Computer freezes randomly....

[Yoshi21]

I recently built a shuttle XPC and it randomly freezes at various times. I have a sn21g5 barebone model with athlon 4400 dual core. The computer doesnt give blue screen or nothing and just freezes up on the last display it was at, whether its playing games or on desktop. If screen goes off because of screen saver it doesnt respond to any commands.

The psu for the barebone was too crappy to run a 7800gt so I have a psu sitting outside the box supplying power. I dont think video card is a problem cause i had the system run on barebones integrated 6600(?) before my friend gave me his 7800gt to me and it was still freezing. I believe it also isnt the psu cause on both psus it was causing the same problem.

When i checked the bios cpu ran around at 40c at idle and im wondering if thats the reason. im not really sure what the temperature is when the system freezes. I have the case opened up right now with extra fan running next to the system to give it an extra cool. Im also trying to update the bios just in case but im unsure as to how to make a boot cd with the bin file the shuttle provided.

 

[Nitestick]

40 degrees is a relatively high idle temp (my processor overclocked hits about 40 max at the moment) but i don't think it's high enough to be an overheating issue but you never know. i'll say it's overheating because if it isn't you're probably going to have to start blaming random components as failing

 

[Yoshi21]

well apparently putting a reg ol' household fan blowing air by the case completely fixed the problem. And i realized its a hard drive problem not a CPU.... When I pulled out the lil' bracket that holds the floppy,dvd-rom and hd, i noticed it was hot. So i tried to cool only those components using the fan and the problem simply vanished. can hard drives overheat and cause problems? I also realized the problem only occured after I installed dataguard software from Western Digital. So maybe its software related but apparently fan solved it.... Im gonna have to check this program out and see if there is some kind of safety thing for HD temp(?)......

 

[icantflybfplane]

yes of course hd's can overheat, they will show symptoms of slow retrievel time of info and of course freezing when it gets bad..., when heated like that it shortens the lifespan of the hd and can result in data loss too.....keeping just a regular house fan on it for long periods isnt good for it...all the dust and stuff that will get blowin into ur system will eventually clog the fans already in there and can possibly dmg the hard drive even more in the event a spec of dust get in the hd

 

[Yoshi21]

ok, well fan is not working so well anymore.

I keep my computer pretty well clean. I use compressed air to keep computer free of dirt. I also seldomly take the fan out blow all the dirt accumulated there too.

anyways, if ur hd IS going bad becaus ei think it is the case. hd is more than yr old, ive been using it on my previous pc, and i keep my pc on at all times. Now then, what should i do? is there any steps i can take to maintain/recovery a failing hd?

 

[Yoshi21]

ok, its not the hd.....

it must be either the cpu or the ram. I tested the HD thoroughly and it is actually fine. CPU on the other hand i got a couple of times an error message saying that cpu freq needs to be readjusted ( i didnt overclock though) and it defaulted to fail safe mode. RAM i never really tested but apparently my friend said he had a similar problem with ram being incompatible with his mobo or something.

any ideas? yall input is appreciated. Im gonna try to figure this out.