Computer intermittennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnntly freezing

[Mike Fishcake]

Visualise yourself saying that title. That's the best way I can describe what my PC is doing.

About 3 or 4 months ago, my PC started intermittently freezing. Approximately every 15-30 minutes it froze for about 5ish seconds. It just appeared to be 'stuck', nothing at all happening. The mouse pointer stopped, no hard drive / DVD access, and if there was sound playing, it would stick, not sure how to explain it, but it kinda sounded like a faster version of when a CD sticks :-/

After trying disconnecting / reseating various things, it appeared to be the video card that was causing the problem, as there was occasional graphical corruption, and it didn't appear to freeze up when I ran WinXP in VGA mode. I replaced the video card, and this appeared to cure the problem, because it never happened again. Until a few days ago. My PC has been on quite a bit more than usual in the past couple of weeks. Not really doing anything system intensive - just downloading/seeding torrents (all legal before you start ) and general internet THINGS. It freezes whenever it feels like it, and quite often when I'm burning DVDs, which seems to generate a few coasters

My spec is:

Gigabyte 965P-DS3 S775 motherboard
Intel C2D 6300 on stock cooling (never OC'd)
3GB DDR2 RAM (2x512 and 2x1GB Corsair Value Select)
480W Xclio PSU
320GB SATA HDD
160GB IDE HDD
80GB IDE HDD
(all HDDs 7200RPM)
16x SATA DVD-RW
512MB nvidia 9550 video card (passive cooling)
PCI Belkin Wireless adapter

CPU/GPU/Mobo temperatures are absolutely fine.

I'm wondering if my PSU is strong enough. Whilst I hate the peeing-up-against-a-wall competition that seems to go on with PSU manufacturers, I do have an inkling that it may not be enough for all those drives, but saying that, the only item on that spec that's changed in the last 18 months is the video card that was recently replaced, so why go all cacky on me now?

Any (sensible) suggestions welcome!

[Blaineoliver]

I used to get this problem, except everything froze except the mouse and windows, that was down to a dodgy hard drive. Run a scan on the hard drive using HD tune.

[s3ds]

480W Xclio PSU

check the 12 volt line of this the last one (only one) I had only put out 10.4 volts and it gave me similar problems

another thing to check is the heat inside as the GPU is passive

[Mike Fishcake]

OK, I thought I had it down to the DVD drive, because after I rebooted to check the system health in the BIOS, the system didn't detect it any more. So that's disconnected now, it's not jammed yet, but after running Speedfan, it shows that my +12v is at 0.00v, and -12v at -16.9v.



Is that even possible?

[watercooled]

I wouldn't pay much attention to voltages as reported by software - they are often wrong. If your +12v was 0 your PC wouldn't be on but it wouldn't hurt to check the rails with a multimeter, especially the -12v one, as bad voltages can cause instability.

[Grey M@a]

Last time I had this issue was back on the old P4 system and it turned out to be my dvd burner that would cause the system to hang like you are having.

[Pob255]

I've found Speedfan to be very unhelpful, it all depends on your make & model of motherboard as to how good/accurate it is.

According to speedfan my ambient temp is -128c, maybe a t-shirt isn't enough and I'd better put a jumper on.

[s3ds]

TBH when i tested mine i shoved a multi meter up a mulox when it was on.
The Bios may give you better readings ( under PC Health or similar )

[watercooled]

Molex only provides +5v and +12v with yellow being +12v, red being +5v and black being ground. Also BIOS readings can be far out too - I wouldn't trust either!

[s3ds]

The last Xclio PSU i owned gave 10.5 volts in bios and 10.4 from molex ( sorry my spelling is bad)
the pc hung and had random crashes when i changed for a VX450 the problem was solved.

[Mike Fishcake]

Looks like I'll have to see if I can borrow a multimeter from somewhere...

[s3ds]

I did that to confirm that bios was correct
does the bios give a 12v reading ?

[Mike Fishcake]

I did that to confirm that bios was correct
does the bios give a 12v reading ?

It helpfully says

+12v [OK]

[Domestic_Ginger]

Everest works for me, the voltages appear very accurate (they are what I would expect but admittedly I have not checked them with a multimeter). Its great for temps too (or appeaers to be).

If you have a cd or dvd in a knackered drive it can cause windows to hang while it searchs the drive. For me its DVDs in my 9 year old dvd drive.