Rasori
Baseband Member
- Messages
- 25
Hi all,
I've been running into a lot of minor issues with my desktop lately (happens a lot with my builds at this point, the 1.5 year-or-so mark). I'm getting close to due for a wipe-and-restore so if people are of the opinion that these could well be software related then I'll bump that up my priority queue.
First and most major is intermittent crashes. They're not regular enough to blame on specific programs, but one coincidence does have me wondering if they're memory-related: I've had multiple crashes at about the 80% loading point on Starcraft 2 campaign maps. Aside from that, they've occurred randomly, more commonly after a while running but occasionally just at startup, and after a quick restart the computer almost always runs fine. Heat doesn't seem to be the issue, I'd blame dust but after the first couple I did a thorough cleaning to no avail so that doesn't seem to be it. There's no blue screens (ever) and no crash logs of any sort so it's tricky to diagnose. Is there a feature on Hardware Monitor (or a similar program) that allows it to run in the background and make a log of the stats, so that on a crash I'll be able to provide mostly up-to-date information?
The other issues are, as I said, probably unrelated, but worth mentioning both for diagnostics and on the off-chance that they are linked. First is probably a driver issue: I have my TV set up as a monitor through a DVI-HDMI adapter plug, which works perfectly fine, sound and all, but when the TV is turned off and back on while the computer is running, the video card disables the sound output while claiming that it's not supported. If I unplug the HDMI cable and plug it back in again, it works fine.
I'm not sure where to place blame for my last two problems, though I'm leaning towards software lately and will be running (better) virus scans shortly to see if I picked up something naughty. The first is that, on startup, occasionally I get a blank screen instead of a login screen, all black except for a mouse cursor. No amount of waiting/clicking/button pressing fixes it, but if I press the sleep button on my keyboard and then wake it back up again, it fixes. In fact, as soon as I press the sleep button the computer seems to snap out of it, flashing the login screen for an instant before going to sleep.
And finally, my login is remarkably slower than usual, but not in the usual malware way. It's just that after login I get a black screen (the same as above, with a mouse cursor, but I think it's black just because my background color is black) which just stays like that for a bit, with no loading sounds (no hard-drive spinning or access, for example) for 5-10 seconds before it loads up as normal.
Help/opinions on any and all of these would be greatly appreciated! I spend most of my time in the UK but I'll be back stateside shortly so if I need some new hardware I'd like to diagnose it in time to buy the parts at a decent price.
I've been running into a lot of minor issues with my desktop lately (happens a lot with my builds at this point, the 1.5 year-or-so mark). I'm getting close to due for a wipe-and-restore so if people are of the opinion that these could well be software related then I'll bump that up my priority queue.
First and most major is intermittent crashes. They're not regular enough to blame on specific programs, but one coincidence does have me wondering if they're memory-related: I've had multiple crashes at about the 80% loading point on Starcraft 2 campaign maps. Aside from that, they've occurred randomly, more commonly after a while running but occasionally just at startup, and after a quick restart the computer almost always runs fine. Heat doesn't seem to be the issue, I'd blame dust but after the first couple I did a thorough cleaning to no avail so that doesn't seem to be it. There's no blue screens (ever) and no crash logs of any sort so it's tricky to diagnose. Is there a feature on Hardware Monitor (or a similar program) that allows it to run in the background and make a log of the stats, so that on a crash I'll be able to provide mostly up-to-date information?
The other issues are, as I said, probably unrelated, but worth mentioning both for diagnostics and on the off-chance that they are linked. First is probably a driver issue: I have my TV set up as a monitor through a DVI-HDMI adapter plug, which works perfectly fine, sound and all, but when the TV is turned off and back on while the computer is running, the video card disables the sound output while claiming that it's not supported. If I unplug the HDMI cable and plug it back in again, it works fine.
I'm not sure where to place blame for my last two problems, though I'm leaning towards software lately and will be running (better) virus scans shortly to see if I picked up something naughty. The first is that, on startup, occasionally I get a blank screen instead of a login screen, all black except for a mouse cursor. No amount of waiting/clicking/button pressing fixes it, but if I press the sleep button on my keyboard and then wake it back up again, it fixes. In fact, as soon as I press the sleep button the computer seems to snap out of it, flashing the login screen for an instant before going to sleep.
And finally, my login is remarkably slower than usual, but not in the usual malware way. It's just that after login I get a black screen (the same as above, with a mouse cursor, but I think it's black just because my background color is black) which just stays like that for a bit, with no loading sounds (no hard-drive spinning or access, for example) for 5-10 seconds before it loads up as normal.
Help/opinions on any and all of these would be greatly appreciated! I spend most of my time in the UK but I'll be back stateside shortly so if I need some new hardware I'd like to diagnose it in time to buy the parts at a decent price.
