This is going to be a long post, but hopefully all the info will help someone to help me! A few weeks back my computer started randomly restarting. There was no blue screen or warning of any kind, just restarted like it does if you hit the reset button, then would run scandisk since windows wasn't shut down properly. It would do this while idle or while being used. At first it would happen early in the morning if left on overnight. Then it got to where it would happen while I was using the computer. I was going to do a backup with my CD-RW just in case and discovered it was dead even though it still showed functioning properly in device manager. Thinking this was causing the problem, I installed a new drive. (I had also discovered the case fan wasn't working so replaced that at the same time. Don't think it's a heat issue though because I've kept the case open since all this started). The random restarts stopped once the new CD-RW was installed and instead I started getting a click sound (I think from the hard drive). The same time it clicks, the lights on the CD-RW and Zip drive turn on, there's a buzz sound from one speaker, and everything freezes for a few seconds. If there's a music CD in the drive at the time, it will start playing. I tried unhooking all cables and power to the drives, leaving only the hard drive hooked up. I still get the click sound and freeze. My PSU is only 250w so I bought a larger one yesterday to try (along with a new hard drive just in case). After installing the new 450w PSU(Mad Dog), the clicking and freezing stopped. Everything seemed to be going great then after several hours of running, the computer suddenly shut off. No warning, just totally shut off like the plug had been pulled. To get it to turn back on I had to unplug the power cord from the PSU and plug it back in. Then the computer started up normally. After that first shutdown, it did the same thing 2 more times in about an hour while I was online. I went ahead and put the old power supply back in, so I'm back to the occasional click and freeze. I'm afraid to install the new hard drive in case this is being caused by something that could damage it. The clicking happens only when the computer is being used. I haven't caught it happening if it's running idle. It might go several hours before it clicks and freezes, or sometimes it will click every couple minutes, it seems to be pretty random. There was one time however that might be a clue to someone that the clicking/freezing happened over and over, about every 5 seconds. That was when I went to a site that was running one of those moving intro pages (DirectX or something like that?) Once I got off that page it stopped clicking. The only other change I've made was last night when replacing the PSU, I went ahead and changed the motherboard battery. At least my clock works right now! This is a custom built computer, not name brand. The motherboard is an ECS K7SEM version 1.0 with onboard graphics, about 2 1/2 to 3 years old. I did notice some of the capacitors are bulging slightly on top. I'm not sure if it's signs of leakage but a few of them do have tiny bits of rust colored residue in the indentations on top (where it looks like a +). I read that this can cause all kinds of problems so maybe I need a new motherboard. Any help would be appreciated! In case it didn't show at the top, I have an AMD Duron 900, 448mb ram, win98se.

Bulging capacitors are a bad sign, and residue in the top is more than likely a good indication that the caps are toast :-( I dont know if this is the source of your strange sounds, but it might explain the random restarts.

These bulging/corroded caps could be replaced individually, but it requires a soldering iron, steady hands, and the correct replacement caps.
In the UK http://rswww.com might have them. or www.ebay.co.uk for a replacement board. Good luck ;^)

j1mbo

Win2k / MEPIS linux
PIII 966 / 640MB

A (not so) long shot! If you are using a power `Y' connector, try replacing it. They are known to have flakey connections. Or `carefully' check the female pins to see if any are slightly spread.

Ham30, I'm using only the original connectors that are attached to the power supply, no add on Y connectors. Which female pins are you saying I should check?

Jlmbo, since I replaced the bad CD-RW I haven't been getting random restarts. I get the click sound and temporary freezing when I'm using the old power supply. With the new supply I got complete shutdowns. I'm just guessing on this, but maybe the new larger power supply has a better auto shutdown in case of any shorts. Do bad capacitors cause shorts on the motherboard?

You may be right with the new PSU shutting down there, but with the caps in mind its hard to draw a firm conclusion, its hard to tell what, if any, problems they might cause.

Is it possible to identify the source of the click noise - it may just be your hardrive slowly failing. Also, is your HDD primary master, and CD secondary master (I'd disconnect anything non-essential for testing purposes - eg modem/sound cards, extra HDD's)?

