mjpaquette
Solid State Member
- Messages
- 7
I am working on a friends computer. He's got an eMachine 1400 which came with an Athlon 1600+ processor, 256MB ram. For the past few months, in the middle of some task, surfing the net, etc... the computer would just freeze. It wouldn't shut down, but the mouse and everything would freeze. It would require a hard power down (ctrl-alt-del wouldn't work).
Anyways, I took the computer, did a complete format and fresh install of XP Pro with service pack 2, and it is still locking up from time to time.
I was wondering if it's heat related, so I opened up and cleaned out the case (5 years of dust bunnies). I cleaned off the CPU fan blades, and got it running again, but it still froze on me. I tried dowloading some temp monitoring software, but it can never read a temp (it seems eMachines didn't spring for this feature?).
Can you recommend next steps? I won't mind spending some time on this, but I have no intention of spending any real money on it.
Do I need to improve the cooling?
Is the MB going bad?
Could it be bad memory?
In the meantime, I'm running it without the cover on to see if that helps. We'll see.
Thanks,
Matt
Anyways, I took the computer, did a complete format and fresh install of XP Pro with service pack 2, and it is still locking up from time to time.
I was wondering if it's heat related, so I opened up and cleaned out the case (5 years of dust bunnies). I cleaned off the CPU fan blades, and got it running again, but it still froze on me. I tried dowloading some temp monitoring software, but it can never read a temp (it seems eMachines didn't spring for this feature?).
Can you recommend next steps? I won't mind spending some time on this, but I have no intention of spending any real money on it.
Do I need to improve the cooling?
Is the MB going bad?
Could it be bad memory?
In the meantime, I'm running it without the cover on to see if that helps. We'll see.
Thanks,
Matt