piratfisk

Hello there. Several months ago my computer started to randomly restart itself 2-3 times a month, both while I was playing games/browsing the Internet and when I was not even using the computer. Sometimes when it restarted it had an error finding the operating system, when this happened I left the computer off for 5-10 mins as a friend told me the RAM maybe had to reset. It started up normally after leaving it off for a few minutes.

I thought maybe it was my gfx card overheating (it was up to 90ºC/194ºF), as it happened mostly when I had left the computer on for some days and played games all day long. I borrowed a gfx card from a friend which I used for a couple of weeks, but I still had the same problems. The only thing left that I'm capable of testing myself was reinstalling windows, so I did that just to exclude it being a softwareproblem.

Recently, the past week or so, the problem has gotten much worse. Now it will restart several times a day and the system also seems a lot slower. When I start up the computer, the windows loading-bar takes maybe 2 minutes, then the screen goes black for a minute or two and then I see the desktop and the programs starts loading, a lot slower than before. Starting a program also takes a lot more time than before.

I also play World of Warcraft, and recently the game has started freezing for 5-10 seconds quite frequently. Before all these problems started happening I ran WoW on max settings and had no fps lag or problems, even when running 2-3 clients at once.

My computer is about a year old, I've looked up my order at the site where I ordered the parts as I don't really know how else to find my "specs".

- HIS Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3, PCI-Express 2.0, 2xDVI/HDMI/HDCP
- Kingston DDR2 HyperX PC6400 4096MB CL5, Kit 2x matched HyperX 2GB DDR2
- In-Win C603 Midi Tower ATX Black Tower w/460W Power, 2xUSB 2.0
- Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L, P35, Socket-775, ATX, GbLAN, DDR2, ICH9, PCI-Ex16
- Sony NEC Optiarc DVD±RW burner AD-7200S, 20x, SATA, Black, bulk
- Samsung SpinPoint F1 500GB SATA2, 16MB 7200RPM
- Intel Core? 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz Socket LGA775, 1333MHz, 12MB, BOXED w/fan
- Scythe Mugen CPU Cooler, 120mm

I'm posting in this section because I read a few other posts here and some of the problems seemed similar to mine, I'm sorry if this is the wrong section. I also read you asking people for voltage and temperatures, so I tried finding this in the BIOS as well. Hope it's the right one:

Vcore 1.236V
DDR18V 1.792V
+3.3V 3.296V
+12V 11.795V

Current System Temperature 42ºC (107.6ºF)
Current CPU Temperature 29ºC (84.2ºF)
Current CPU FAN Speed 1293RPM
Current System FAN2 Speed 0RPM
Current Power FAN Speed 0 RPM
Current System FAN1 Speed 0 RPM

makinu1der2

I would suspect the PSU as your problem as it is not supplying adequate power to the

system. The +12v output is also a little low. This could also be leading to the high

GPU temp.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139005

piratfisk

Thanks for your fast answer! Do you recommend me to just buy it, or can it sound like it's a RAM (or something else) problem at all? Just wondering if it's any point borrowing a PSU to test it out or if I might as well buy one anyway.

Thanks again for the help :)

Tyree

The problem sounds like a power problem. If you can borrow a quality PSU, that is sufficient to power the system, that would be fine.

piratfisk

My new PSU (the one makinu1der2 linked) arrived today and is in use now. It might've fixed the random restarts (time will tell), but the other problems still seem to be there; computer starting up very much slower than it used to, programs loading slow, WoW freezing randomly for a few seconds. Could this be the RAM or something else?

piratfisk

Sorry to bump this thread, but I'm still having problems..

I bought that new PSU and have used it for over a month with no problems when it comes to random restarts, so that problem is solved (I hope).

However the computer is still acting very slow.. when starting up, when starting programs, in programs/games and such. An example: the other day I tried to open the Security Center from the control panel, and it took almost 2 minutes before it actually loaded. The window itself loaded like a picture on the web loads on a dial-up connection, one line at a time, if you understand me.