Finally, I wouldn't rely on having your case open as the best way to keep it cool - case cooling is essentially about creating a flow of cool air through the case - eg one sys fan at the front drawing air in, another at the back throwing it out is a good start. I used to have an AMD1000 that suffered from heat exhaustion a few times.

Keep at it ferret :^)

j1mbo

Win2k / MEPIS linux
PIII 966 / 640MB

Before I go, just re-read your post. The clicking, you mention, got worse when the flash(?) animation popped up; perhaps the caps on your board relate to the onboard graphics card - which malfunctions when its required to do a bit of hard work. Could the clicking be coming from the board itself? Is it worse when playing games?

I might be sniffing in totally the wrong direction so tell me to shut up if Im going on a bit; just suggesting all the things I'd go through if I was sorting it out :^)

j1mbo

Win2k / MEPIS linux
PIII 966 / 640MB

I'm pretty sure the click comes from the hard drive. I've tried holding my hand on the side of it and it seems like I can feel a little something when I hear the click sound. I had read some posts about hard drives clicking and freezing when they're close to death. I'd also read that it could be a sign of the hard drive not getting enough power. That's why I went ahead and bought both hard drive and power supply while I was in the city. The new power supply did stop the click and freeze, but then it shut down completely. So you think it's possible too that the new power supply has an auto shutdown in case of any shorts in the computer?

To answer another of your questions, I have one hard drive (Pri.master), CD (Pri.slave), CDRW (Sec.master), floppy, and zip drive (Sec.slave). I tried unhooking everything except the hard drive, including all of their power connections, audio, and ribbon cables. Still got the click and freeze. I've been thinking along the same lines as you about the bad caps/onboard graphics because of that flash page. Something to note, I did have to download the newest flash player to view the page, and now when I go back there I don't get the same continuous clicking. Maybe the hard drive was overworked trying to run the page with the outdated flash player? Or the onboard graphics overworking? Have any thoughts on that? Since the CD drive will also try to start at the click, and will start playing if there's a CD in the drive, I was thinking it was part of the audio too. Are onboard graphics tied in with the audio?

I suppose it's just time for a complete rebuild. I was hoping to avoid that because of the new motherboards using different memory, and maybe I'd have to go with a new CPU too. But at least I've already got the new power supply and hard drive.

I'm struggling to think of any more avenues to explore - could try and find yourself a nice Socket A board off ebay, an ASUS or Abit(KT7 is a nice socket A board) like this one:

Abit KT7 (Just for example)

And then you could stick with your current bits, ram, cpu etc. Plus you could add one of these graphics cards - be a nice improvment over that onboard. Careful with geforce graphics cards and Athlons tho'.

j1mbo

Win2k / MEPIS linux
PIII 966 / 640MB

Stumbled across an article that may interest you about dodgy caps: HERE

:^)

j1mbo

Win2k / MEPIS linux
PIII 966 / 640MB

Most of my large capacitors have bulging tops and a few have the brown crud on top, just a little bit, not large amounts. I bet the motherboard is the problem. Yesterday I tried formatting hard drive and reinstalling Windows since my local repair guy said it sounded like a software problem. I didn't really believe him but figured it was worth a shot since I'm probably going to end up rebuilding anyway. I've been looking at motherboards on ebay. It's kind of scary buying that way since you never know what you're getting, or how long it might last. I'll check into the one you suggested. Thanks for your input!

I know what you mean about buying PC bits off ebay - you do feel like you're entering a bit of a lottery, lol.

Post here or message through my-computing (not tried it myself yet), and let me know how it goes.

j1mbo

Win2k / MEPIS linux
PIII 966 / 640MB

Just wanted to let you know how this turned out. I decided to try a new motherboard and bought one off ebay. I got the ECS K7S5A so I could use my old memory and processor, but still upgrade to DDR if I want to later. I've read some bad things about this board but it was cheap enough that it was worth a gamble. I must have lucked out and got a good one, everything seems to be working fine. I used my original hard drive and haven't heard any clicking like before, so apparently it was the motherboard that was bad and not the hard drive. Only trouble I had was trying to install the new board without formatting my hard drive, just deleted the enum key like I had read online. Was having alot of trouble finding and installing all the hardware, so I finally used my startup disk to format and reinstall windows. Everything went perfectly smooth after that.

