Crashing PC

[LambchopMT]

Hi Folks.

I'm after some advise on a friends Novatech PC that has started to crash randomly.

It crashes with no BSOD, it's just dead as if the plug was removed from the wall. When started again you get no message that Windows (XP home) was not shut down correctly. Sometimes you need to wait a few minutes before the system starts working.

Whilst checking inside for loose components I discovered that the heatsink latch was loose and had become detached from the processor. I applied some thermal paste and reattached but had it in the back of my mind that the processor may have been damaged by overheating. A check in the BIOS showed that overheat shutdown was disabled and I left it that way to see if this issue continued.

We did a clean install on a new disk to see if it was software related as well and, whilst it ran okay for the whole of the install, as soon as he tries to load new software it crashes.

Now rather than working through replacing bits (that may not need replacing) does this look like a processor failure? Do processors become damaged in such a way that they work fine until they start to get hot and then shut down?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Kevster]

Hello mate.

In short, Yes.
Excessive heat 'can' damage the CPU and/or motherboard.

Might be worth checking what the temps are like..
Have you reseated the RAM and GFX card?
(Remove anything else connected and retest)

Does it always fail after the same actions?
Or 100% random?

[LambchopMT]

Thanks for the quick reply Kevster.

I did "wiggle" the graphics card and RAM but never fully removed them.

Remembering back, he did have a problem with the RAM which were solved by moving to different slot, but this issue just prevented the thing from starting I think.

It seems to fail when under load although he doesn't use it for anything really intensive like games, etc. It seems strange that loading Windows and the subsequent Windows updates never caused an issue but him loading other software does.

I'll grab it back and start my investigations...

[PMM]

It is possible that it maybe the ram still.

On the Processor front if it was an Intel Chip then safety Guards are generally in place to protect the chip if its a AMD chip then it could be what you fear.. a fried chip.

Ram can cause a PGood signal to be sent if faulty and the whole system will shut down.

But I would also start 1st by just cheeking that the Ram is getting enough voltage as by your previous comment sounds like it struggles a little bit at defaults hense jiggling the locations around to get it working.

[Willzo101]

You should run a CPU heat test to cancel out or confirm its an overheating issue. Id reccomend you download Speedfan or Everest Home edition to check CPU temps. Worth a try i guess!

[LambchopMT]

Thanks for the reply folks.

My friends been away for a couple of weeks and I have now had it back for testing.

Couldn't get very far though as, no matter what I did, the the **** thing just blue screened before the Windows loading progressbar.

Stripped it right back to basic hardware and still nothing doing. In the end we flipped bits between this PC and another, with the RAM being okay in the other and the the other's hard disk okay in this one. However, this hard disk in the other PC blue screened at exactly the same point.

Doesn't matter anyway as he has now decided to buy a new laptop!