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Thread: what the hell's happening???!!

  1. #1
    Photographer; for hire!! shiato storm's Avatar
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    what the hell's happening???!!

    i turn on my computer, windows starts up - runs for about a minute or two and then the computer shuts down for no reason AT ALL. and its driving me insame as i have to write a 10,000 essay by ... well, not long.
    it isn't connected to the net so no virus likely, been nimdar and klez checked plus latest virus def.s
    its really screwed, i'm thinking harddrive is dodgy as i compare it to a mate's computer, which is a lower spec but seems to be much faster at opening files and everything e.g. know how thumbnails sometimes take a while to load up? mine take ages, his are up in less than a second...
    why do i think HD? i continually recieved the 'Chkdsk' blue screen on start up having shut off automatically looking for disk errors, i think it found a couple because it shut off during the scanning process...!!
    well i thought it was a problem with windows - went through laborious task of reinstalling - but i wanted to format the disk to be sure i installed clean... i reformat and now i'm utterly buggered - XP keeps running into problems and when i check the space on the disk its as though only a teeny bit actually installed...baring in mind i'v sat a WHOLE DAY trying to figure this one out, tried to install windows god knows how many times...

    i have an asus a78nx dlx with 2100xp, 512ddr, geforce2mx 64mb (don't laugh, i get a good enough picture...sort of) and the HD is a maxtor one...don't know exact model but it should be 7200rpm and its ~40Gb...

    anyone have any hints?
    can YOU help?...

    if you could that would be lovely

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    Shutting down for no apparent reason is most likely a heat problem, check your BIOS for any settings and ensure your cooling is up to it. ALWAYS set your o/c's back to default when trouble-shooting. I take it it is shutting down rather than resetting or crashing/freezing.

    Even if you don't use the Internet you can still get infected from other people's CDs/disks either accidentally or intentionally. Things can also get screwed up by anyone else using your computer.

    Time to load and open files is almost entirely down to the HD and amount of system RAM, eg Duron 1ghz with 7200rpm (esp 8MB or SATA) HD will do certain stuff much faster thana P4 3ghz with 5400rpm. You can read the HD drive model number either when your IDE disks are detetced at POST/BIOS or in Windows via Device Manager -> Disk Drives or diags sw. Brand of HD and esp whether or not you defrag can also make a diff, scandisk once a week is wise too as is scanning your whole PC for viruses, getting all critical Win Updates and using the latest mobo drivers (pref generic chipset ones).

    As for thumb nails there's a caching options somewhere which can 'remember' thumbs already cached ... otherwise they have to be created fresh every time you browse the folder (or whatever) containing them.

  3. #3
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    I too had similar probs with this mobo. I suspect you may be running 400 on the memory?? Mine is rated at 400, but will not load XP at that, had to run at 266 to get XP on. I should have bought more expensive memory which was on the ASUS approved list, but hey, you live and learn:-( Try setting the speed of memory down, mine is now stable.

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    It could be the PSU aswell. As they say above, underclock everything including the memory and retry.

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    Then seriously stress your PC (even at stock) to test it is actually stable. What brand of RAM did you buy shiato storm? If it isn't a known brand it is asking for trouble esp if you want to run it at 400mhz (PC3200). Cheap RAM is only likely to run at that speed reliably if you set the RAM timings and settings high (slow) and possibly add a little voltage to it too (RAM +0.1v?).

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