The only other thing I had to buy new was a graphics card since my old board had onboard graphics. I don't play games on my computer so I didn't think it was worth investing in one of the expensive cards. I bought a Radeon 7000 with 32mb memory, cheapest one there is I think. It also installed easily once I'd reformatted.

I went ahead and used the new power supply too since it's bigger and better quality than the old one. It's running fine so again I suspect the old motherboard was causing it to shut off.

I haven't completely finished yet, still have to put the modem back in and extra usb ports, but I think it's safe to say that the problem was the bad capacitors on my old motherboard. Is it possible that the motherboard also fried my cd drives? The cd-rw had died while I was having all the random restart problems, and I replaced it so I could save all my important stuff before working on the computer. Then the cd-rom quit working right before I started the rebuild.

Anyway, my friend now thinks I know what I'm doing so he brought his computer over for me to look at. He's been having random shutdowns and freezes and I do see bad capacitors on his board. Looks like another rebuild project!

Nice work! Good to hear you've got to the bottom of it, seems like dodgy caps were the root of all evil (not sure if they killed your CD drives too, but it seems feasible, considering the other effects they had).

Good luck fixing the next batch of bulging caps :^)

P3-949Mhz
640Mb PC133@146
GeForce4 64Mb
PCI 36.5Mhz

Looks like I spoke too soon. My computer froze completely a couple times today and just had a couple random restarts tonight (no blue screen or other warning, just restarted like I'd hit the reset button). The hard drive hasn't made the clicking sound like it did with the old board and so far the restarts aren't as frequent as before. Could the hard drive or CPU have been damaged by shorts in the old board and causing my new batch of headaches?

could try Sisoft Sandra or Memtest86 to test your memory and other bits(plus check temps), because it doesn't sound like CPU (they tend to either work or not IMO).

Does your HDD manufacturer have any apps to test the health of your disk? Might be a thought. Are you just on the desktop when it restarts?

Damn it - thought we had it sorted there lol, some PC's just like to challenge their users - I've got 2 like that.

I ran memtest on it back when all this started and had no errors. I just downloaded the motherboard monitor program yesterday to keep an eye on the temps and voltages. I think they're fine. Runs about 27C on the case and 37C on the CPU. I tried to open the program last night and got an error that a .dll file was missing. Then when I restarted my system later I got a hardware found popup saying there was a new wheelman mouse on the ps2 port. I have nothing hooked to my ps2 port and don't use a wheelman mouse. I also had a couple errors caused by explorer yesterday. I figured it couldn't hurt to try reinstalling windows. During the installation something went wrong so it didn't complete and said to try installing again. Windows wouldn't start after that, just kept saying files were missing, and then the computer shut down completely. I used my startup floppy to get going again, reinstalled windows, and everything went smoothly that time. So far I haven't had any more errors or restarts. Keeping my fingers crossed and will keep you posted.

Got my fingers crossed too mate. Working on an AMD750/XP home machine myself at the moment - it refuses to handle jpgs, and grinds to a halt if you open a folder with more than 20 photos in lol. I think I'll follow your example and re-install too.

P3-949Mhz
640Mb PC133@146
GeForce4 64Mb
PCI 36.5Mhz

Well today has been interesting. I left the computer on for about an hour and when I came back in the room the screensaver was frozen. The red light was on solid and nothing I did would make it work or restart. Not the reset button, power button, cont+alt+del. I had to switch the power off manually to the PS on the back of the computer. When I turned it back on the hard drive light would stay red and nothing would happen on the monitor. Finally I opened it up and unhooked everything from the motherboard except power and the video card. It gave me the single beep when I powered it back on and the monitor came on, so I guess there's not a problem with the motherboard or video card. I hooked the drives back up one at a time and got it running again with just a few problems. It seems to hang alot longer at the initial startup screen now (the one where you can hit del to go into setup). Also I used the F3 option to find all drives in setup and it found the hard drive fine. But when I went back into setup after a restart, it showed hard drive not installed. I tried setting it to auto detect, restarted, and it failed to find the hard drive that way. I went back into setup and used F3 to find all the drives again. I restarted a few times and so far it hasn't lost the hard drive again. I also tried hooking up just the floppy drive at one point and I got no beep when I powered on. Does that point to the floppy drive having a problem or is it not possible to power on with only the floppy installed?

