Freezing Randomly

[brandonkick]

I don't understand why you didnt listen to me, but your throwing fixes at a machine and your not sure of what the problem even really is. It's not good practice to fix something until you know what exactly is broken.


First of all, inspect the motherboard for swelling or leaking capicators. Remember though, a visual inspection isn't always good enough. Caps can go bad without swelling or leaking. The best way to check a cap is with an ESR meter. Good ESR meters aren't cheap and it requires you to pull the motherboard out of the case.

Secondly, do not go by software readouts for power supply voltages. If you want to check them, do so by using a voltage meter.

Then, do what I suggest first and remove the hard drive and try to boot the hiren disk. If that still wont work try another utility cd, perhaps a live OS disk like a live version of linux.

When you (or I guess I would say when I) have a machine that isn't working properly / isn't booting I recommend you strip it down to the bare minimum hardware.

This is:

Power supply
CPU (with heatsink and fan)
Motherboard
1 stick of ram in the lowest numbered slot

The machine should boot and you should be able to enter the bios just fine.

Before booting, make sure all fans are clear of blockage and dirt and that they function. Check for swelling or leaking caps.

Then add in one CD or DVD drive, so that you can try to boot a diagnostic disk. I would recommend hirens since it didn't work before. Try a different disk drive as well or a newer version of hirens.

Sounds like you may have several issues. The power supply might be flaking out on you and the hard drive as well. Then further down on my list of guesses would be a corrupt install or a heat issue. Is the heatsink itself clogged up in between the metal fins?

Do a proper diagnostic before you start applying fixes. Be complete and precise in your diagnostics.

 

[PCX]

Again, maybe I am missing it, but when did you run the HDD diagnostic and what did you use to run it? Did you do a short diagnostic or an extended? Was there any Read Errors or other SMART errors? How many bad sectors were there? This is one of the first things you need to check on a system. In fact, if you skipped everything else in the diagnostic process, the HDD would be the one thing you would NOT want to skip.

You especially do not want to throw chkdsk or sfc /scannow or anything else that would otherwise keep the hard drive spinning, until you have ruled out the HDD as the problem. I hope to God that their data is not important to them.