hi, help!

[GoNz0]

by the way where di all of you guys learn how to virtualy build a computer?i know tht obv sum1 must but i was tlkig to my computing teacher and he says that (in my school anyway) that you dont get taught about the computer its self

the same way your learning, by asking questions on free forums, i started out with the beta of XP and a PC world excuse for a 1st PC. since then i have worked in a PC shop, a laptop specialists and had a attempt at running my own business. all without qualifications.

for the next 6 weeks im off to retrain for maintenance on IT related peripherals, ir printers, projectors. it will be the 1st qualification i had since school and the NVQ's i got soon after.

you get help, warnings and links to plenty of how to guides. only thing i can advice is asking your old man if the PC is covered under house insurance on the off chance something goes wrong

[Thorsson]

I started mucking around with the internals in PCs over 20 years ago. Mostly from reading articles in magazines - there wasn't even an internet back then...

I fixed a PC that wasn't working in my girlfriend's work, and they let me take my pick of some others they no longer wanted. I got one fixed up with a dot matrix (!) printer and sold it for £300 (PCs weren't cheap back then) and used the proceeds and a lot more £s to build my first PC. Been at it ever since.

Anyway back to the problem PC. Not terribly useful being a no-name motherboard. Hope iranu's suggestions have hit paydirt or we are going to have to go through the BIOS slowly. Can you just hit <Delete> during bootup and see what options are there when it goes into setup? You can reset at that point with no ill effects.

Looking at what we can see I'm guessing that this was a cheap computer. I suspect that you (your Dad) paid too much for it even so. I'm actually surprised that you can play WoW with it. You certainly can't be seeing it how Blizzard intended. And this makes me wonder just how many corners were cut in the making of it. We really need to know what's sitting on top of your CPU. Surely you must have a digital camera (even if only in a mobile) in the family? A picture would really be a great help at this point.

P.S. You said you paid zillions of paper deliveries to upgrade the memory - you were probably ripped off there too. Too late to do much about this now - but next time you need to do something with a PC, ask here first.

[DanceswithUnix]

For some reason I started off thinking the PC must be old. Is it actually under any warrentee?

I think a computer that only works as long as it has nothing to calculate would be a valid return to vendor job

[b0ned0me]

by the way where di all of you guys learn how to virtualy build a computer?

As others have said, you learn by asking others who know, reading how-to guides, and occasionally just trying stuff to see what happens. I think most of us started off with either "why doesn't this damn game work properly" or "how can I make my computer go a bit faster?" and just sort of went downhill from there. Fortunately PCs are just a sort of super-version of Lego, you just need to figure out which bits can plug into each other and what things might make for slightly funny behaviour.

Unfortunately schools don't do classes in 'how to be a geek who can sort out people's PCs for free' - if they did I wouldn't be sorting out my mum's neighbour's internet every time I visit . So PC help seems to break down into three kinds:

• Free help done out of goodwill, with no guarantee it's correct
• Paid-for help done by numpties, no guarantee it's correct, and not cheap
• Paid-for help done by experts with a guarantee it's correct - which is so expensive even most companies can't afford it.

Fortunately the advice you get from places like Hexus is very very good, and free

Any news on just how hot the actual heat sink is getting? Would be good to know if the sensor is reporting the temp properly. If it very hot, and you have a passive HS, then at least there's a cheap and simple fix - a new HS and fan won't set you back much, and might even be free if you can track down someone with a spare one.

[quintinius]

yeah lol was &#163;40 for the RAM and that is zillions of papers believe me....2p per paper >.<

[quintinius]

the heatsink isnt actually that hot its about 40-50 degrees tops but im just on the computer it may not have warmed up and thanks for all t hese articles now i know what the heatsink actually does- cools the cpu so if the heatsink isnt hot does this mean that it isnt getting rid of enough heat,doesnt have enough heat capacity or my computer just sucks hands down?

[quintinius]

oh and the motherboard looks very much like the link from jetway computers except my heatsink sits on top of the bigger black bit that says VA on it (its sitting at a side ways angle but is a square and bigger than the other one) but i can see a little black line under the heatsink, going to try and get a loan of my dad's camera

[iranu]

oh and the motherboard looks very much like the link from jetway computers except my heatsink sits on top of the bigger black bit that says VA on it (its sitting at a side ways angle but is a square and bigger than the other one) but i can see a little black line under the heatsink, going to try and get a loan of my dad's camera

That will be the heatsink for the chipset. If you look at that picture there is a big white square to the right with lots of holes in it. That is where the cpu goes. On top of this should be another heatsink with a fan ontop of it. The fan has a wire that plugs into the motherboard so it gets power.

Was the PC crashing before you had the extra ram installed?

[Thorsson]

yeah lol was £40 for the RAM and that is zillions of papers believe me....2p per paper >.<

That's 2,000 papers. You need to spend more time on your Maths lessons...

[quintinius]

Was the PC crashing before you had the extra ram installed?[/QUOTE]

yes but i thought it was because the lack of ram..

