Frenchie
14-08-2007, 11:21 AM
My PC started behaving erratically last week for the first time since I bought it 18 months ago. When watching an avi file it stared to chug and freeze for several seconds at a time. This I would associate with running a graphics intensive program so I worried that my nvidia Geforce 7800 GTX PCI express card may be overheating as it was (For a change this year) a very hot day. The fan seemed to be all fine and this had not ever happened before but when I tried to restart, it froze when it got to the windows xp loading screen and would not load up the OS. When I restarted again it would not turn back on.
I pulled out all of the plugs overnight and left it until the morning when I took off all my valuable word documents before shuting it down quickly. There did not seem to be a problem this time but it was on for 10 minutes at the very most.
When I turned it on again a couple of days later, it seemed to be okay so I started running a game and within 20 minutes it started to chug again and within the hour (after a steady decrease in frame rate) it completely froze and had to be turned off at the mains.
This led me to believe that it was definately my graphics card but when I tried to check the systm running without graphics intensive programs (I put on AVG anti-virus to see if a virus may have been a problem and looked at simple internet sites without any flash or movie files) the computer descended into the same sluggish precursor to freezing that was mainly evident from the mouse cursor appearing to be suffering from a 'low framerate' as it moved, skipping large portions of the screen as it fought to catch up with the physical movement. Now I am starting to worry that it might be my intel dual core 3GHz processor. Again, the heat sink and fan seems to be working fine and more to the point, I have felt around for any abnormal hotness coming out of the chassis fans and it's actually still pretty cool with the exception of the PSU but even then, it doesn't feel any hotter than what my laptop adapter gets.
So obviously I am a little perplexed as to what this could possibly be as there seems to be no physical problem with any of the suspect parts. Is there a way of running a more detailed diagnosic report? The one running at startup is telling me that the cpu is running at a temperature of 62.5-63.5 degrees celsius but I have no idea what the ideal temperature is for a 3GHz dual core cpu.
If anyone has any idea what this might be, I would be very grateful for your input.
I pulled out all of the plugs overnight and left it until the morning when I took off all my valuable word documents before shuting it down quickly. There did not seem to be a problem this time but it was on for 10 minutes at the very most.
When I turned it on again a couple of days later, it seemed to be okay so I started running a game and within 20 minutes it started to chug again and within the hour (after a steady decrease in frame rate) it completely froze and had to be turned off at the mains.
This led me to believe that it was definately my graphics card but when I tried to check the systm running without graphics intensive programs (I put on AVG anti-virus to see if a virus may have been a problem and looked at simple internet sites without any flash or movie files) the computer descended into the same sluggish precursor to freezing that was mainly evident from the mouse cursor appearing to be suffering from a 'low framerate' as it moved, skipping large portions of the screen as it fought to catch up with the physical movement. Now I am starting to worry that it might be my intel dual core 3GHz processor. Again, the heat sink and fan seems to be working fine and more to the point, I have felt around for any abnormal hotness coming out of the chassis fans and it's actually still pretty cool with the exception of the PSU but even then, it doesn't feel any hotter than what my laptop adapter gets.
So obviously I am a little perplexed as to what this could possibly be as there seems to be no physical problem with any of the suspect parts. Is there a way of running a more detailed diagnosic report? The one running at startup is telling me that the cpu is running at a temperature of 62.5-63.5 degrees celsius but I have no idea what the ideal temperature is for a 3GHz dual core cpu.
If anyone has any idea what this might be, I would be very grateful for your input.