PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME SOMEONE!!!

I have an 8 month old PC bought new on Ebay (AMD Athlon 3000+ 512mb ram & 120g hard drive) - unfortunately the seller has disappeared off the face of the earth so my 1 year guarantee is worthless. I've noticed that I keep getting BSOD's and can only link it to overheating (I've checked everything else - NVIDIA graphics card drivers seemed to cause problems also & have updated). I've done 3 clean installs of XP Pro SP1. I've noticed that as soon as the CPU temp goes over 52C it becomes unstable and I keep get BSOD's. I've removed the side cover which helps a bit but is obviously not a long term solution - I'm not very good with hardware so here goes!! I can see Asrock mobo with fan on it and Eagle Switching Power Supply with fan - what else can I do to reduce temp especially with the really hot weather recently? Please be as non-technical as possible!! Temps in BIOS when OK are:-

CPU Temp 52C
Mobo Temp 42C
CPU Fan Speed 5573 rpm
VCore 1.625 (goes up and down)

Thanks

Have you checked your RAM to see if they are high quality. I would start by checking them and use th etests at

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

My next step would be to check the power supply. You say the vcore voltages fluctuate. I would want to know why and how much. Your ASROCK board is considered to be a decent low
budget and no frills board.

Hi - thanks for your reply.

I've run the memory test which came back fine. Checked BIOS again CPU temp went up to 54 and I got BSOD and microsoft error report said CPU failure (BSOD's are always random) - page fault in non paged area, graphics device driver, device is trying to write to read only memory, win32k.sys, driver irql not less or equal are some of the ones I can remember. I think my CD writer isn't working properly either.

CPU fan speed fluctuates, VCore is either 1.609 or 1.625, +12v is either 12.258 or 12.322

Does any of this help?

Thanks

Nadia

blow a house fan into the open case and see if the bsod's go away. Turn up the a/c as well. You need to make sure the problem is heat, or not. If it becomes stable after taking these steps, an additional case fan and a new cpu cooler are in order.

If it still bsod's, you probably have either a software problem or a failing power supply. To figure out which if those it is, try using something other than winxp, like tufftest lite (boots from floppy) or a CD bootable version of linux. If you are stable with them, you have one of 98 thousand possible software problems from a bad driver to a corrupt winxp file to a virus, etc

http://www.tufftest.com/tt01-lite.htm#download_info

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/download.html

3000's are supposed to run cool and quiet with their stack cpu coolers. Your temps seem a little high, but they are not high enough to be causing the major problems that describe. Have you touched the cpu cooler or used a thermometer to see if your board's temperature monitoring devices are working properly? How many case fans do you have? If you have one in front is it installed so it is intaking air, and the rear fan would be exhausting it. Is your power supply a good name brand(Antec, Enermax, Fotran, Zalman, etc), or a low cast generic one?

While 52C for the CPU isn't high, 42C for the motherboard temp is...either your case isn't adequately ventilated, the sensor is in a "hot spot", or your temps aren't being reporting accurately.

Regardless of all that, chances are, your BSOD probs are NOT heat related...

Remember the symptoms of heat issues is lock ups and errors consistantly after a some amount of time as the PC heats up. Is this indicative of your problems?

If his temps are 52C with the side off in the BIOS, I'd say he has a bit of a heat problem, although that's not necessarily what's causing the problem since the temp sensors could be off.

Couple things you could try...

If it's that hot with the side off, there's not much you can do to improve case ventilation to help the heat problem. It won't hurt to, but it's not going to reduce the temp of the CPU.

So, you could try any or combination of the following.

1. Remount the heatsink properly. Whoever did it may not have done it right.
2. If a thermalpad was used between the heatsink and CPU, use some type of goop like Arctic Silver 5, or Ceramique.
3. Use a better heatsink/fan. The Volcano 12 is a very good bet.

It might be easier to do all three at once in case only one of them doesn't solve the problem.

If you're not experienced mounting a heatsink/fan, you may consider paying someone to do it if you're not comfortable doing it. It's not difficult to ruin your CPU in the process.

MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

Thanks to all those who replied. I'll try to answer as many of the questions as possible with my limited knowledge of PC's!! All the temps I have given are with the cover off. I think the switching power supply make is Eagle (installed so that the fan blows air out of the back) and there's another fan on the mobo (don't know what this is called). I have problems installing downloads as they download OK but when I go to install them a lot of the time I get a random BSOD (see previous post). I've seen a lot of complaints about the Nvidia graphics cards causing problems and I've downloaded the latest drivers from their site. I've just noticed that it runs OK when the weather is cool with only the occasional BSOD but when it gets hot it starts having persistent problems which is what points me to overheating.

I'll give tuff test a go - I doubt it will like it though - my PC doesn't like to be overworked!!

"I have problems installing downloads as they download OK but when I go to install"

if the problem is very repeatable it is not due to hardware. Software problems are repeatable, hardware problems are random (generally).

"I've just noticed that it runs OK when the weather is cool with only the occasional BSOD"

If peak cooling does not fix the problem completely, its not a heat problem.

you said your cpu fan was at 5573rpm yet your temps are still in the 50s

i would say that your heatsink was not mounted correctly! maybe the pad or paste has gone dry

the solution to this is to remove the cpu heatsink and clean it's bottom surface with 99% isopropyl rubbing alcohol on a fresh q-tip as well as the cpu's die surface
then apply artic silver 5 or any other thermal paste as it says in the directions

also your mobo temp is 42 that's pretty high
what you could try is tucking all your cables off to the sides of your case out of the way of airflow and also dust everything out really well with some canned air

^(-.-)~~~]>:}>

I'll get someone to try sorting out the heatsink etc. If it still doesn't solve the prob I'll get back.

I couldn't create the tuff test diskette even in safe mode - so gave up with that one.

thanks to all

I have the same problem. I only have a XP 2000+.

I have cleaned everything, added a new Cooler Master 3.2Ghz heatsink and fan. Memory test says it isnt faulty memory. Have run the Microsoft test utility and it reports no errors. (Could this be because the video card is not stretched?)

Reloaded XP Pro and added SP2 last night but to no avail.

I have to run the chip @ 1276 mhz to stay online for more than 10 minutes.

Any help would be great as this is getting really boring. :) I hate things that dont do what it says on the box.