This does not happen all the time though, but in general it's slow and this example shows how it is on it's worst. In WoW I'm also experiencing a lot of problems, every few minutes or so it'll freeze up for a few seconds or the whole game will just freeze and crash. Even my 3 year old laptop runs the game more smoothly than my 1 year old computer. I like to think the spec of my computer is fairly good, or do you disagree? I know it's 1 year old, but when I bought it I chose some of the newest components (maybe except GFX card?) so that it would last longer.

After I got the new PSU and realized I still had problems, I changed from Windows XP 32-bit to 64-bit in hope that it would use more of my RAM and thus be a bit faster, however this was not the case. I've kept the 64bit installed for now, but I haven't installed anything except Antivirus (AVG, have also tried Avast just in case it could be AVG, but no difference), WoW and Firefox as I don't intend to keep this version of Windows.

Anyway, last night I suddenly got a bsod, and it just kept restarting over and over again. Luckily I can go into safe mode and turn off auto-restarts, so here's what the bsod says:

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

BAD_POOL_CALLER

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x000000C2 (0x0000000000000048, 0xFFFFFA8000FB2000, 0x0000000000000FB2, 0x00000000D5200000)

I've cleaned the computer with a compressed air can, I've checked that everything is connected as it should inside, I've tried starting up with only one memory stick at a time (in different slots), I've tried starting up with nothing else connected except keyboard/mouse/monitor... nothing helped.

I decided to run another memtest, one over night and the other one this morning. I ran one stick at a time, 7 hours (Pass 15 I think it said when I turned it off) on each and no errors!

I googled my bsod error and found that most suggested it as a problem with the memory, can it be the memory even though memtest shows no errors? Is there any settings in memtest to run a "deeper" test?

Can this be a problem with the harddrive, how can I check the disk for errors? Could it be overheating, even though this happens when it has been off for a while or in idle for a while? Can it be the motherboard, and how do I find out if it is?

As I can get into Safe Mode, I can probably restore it to last known configuration. I haven't tried it, as getting Windows up and running again is not what I'm looking for. I've got backup of anything of importance on an external drive, and I'll install another version of Windows anyway. But before I do that, I want to find out what the problem is and possibly buy any component that needs changed.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I thought I'd better give all the info I could at once.

piratfisk

Just thought I'd post the new voltage and temperatures in case it can be of any help.

Vcore: 1.236V
DDR18V: 1.808V
+3.3V: 3.376V
+12V: 11.858V

Current System Temperature: 32C
Current CPU Temperature: 21C


This is after the PC has been off for an hour or two, and the case is open.


Would it be more helpful if I reinstalled Windows to get rid of the bsod+restart so that I could check temperatures after having played games for some hours?

Tyree

Too many programs starting on boot can certainly slow down boot times. Virus/spyware/malwares can all cause sluggish performance.

piratfisk

Like I said I haven't installed anything except World of Warcraft, Firefox and AVG because I don't intend to keep this installation of Windows. But it's not just the startup of Windows, even if I kill every single process running except the ones needed to run Windows and try to play WoW it will still freeze.

The first 6 months or so I had this computer everything was perfect, I could run 2-3 clients of WoW at the same time with no problem at all. Then the problems with random restarts started (now fixed with a new PSU) and later everything just started going slower and slower, and it has not been because I've installed new programs or drivers because I've barely had anything on this computer from I bought it except WoW.


Edit: I even noticed the slow performance before I had connected the internet cable after my new Windows installation, and installed the antivirus program in offline mode before I did anything. The first thing I did after installing Firefox was also to install noscript and adblock. So I'm kinda hoping to exclude anything like that, as I don't even browse suspicious sites on my computer. (I ran AdAware and Spybot several times in the weeks before this bsod to try to find anything that could cause it anyway, but nothing..)