The rest. Chances are that some part of the system
> is dying - most likely is power supply,
> motherboard RAM (or less likely, any number of
> other components... just what you wanted to
> hear!). But to be honest, before you run out and
> buy replacements, I'd reinstall Windows just to
> see how much of it is a software issue (which
> won't solve the start-up issues, but might give
> you a usable system). You'd have to reinstall
> Windows if you replaced the motherboard anyway, so
> you might as well at least do a temporary
> install.
>
> But, given the nature of the start up problems I'd
> put my money on power supply being inadequate,
> followed by the motherboard.
>
> //edit: I won't be back until the weekend, so I'll
> let others sort this one out for you. :P
>
> Just let Dave tell you when TurkeyMachine is
> giving out silly advice.

I'm surprised you didn't notice the Seagate or Maxtor drive bit

You can only get them two makes here unfortunatly, i´ve looked though and it is a Seasgate.

Anyway, it frozen again with the new version of windows. So looks like it is not software related. I´m running now without the UPS to see if that makes any difference.

Monza972 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm surprised you didn't notice the Seagate or
> Maxtor drive bit

They generally just die or aren't detected. The closest I've seen to this is the system will grind to a halt, you reboot and it can't detect the hard drive, and won't do so until the hard drive has cooled for an hour or so. Horrible things. Shame, as prior to the 7200.10s (might be 7200.9s) Seagate were damn good, and Maxtor made some brilliant server drives before Seagate bought them.

airefresco, by PSU I didn't necessarily mean the UPS. I've little experience with them myself, so I don't know how much of an issue they could cause (not much I guess, but it's a rather hollow guess... I'd have thought they either provided the power or they didn't). I'm sure you know, but I meant the PSU in the PC, the box the power cable plugs in to.

Well, so far the computer has been fine (touch wood) with the UPS disconnected. Do you want to edit your post now Gav? Incase it is the UPS. :P

The UPS connects to the computer via the comms port, so It might be something to do with that. Also the DVD drive is behaving itself now too. I plugged it back in to install windows and forgot to unplug it again. So far, with the UPS disconnected, that has been fine too and it´s not doing stuff on it´s own anymore.

If it´s still working this time next week, then i´ll bin my UPS.

airefresco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Well, so far the computer has been fine (touch
> wood) with the UPS disconnected. Do you want to
> edit your post now Gav? Incase it is the UPS. :P

Nope, like I said, I know sod all about them. :P

It´s not the UPS, it just froze again.

What should I try next? I have a spare hard drive, is it worth trying that?

Its got to be worth it, we need to work out if its a software issue or not at this stage.

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No I think it is hardware as I did a clean install of XP and it still froze. I´ll bang XP on the other drive tomorrow and see what happens.

thanks..

i think the RAM is not working properly it happened to me a while back, but instead of frozing it will just restart, what i did was remove the ram and clean it, try with a electronic cleaner on the contacts, if it works then make sure to change that RAM as the problem might come back in a few weeks

If you even remotely suspect it's RAM related, download Memtest86+ and run that. If it flags errors on 3 passes or more, your RAM is the likely culprit.

---

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Did the memtest thing. Ran 3 times, no errors. So not the ram.

I´ve just checked the spare hard drive I have and it´s only a 20GB one. Would it suffice to run windows off that and everything else off my current (potentially dodgy) drive? If that drive failed while windows was running on the other drive, would windows bring up an error instead of freezing?

Even with the hard drive set as a secondary one, it would normally still cause the same problems.

I'm swaying back towards PSU, but, excluding the RAM now, it could still be any other component - even something as simple as a faulty SATA cable.

Cheers Gav, I think my brother might have a spare PSU, so I´ll try that next.

The most annoying thing about all of this is that it is an intermittent fault, so it makes it a long process to test things.

Sorry to thread hijack but I didn't see the point in making a new thread for one question.

Basically Im thinking of building myself a new Intel rig over the next few months bit by bit, I have come up with this as the basic's (Not really after a Core i7 and DDR3 machine due to cost!)

Thermaltake Soprano Black Case
LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray/HD DVD-ROM
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Aftermarket Fan
2x 500GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 502IJ SATA2 7200RPM 16MB cache
2x OCZ 4GB PC2-8500 DDR2 1066MHz Gold Dual Channel (2x2GB)
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R P45/ICH10R Socket 775 Motherboard
Windows 7 X64

I already have an ATI Radeon 4870 512mb that I will probably use until the new 5xxx Series comes out. As its probably not worth the money getting a Radeon 4890 1GB?

I have a 600 watt OCZ PSU at the moment as well, would this be enough to run a rig like this with a more likely power hungry 5xxx series GPU? Or should I upgrade to something like this CORSAIR 850W TX PSU ?

Cheers,

Mika19b.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2009 04:30PM by mika19b.

Unless you can get a very good deal on that Q9550, just wait. Core i5 will be coming and is looking very good - just about as fast as i7, but without certain features (none of which you'll need, such as Virtualisation or triple-channel RAM). It will still be more expensive than the Q9550, but you'll either have saved up more by then, or the Q9550 will be cheaper, so it would be win-win.

PSU is fine.

And it would be a complete waste of money to buy a HD 4890, and poor timing too. Prices are of ATI cards are plummeting now, so you'd get very little for your current card for only a few percent more FPS. The HD 4870s are selling new for under £100 now, wiping the floor with NVIDIA at every price point.

Consider more RAM too. 6GB is becoming a sweet spot, but wouldn't make sense with either the Q9550 or Core i5 (both have dual-channel controllers), but you'd get a lot of performance out of 8GB of SuperFetched data... far more than most upgraded which would cost more.

Alternatively, if you're holding tight, get a small SSD drive for the boot disk... smoking. They're falling in price all the time - just ask which one first, as there are some really poor ones and some really good ones - benchmarks won't tell you which is necessarily fastest, as the ones with JMicron controllers are very, very poor for Joe Public.

Cheers Gav

I plan on getting 8GB of ram whatever, I have 4 now but could do with that bit extra.

The Core i5 sound's very interesting, as I have only just started saving anyway by the time I have some decent £ I will be able to look into that as an option.

I have read about these SSD drives also and they sound very promising, if I could get one for a decent price without the horrible JMicron controller that would be excellent!

Think I will wait for the ATI 5xxx Series then.

mika19b Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I plan on getting 8GB of ram whatever, I have 4
> now but could do with that bit extra.

Sorry, I misread.


mika19b Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have read about these SSD drives also and they
> sound very promising, if I could get one for a
> decent price without the horrible JMicron
> controller that would be excellent!

30GB would be enough for the OS and a few smallish programs (Win7 installs fine on an 8GB SSD on a netbook), but ideally you'd want 60GB or more, so all your programs and some of you games can be on there too, everything you use frequently benefiting from the minuscule access time.

Good 60GB drives (such as the OCZ Vertex) are moving towards the £150 mark rapidly. Hopefully by the time you order, they'll be near the £100 mark. Any further economy recovery (including strengthening of the pound) and SSDs getting more popular ought to drive the prices down quicker still.