I hope you're having better luck with your repair project. I'm getting ready to take a few more aspirin for mine.

I think I figured out the problem with the hard drive not detecting. I had it set as master and my zip drive as slave originally. When I hooked it back up I plugged the zip drive in as a slave to the cdrw instead, but didn't change the jumper on the hard drive to single. From what I've read, the hard drive won't be detected right when it's set to master and it's the only drive on the cable. I went ahead and hooked the zip drive back up as it's slave and everything was detected and started up quickly like before.

So now I'm just back to the problem of why it froze up completely today.

Sorry to barge in like this, but I found this topic on Google when looking for the solution of the very same problem.

Harddrive goes *click*, then the computer just freezes up. Also there's been other genreal unstability around the computer lately for some reason. All of the symptoms described are noticed, it tends to happen more often when I'm listening to music or downloading files, in other words when the computer is doing more stuff.

However, unlike explained here, my capacitators are not leaking, nor bulging, they seem to be in good condition, something which I just asserted. Also this HD is new, and the problem propagated from the old one that did the same thing. Honestly, I'm afraid for the HD a bit. I'm thinking it's the motherboard, but that scares me as well. It's a relatively new one, and I can't afford to swap it around.

I'm highly interested in the outcome of this, and hopefully I can give in some input on the problem as well, which seems to be rather ghost-like around the net.

So you replaced your old hard drive because of the clicking and freezing, and now the new hard drive is doing the same thing? I'm curious if you tried a new power supply too.

My new motherboard has apparently died completely after only a few days use. At this point the fans all spin, but I get no post, beeps, or video. I tested it with nothing but the cpu and didn't get any error beeps either (I did under original testing after installation because of missing video card and ram). Also tested it outside of the case to make sure it wasn't shorting to something in there. Same result, only the fans work.

I'm hoping somebody can tell me what would cause a motherboard to die so quickly. One of my theories is that the old board damaged the hard drive, and it in turn killed the new board. Don't know if this is possible or not, hopefully someone can confirm.

I put my old board back in with my old power supply just to see what happens, and the hard drive clicks every few seconds. Didn't look like Windows could load so I shut it down manually after a minute. With the old board/new power supply, windows loads, no clicking from HD, but just as the desktop appears the power supply shuts down. Again, I think it does this because it's got better protection and something is shorting.

At this point I haven't decided what to do. I don't know if I should try buying just another board, or if I should also put in a new hard drive at the same time. Probably should have taken it to the repair shop to start with, but after all this I'm too stubborn to give up. :)

Died completely!! Don't know whats killed that so quick - I would be suspiscious of that old hard drive, but I doubt its caused the downfall of this second board. What other components are in there are from the original setup?

"...Also I used the F3 option to find all drives in setup and it found the hard drive fine. But when I went back into setup after a restart, it showed hard drive not installed. I tried setting it to auto detect, restarted, and it failed to find the hard drive that way. I went back into setup and used F3 to find all the drives again. I restarted a few times and so far it hasn't lost the hard drive again..."

Got this kind of detection situation the other day, and the drive ended up in the bin - since the machine wouldn't post/random behaviour (this was on an AMD1000/Abit board). I thought it had caused some damage to the BIOS, but since replacing the drive yesterday everything seems OK again. So again, this makes me doubt the HD is responsible for the meltdown.

Have you tried popping the CMOS battery out for a minute (disconnect from mains beforehand), or find the CMOS clear jumper in your mobo manual/website. This should reset BIOS to defaults, worth a go. Don't give up mate!!

I'll have a look into HD's messing up mobo's, since Sunstorm(welcome btw) suspects the HD too.

