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Computer Woes

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OzFab

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A very close friend of mine (ok, the little princess' mother) has been having a problem with her computer for some time now, it randomly shuts down on her...

Now, I have some basic training & more experience building & repairing computers (both hardware & software) but this one has me stumped.

My initial thought was overheating so, I installed more fans in the case; no change. Then I put it down to a dodgy PSU & installed a new one; still no change...

The unit is about 5 years old (AMD 2.6GHz dual core processor, 4GB RAM (DDR2) IIRC) but, when it's not shutting down, it still works well &, as she is on a very strict budget ATM, a new one is out of the question; even buying new replacement parts will be on me...

My next thought is the RAM may be on it's last legs; can anyone confirm, deny or offer any other suggestions?

She told me tonight that there doesn't seem to be excessive heat inside the case & it tends to shut down more when playing mid graphic (facebook) games but, it has been known to die when sitting idle...
 
itsid

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Hey Tony..
please take the best image possible of the mainboard , especially the small capacitors are important.
I think you might find one (close to the CPU) blown

common problem on cheaper mainboards and PSUs is that if there's a peak it blows one of the capacitors...
no problem since the cpu voltage is buffered by all of them (well normally four to five, six sometimes.. the rest is.. well other stuff)
and then when the mainboard gets too hot, or the CPU gets some load it leaks and it shuts down.

If it freezes first then crahshes (sometimes with BSOD sometimes without) it's more or less the same issue.. just with the graphics card;
if it's not fully enclosed or covered by a heatsink take a picture.

If you think those are all in order,
try the next test:

Remove all but the first HDD, graphicscard, CPU and the RAM.
(no optical drives, no secondary hdds no tv-cards, no usb devices... just that)
well keep keyboard mouse monitor of course ;)

If it remains working and doesn't shut down on its own,
then it's the PSU having not enough power for all the devices (or one of the capacitors that buffer those pci slots)

if it still shuts down on you, you need to find the error log in the control panel.
maybe it's as simple as a mismatching driver module calling and locking a stack used by the CPU
(happened on ATi drivers IIRC a few years ago)

'sid
 
itsid

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Well Tony, I hope I'm wrong.
Take some pictures, you can spot a blown capacitor rather easily most of the times ;)

'sid
 
jman231994

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Most of the time a blown capacitor will be of the older electrolytic type, newer solid ones obviously can't leak. If it's an older one it will be easy as to just replace with a new one and a soldering iron

Might be just as easy with the newer ones, I just haven't had a need to do it yet so wouldn't know haha


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itsid

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jman231994 said:
Most of the time a blown capacitor will be of the older electrolytic type, newer solid ones obviously can't leak. If it's an older one it will be easy as to just replace with a new one and a soldering iron

Might be just as easy with the newer ones, I just haven't had a need to do it yet so wouldn't know haha
Click to expand...
Soldering?.. I have a nine year old mainboard (MSI) that died for that reason. You couldn't just solder in a new cap, because it was connected on the second layer, not the bottom or top..
no way to fix it
And yes, I clipped the leads and soldered the new cap to the old leads.. but that prevented the CPU Cooler from being mounted..

And worse, the first test (cpu uncooled for a minute or so)
blew the next capacitor right on bootup sequence, so back to square one.

Oh and most mainboards today don't use all solid caps,
you'll still find el caps on almost every board.

'sid
 
jman231994

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itsid said:
Soldering?.. I have a nine year old mainboard (MSI) that died for that reason. You couldn't just solder in a new cap, because it was connected on the second layer, not the bottom or top..

no way to fix it

And yes, I clipped the leads and soldered the new cap to the old leads.. but that prevented the CPU Cooler from being mounted..



And worse, the first test (cpu uncooled for a minute or so)

blew the next capacitor right on bootup sequence, so back to square one.



Oh and most mainboards today don't use all solid caps,

you'll still find el caps on almost every board.



'sid
Click to expand...


Ouch, I've only done an old imac g5, the caps definitely soldered in fine, it booted up fine for a few times and then I found another blown cap lol. Couldn't be screwed to do it all again and didn't have anymore caps so it's still sitting in a corner haha

I thought gigabytes claim to superiority was all solid caps? I'm pretty sure my board at least is all solid


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itsid

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yeah well, maybe it's because I don't see all solid capped boards too often and mix up cause and effect :D

See.. another blown cap, generally that means either that cap was already on its deathbed, or your freshly soldered in cap hasn't made proper contact with the correct layer of the mainboard ;)

'sid
 
jman231994

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Haha yea probably cause and effect, gigabyte loves making them haha

Nah haha the g5 iMacs are notorious for eating caps, I only replaced the really bad ones, a few others were still a bit puffy but not too bad


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What os is she running. Try reinstalling your os. Might be something as small as a missing file. Maybe a factory restore.
 
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