Is my CPU dying?

[olivier1984]

I too think that if I try to reformat/reinstall windows, it'll be really slow and probably will freeze before I manage to finish, so I don't think it's the best option for my PC.

I am pretty sure the hard drive is fine. It starts windows without any delay, I can browse the disk in explorer easily too (well, if not doing anything else at the same time, otherwise 100% cpu and zzzz...). And I recently did a defrag for my main HD, it went fine and didn't report any errors.

Spyware, adware, trojans, virii - all part of the Windows fun. If you are not protected, learn and do so before connecting to the net AFTER you reformat and reinstall. I think that is your best bet for a lot of reasons. Some folks like to patch it up and try to keep it running, but a fresh install solves all Windows problems (for a while).
I can tell you my PC was well protected before this happened. I had an anti-virus running, a firewall, did spyware scans regularely, etc.

Olivier

[Amd2800]

errm try a format see if it helps maybe you got a virus

[gimli of gloin]

Got a problem? Reformat...(diabloII)

[Sui]

uhm don't pentiums have a throttle back function at high temps? I think thats why it seems so slow. I think you have a faulty temp sensor as well, 100c would be litterally boiling temp, I couldn't see any cpu surviving at that temp.

Ohh yeah check your cpu temp in the bios.

[olivier1984]

uhm don't pentiums have a throttle back function at high temps? I think thats why it seems so slow. I think you have a faulty temp sensor as well, 100c would be litterally boiling temp, I couldn't see any cpu surviving at that temp.

Ohh yeah check your cpu temp in the bios.

How does the bios measure the cpu temp? If the cpu temp sensor is faulty, can the bios still give the correct temperature?
Because I checked today and the CPU temp in the bios was 93°C.

Now it's the weekend so no mail. But hopefully I'll receive my thermal paste after that, and then I can finally try it out and see if it works.

Olivier

[shenlingstyle]

What kind of a heatsink/fan do you have? Temperatures depend on that and your thermal paste. Also try Motherboard Monitor 5 to see if it can detect the actual temperatures.

[olivier1984]

Hello again,

I received my HS5 paste today and applied it between the cpu and the heatsink. The temperature dropped to 50 °C in idle (compared to 75°C before) and 75°C when surfing and downloading stuff (compared to 100°C before).

So, apparently the temperatures are correct, the cpu sensor is working, and it was a heat issue.

I can now download stuff and surf the net and post in this forum, all at the same time. I can also play flash animations (in browser) and videos (in media player) with no lag.

So...this thermal paste really works..woohoo!
Plus, they say on their website that it takes between 50 and 200 hours of use before it's at it's full efficiency, so things will even get better

I thank you all for your support, ideas and advice and wish you a great weekend!

Olivier

p.s. To anyone who reads this: If you have a fast computer (anything over 1GHz) and use it a lot, make sure you have a good heatsink/fan combination and buy Arctic Silver thermal paste to pu in between (instructions on their website). It really helps!

[Gravesent]

I apologise if anyone mentioned this before because I didn't read all the replyes, this may sound dumb but in order for a cpu cooler to work right you need to ad a heat conducting paste betwen it and the procesor, also make sure the new cooler is built to cool your processor model, as to if it's dieing or not the cooler you keep your processor the longer it will live so if it's over heating it will unavoidable "live" lesser.

Your problem might not be only related to your procesor, some time ago a friend of mine had his computer slowed down because DMA was not enabled, his HDD made a lot of effort and his procesor was always used at 100% when doing things like listening to music or brawsing the internet, now I don't know were in Windows you can make this setting but he installed DVD Idle Pro for something else and at start up it prompted him that DMA was turned off and that solved his problem (this is of course empirical so don't bet on it)