P3-949Mhz
640Mb PC133@146
GeForce4 64Mb
PCI 36.5Mhz

I tried using the jumper to reset the CMOS, also tried removing the battery, and that didn't help.

As far as what components were used on the old board. Both sticks of pc133 memory are original and checked out ok using memtest (right before motherboard replacement). CPU is original (new hs/fan). My HD and zip are both original. If I remember right, all of these components were installed at the original build (mid 2001). Floppy is about a year old. The CDRW is less than a month old. PSU was bought the same time as the new CDRW. Everything was hooked up to the new motherboard, and all worked fine for the 2 or 3 days that the computer was running.

I'm going to try another board but will have to gamble online again to get one that will use my memory. Don't have the funds right now to upgrade to DDR.

It's not worth the cost to have the board tested, but I'd like to have it done just to find out exactly what went bad.

I was looking at the new board again and found a scratch on the back. It's pretty deep and runs across several of the traces that outline the CPU socket. Since this was an open box item, I'm thinking the scratch was there when I got it. I didn't handle it roughly myself, but who knows what it's been through before. I don't know if the scratch would affect it in a way that it would run OK for a few days and then die a very early death. Any opinions?

Sounds like bad news there - its a similar situation to the blown caps, it might not be affecting anything, but it introduces the random factor which means its difficult to blame/troubleshoot anything else easily.

Are you still considering buying another mobo? You'll be the expert on Athlon mobo's if this carries on :^)

How much did the last one set you back? If its not much then I'd go for another one - alternatively, you could buy a complete athlon base unit and transplant all the best bits into one box.

P3-949Mhz
640Mb PC133@146
GeForce4 64Mb
PCI 36.5Mhz

Yes I'm planning on buying another board, definitely sticking with AMD. I'm still watching online but I've been thinking about just biting the bullet and getting a new board from the local store. All the new boards have DDR only so that means I'll have to invest in the new memory too. That's what I was trying to avoid, but with a local purchase I'll be more likely to get good parts and good customer service. Hopefully this will all be resolved eventually and I'll be able to say that it definitely was the motherboard that caused my original problems. We've kind of gotten off the beaten path on this one haven't we?

Sorry its been a few days - been working like mad. Buying from a shop and buying some DDR has to be the best option - we were both a bit suspect about getting parts off ebay, with good reason in the end.

I think we've got the longest thread ever recorded on computing.net, LOL, keep me posted if you do get a shop board.

P3-949Mhz
640Mb PC133@146
GeForce4 64Mb
PCI 36.5Mhz

With Windows 95 and Windows 98, a reboot and a clicking sound likely means an IRQ conflict or a memory address conflict.

Just wanted to touch base...I ended up buying another board off ebay since the one Microcenter had advertised wasn't available (surprise, like they ever have any advertised specials on hand). This board is an ECS K7SOM (like the K7S5A, it has double slots for DDR and 'old fashioned' memory in case I can afford to upgrade later). When UPS brought me this board the shipping box was completely torn up and taped back together, like it got stuck in some of UPS's machinery. I went ahead and kept it to test instead of refusing the delivery, figured it was worth a shot. Amazingly enough, it actually started up perfectly and is running fine (I'm typing this right now on my newly rebuilt computer...2 days and counting). So far, so good.

On another note, I received the board for my friend's computer on the same day (also an ebay purchase, but it's a pentium system). I installed his board the day after I did mine, no problems whatsoever. I've been running both of them off and on for 2 days now. I'm not a gamer, so all I've got to use for a stress test is AOL and the Titanic game. Both systems seem to be running fine.

It may be too early to tell, but I'm really thinking that the bad caps were the cause. Both of our boards had bulging/leaking caps. I'll keep you posted!

I believe I solved my problem, but somehow it seems like there are several problems that can cause the clicking. Strangely enough, my problem sorta solved itself. I was trying everything save formatting, and it came to a point where I couldn't even run the Maxtor diagnostics tool without it clicking.

In desperation, I started pulling apart the case to see if it could be anything of the kind. In the process I pulled my case from under the table and sorta left it open for a while. Now, strangely enough, none of my HDs were very hot or anything, I've heard recounts of HDs working even though they could burn one if someone touches them, but it seems like the open case stopped the clicking.

