Okay, I’ve got myself a used computer (my old one sorta died on me). It’s a nice box, except… It freezes on me. A lot. Today, 4 times. Rather annoying and inconveniet. At first, someone told me it may be the graphics card, as it happened when I was doing something graphic-intensive.But now it’s doing it more often, sometimes when I’m not really doing anything at all.
Now, some facts- I’m using Windows 98, a Celeron II processor, and I can probably grab whatever info anyone else needs. I’ve got all updated drivers. But I’ve also got a theory.
I think my box may be overheating, and I think my chip might be overclocked. Is there any way to check for either of these, and if it is one or the other (or possibly both) what can be done about it?
Oh, and, of course, would these things cause a freeze-up?
Check that your CPU fan is turning. If possible try to find a cpu temperature application on the internet, make sure the temperature stays below around 50 celcius.
I will update when I think of more… (unless someone else beats me to it)
I know this doesn’t sound helpful, but you should really reformat and load Windows from scratch. 98 is delicate and there’s no telling what kind of junk the previous owner installed. If it continues to freeze then it’s probably a hardware issue.
Bad RAM is frequently a problem in these cases. You can test it with a free utility like Memtest86.
As Lobsang said, check that all the fans are spinning. You might also want to restore the default settings in CMOS setup (hit the appropriate key when prompted before Windows starts). This should ensure that there’s no overclocking, at least on most boards. If the CPU speed is set with jumpers then you’ll need to look up the correct settings in the manufacturer’s manual.
[sub]Though I don’t know that it’s a good idea to take tech advice from anyone named Ludd.[/sub]
You aren’t specific about what “freeze” means but I have W98SE and the damn thing has been crashing constantly. The video will freeze on whatever it is doing, and the keyboard won’t respond and the mouse won’t respond. After I bang on enough keys, each key press or mouse click responds in an audible “click” noise, but still nothing happens. Moving the mouse results in a stream of click noises. So apparently the interrupts are getting through but the machine is otherwise nonresponsive.
I am running a trial version of MemTurbo, which cleans up after Windows memory leaks. That seems to be solving the problem, as long as I set it to refresh memory when it’s down to 24M physical (I have 128M physical).
When using Windows 95 or 98, Occam’s Razor should lead us to investigate a software problem before a hardware problem.
Take the cover off, point a fan at it & try it then. Heat is the number one first issue to look at & this should show you if thats the case. I had a board that told me what the temperature was & when it got hot it would shut down, cool itself off & come back on.
Take the cover off, point a fan at it & try it then. Heat is the number one first issue to look at & this should show you if thats the case. I had a board that told me what the temperature was & when it got hot it would shut down, cool itself off & come back on.
Take the cover off, point a fan at it & try it then. Heat is the number one first issue to look at & this should show you if thats the case. I had a board that told me what the temperature was & when it got hot it would shut down, cool itself off & come back on.
Take the cover off, point a fan at it & try it then. Heat is the number one first issue to look at & this should show you if thats the case. I had a board that told me what the temperature was & when it got hot it would shut down, cool itself off & come back on.
Ding! This is -exactly- what is happening to me. I’ll take a look for MemTurbo out there, see what I can find. I’ve also got a temp monitor running now, so I can see if something weird is up with that.
Oh, when I got the computer it had -nothing- on it. We did a completely clean install. I’ve got a monitoring program running, and it currently says- temp 40 degrees, mem available 100.25 Mb, Current Freq. 451.0 MHz. The available memory fluctuates now and then. If I get another freeze-up, I’ll keep a record of where these values are at and report in.
The program is called CPUCool, and I’m running it along with MemTurbo. Now, I’m noticing that I seem to start out with a whole bunch o memory, but drop -really- fast. Anything I can / should be doing about this? I haven’t had a freeze-up since I started running both programs, but it’s only been 12-13 hours.
Heh, my computer used to be like that. It would randomly crash on everything except for Starcraft (don’t ask me). I ran every diagnosic under the sun to no avail. Over the next two years, I replaced the video card, sound card and hard disk (primarily due to random influxes of money). I finally upgraded my motherboard, CPU and power supply and the crashes stopped. Lessons learnt? Sometimes things just f*ck up.
OK, now to your OP.
You can try to swap parts with a friend’s computer to isolate the cause. Obviously very fiddly and can take up a whole day. If you can isolate it to the motherboard and power supply, you’re doing well. You could take it to a computer techhie, but if it’s random crashes than the Tradesmen’s Murphy Law will apply.
Drivers, reinstalls, patches, updates, bleh. If you have random crashs, these probably won’t work, but of course YMMV