[acrobat]

There is a lot of experience on this forum though, I reacon a few weeks reading here and you can be overqualified for PC world

lol

(Thats the truth)

Was the PC crashing before you had the extra ram installed?
yes but i thought it was because the lack of ram..

no worries, extra RAM is always worth having.

By the way, I'm losing track of whats going on here. One thing I wonder if you've tried yet.. Do you have access to a big fan? Like a fan that people have in their office or house or whatever. (like something like this)

If you have something like that, you can take the side off your PC case, and then point that fan right at the inside of your PC and set it to full blast, and let it blow air at all the components in your PC. You can then see what that does to the temperatures, and also try playing WoW and see if you can play it for longer without crashing. If so, then you know for sure its a temperature problem.

Temperature problems are a pain, because they usually mean you have to buy something. But luckily, its not always expensive. It may just be that your case has no fans and everything is cooled passively in the PC. (Passively = by sticking metal heatsinks to stuff to draw the heat away - rather than having an actual fan to actively cool stuff). If thats true, then you can just buy a couple of case fans and fit them in the case. And that might fix any temperature problems.

Although... figuring out if the Voltage of the CPU is too high should still probably be the first job. Because if thats too high, that will most likely be the cause of your crashes. So having a look at your BIOS would be useful, and then we can see if you can change the voltage and stuff.

[b0ned0me]

so if the heatsink isnt hot does this mean that it isnt getting rid of enough heat,doesnt have enough heat capacity or my computer just sucks hands down?

Well, it's more a case of trying to figure out what it might be and what it definitely isn't. If the heatsink was cool it might suggest that the temp sensor was confused about how hot it actually was or that the heatsink wasn't fastened on to the CPU properly.
If it gets scorching hot then either the CPU is generating more heat than it should be, or the heatsink is too small, or both at the same time.
You just sort of work through all the possible problems it might be and try to eliminate things one by one until you have a clear diagnosis. Sort of like House but without the stick, Vicodin and snappy one-liners.
Getting a photo of the innards of your PC, and another of the bootup screen, would be kinda handy for trying to figure out what you've got under your desk, so if you or your dad can take some snaps it would be helpful. Is there any writing on the motherboard that might be a model number?

And definitely try Acrobat's suggestion if you can lay your hands on a fan from somewhere...

2p a paper? Is that delivering free papers, by any chance? I used to get paid £12 every fortnight for delivering 1000 papers back when I was your age. Backbreaking miserable job when it was raining, or really hot.

[Pob255]

Well I lernt quite a bit from my father who built his first computer back in the 1980's when to make a computer involved getting a curcit diagram, a bunch of chips and resistors and such and soildering it all together (all thoes components where far more chuncky back then)
I got my first PC back in 1997 for Uni and I've been upgradeing ever since. The original floppy disk drive is still in use in my current PC
A lot can be trial and error, I've made mistakes along the way. (a really cheap Eagle PSU comes to mind which blew up about a month after I got it and took the motherboard and 1 stick of memory with it)

oh and the motherboard looks very much like the link from jetway computers except my heatsink sits on top of the bigger black bit that says VA on it (its sitting at a side ways angle but is a square and bigger than the other one) but i can see a little black line under the heatsink, going to try and get a loan of my dad's camera

is the mother board the same colour? does it have the words PT880DM on it like in that picture?

Is there a fan at the end of that yellow plastic duct? (not personally come across one of these mother boards before)
Has your case got any fans on the front or back of it?
Also we don't seem to of asked you about your PSU (Power Supply Unit) although looking at your voltage numbers from before and your specs it seems ok

Voltage Values:
CPU Core 2.16 V
Aux 1.60 V
+3.3 V 2.67 V
+5 V 5.08 V
+12 V [ TRIAL VERSION ]
+5 V Standby 5.11 V

that very high Volatge core still looks like the problem, the intel website lists the Celeron D 320 as 1.25-1.40v operateing voltage.

[iranu]

I'm gonna bump this.

CPU core = 2.16V and
+3.3 V l @ 2.67V

seems suspicious. That cpu voltage just can't be and the 3.3V reading is about 20&#37; low which must be out of spec.

quintinius - can you get back to us? I would suspect that either the voltage to your cpu is too high or you need to take the heatsink off the cpu, clean off the heatsink paste (it gets hard and less efficient over time) and reseat the heatsink with new paste in order to get your temperatures down.

[quintinius]

ok umm where do i get heatsink paste and how do i get the heatsink off? gona take a picture as soon as my dad gets back from london

[acrobat]

You can buy heatsink paste (called "Thermal Paste") in lots of places. Like PCWorld, or buy it online. (My favourite place is www.scan.co.uk). You can also find guides on how much to put on etc. Its important to not put on too much or too little.

As for getting the heatsink off, its probably best if we wait until we can see it in a photo. Its usually got little things like screws near each 4 corners of the heatsink. Its usually possible to take the fan off the heatsink first, and then the heatsink can be unscrewed and lifted off.

You might not need to do any of this though if the problem is just your voltage. If its just the voltage, then hopefully we can just help you get into the BIOS screen and change the voltage back to normal. And that could fix all your problems.