Now, I'm perfectly aware that my case was horrible, it had little room, not enough bays, and I had to burn a hole through the big front plastic cover it with a welding tool to put in a front USB box, however I didn't consider it could be overheating, since temperatures seemed to be rather normal, both in the diagnostics tools and by touch.

I talked to a few teachers of mine, and we established that the clicking noises come from the head hitting the platter and bouncing off, which might in fact damage the HD. Some possibilities that were brought up were a messed up IDE, dying drive, so on... I brought up the possibility of overheating, and in fact this was agreed to be possible.

Either way, I bought a new, more roomy case, and put it on top of my table instead of under it for a better airflow, and I haven't had the problem since then. I'm also considering getting some HD fans just to make sure. My guess is that possibly either some HDs or some MBs are more sensitive to heating then others. Just for a reference, my relevant computer specs:

- AMD Athlon XP 1800+, 512MB RAM
- Chaintech 7VJL Apogee Deluxe
- 200GB Maxtor (Prim. Master) and 40GB Seagate (Prim. Slave)

Either way, thanks for the help, and maybe I'll roam around the forum a little more, since you all seem to be nice people. :)

Good to hear all is well ferret, hope the motherboards stand the test of time; you could try some folding if you felt the need to give those new parts a workout.

Seems like the dreaded crashing HDD infection has struck again, the Abit KT7 I'm building for a friend has tidy caps and doesn't click. But after 10mins up, it locks briefly and reboots - then fails to find the HDD. A day or too later it will boot again, but only for 10mins.

Oh well, give him this 866 if I can bear to replace it; its been going strong for 4+ years, apart from that time I investigated what the red switch on the PSU did - bang! that'll be the 110v switch then.

Good news from Sunstorm too; putting a case fan that cost £5 saved my mates AthlonXP from restarting when he played games. Nice detective work, decent airflow makes a world of difference - not a problem for my overclocked Pentium3, the 120mm fan it sits in front of dwarfs the CPU heatsink+fan lol.

P3-866@975Mhz
640Mb PC133@150
GeForce4 mx440

That does remind me of something. Another thing I did during slightly before opening the case was to turn off the Folding service, which's been running all that time. Strangely enough, I remember problems started popping up slightly after I started to run it...

... Dun dun dun. Although it's probably understandable that a CPU intensive app like that would be bound to raise system temperatures, even though once again, it didn't feel very hot to the touch. I stick to the thought that possibly the mobo's more heat sensitive and the CPU heatup caused the problems to start.

I'll experiment with running Folding again to see if anything shows, however I doubt it since outside temperatures have dropped to negatives here, and the heating decided to fail just now. Ah well.

I guess I don't know what Folding is. When I clicked on the link in your message (jlmbo) it went to some page about protein folding (?!) I do have burn-in test on a disk. Is that the same type of thing?

As I understand it, Folding is basically scientific research into protiens and DNA which helps understand/identify illnesses.

By downloading and installing the folding@home program, you're effectively contributing to a grid network. Having lots of PC's at homes around the globe folding away is far more effective than having a few supercomputers work on the data. If you decide to fold then you need to pick a team to fold for, as there's a league of teams to promote competition :^)

Any spare CPU resources are used to fold, so you get 100% cpu usage most of the time; this is a decent work out. The P3's been going 4 days now, at about 35*C (I use MBM 5).

I think burn-in tests are very intense, more intense than folding, usually used to benchmark/compare components(?). Provides a good work out for a short period though.

Lecture over, lol.

P3-866@975Mhz
640Mb PC133@150
GeForce4 mx440

So I guess I was at the right site. I didn't look around enough to see the program to download, thought I was lost when I saw references to protein instead of computers!

My friend finally took his computer home last night, after I ran it for a week to make sure nothing obvious was going to go wrong. He's been loading it up with programs and hasn't had any trouble. Mine is still running fine also. I noticed after putting the sides back on my case, my CPU temp is up a little bit. It's running around 38-39 idle and up to 42 when I'm online. That's still OK isn't it?