I have an Alienware. Runs hot. I know. Every once in a while I overload it, leave it on for too many days with high RAM using things on. It goes slow, and when I go to restart, it won’t advance past the first boot splash screen. I hear everything churning, and it doesn’t stop when freeze occurs. I’ve gotten “around” this by rebooting it and turning it off often, and when it occurs, I just leave it alone for several hours. Surely there’s a better way. What if I stuck a boot disk floppy in it, would that make me able to get online and stuff again? Should I figure out how to unscrew the thing and “reseat” some things in slots, or use one of those canned air things on something inside? How do I know when it’s cooled down enough that I can turn it on and it’ll actually do my bidding?
Um, specs:
1 | INTEL D875PBZ MOTHERBOARD AA#C26680-206
1 | INTEL PENTIUM 4 3.2 GHZ 512K L2 CACHE 800MHZ FSB
2 | CORSAIR 256MB DDR PC3200LL XMS
1 | CREATIVE SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY 2 ZS 7.1
1 | ATI RADEON 9800 XT 256MB
1 | MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP HOME VER1.1
Maybe one of these has “issues”?
Runs hot?
Check it for missing slot covers, and check your power supply fan. Is it turning? Do you have a CPU fan? If so, is it turning? If not, maybe you want to install one.
If you’re not familiar with the inside of your case, go online or contact the manufacturer (or whoever put the box together) and get the instructions. There are also online courses that will teach you about the innards of your Alien.
The computer freezing during the Windows boot may indicate a corrupted registry file; since it doesn’t happen when the computer has cooled it may be an overheating problem. If it happens at other times you may need to load your Registry from backup (you do backups, right?) or repair your installation.
One other thing- can you access the Recovery console? Win XP doesn’t boot from a floppy the way that Win 9x systems do. If you don’t have the multiple disks made already, you may have some trouble.
Computer’s back now. Hah.
Actually, I think it isn’t the computer now. (It isn’t physically running hot, to me; I can touch it all over and it feels cool. I dunno. I just know Alienwares have a thing about running hot, hence all the coolers you get with them.) I think it might be the monitor. 'Cause I’ve had…problems wherein the computer would boot and run (which may very well have BEEN happening all this time, I dunno), but the monitor wouldn’t cue up and show pictures despite being on. I unplugged the monitor and plugged it back in and everything worked in the computer again.
Maybe it’s a driver problem then? This monitor didn’t come with this computer. But it’s not a “brand” type, IIRC - it’s some Gateway one. Is it possible that it was just the monitor being stupid, and not loading anything past the boot screen? (Normally when it doesn’t go with the tower’s commands, it just stays black.)
Have you been to Windows Update and installed any driver updates that are suggested for your machine? - Not every device/driver is covered by this process, but some of those known to cause problems will be.
Wow… where to begin here?
That matters not, my friend. Computers like email, web and file servers and even this message board run for months at a time. My own PC was up for almost seven weeks until last night when I had to reboot for a stupid Adobe update. According to Netcraft, www.aarosmetro.se has been up and running for 1648 days. So shouldn’t be an issue. In and of itself.
Sure. It’s possible. But in my 7+ professional years of working on some of the biggest pieces of junk I’ve ever seen… it’s never happened. One of two things will usually happen - either the monmitor won’t come on AT ALL while booting (which you’ve not described) or your display settings are set to something your monitor cannot display - which shouldn’t happen in XP anyway, but doesn’t happen randomly in any case.
Ummmm… No. Just because they have a lot of cooling doesn’t mean “they run hot”. Alienware makes niche computers for the gaming crowd. These people tweak their computers to the limit - overclocking the CPU and\or GPU and other stuff outside the scope of your problem. Anyway, overclocking does create a bunch of excess heat, so Alienware gives lots of cooling in anticipation of this. Also, newer computers need more cooling than older ones. Since Alienware tends to sell the highest end stuff, it needs cooling more than a Celeron 500.
Having said that, I’m sort of with Steelerphan on this one. If your PC progressively slows down, I’d look at the fan inside the power supply. NOTE: DO NOT OPEN THE POWER SUPPLY ITSELF! The next time your box slows down, open the case and touch the power supply. It should be warm, but not enough to make you flinch away. If it’s hot enough to make you pull your fingers away, it’s going south.
It could be some other fan inside your case, but this is unlikely, as BSODs or other nasties usually result when your CPU fan is stopped.
One other thing to try is using Task Manager to see what’s causing the comp to lock up. When things get slow, right-click on the Taskbar and Select “Task Manager” (or press CTRL+ALT+DEL and choose “Task Manager”). It’s possible that some program of Windows process has a memory leak or is using all the CPU and causing the lock-ups, although in this case it usually is hardware.