My PC is dead

[old.Hendrick]

In short: PC suddenly stops working, goes dead, black screen, no power, does not boot up again, nothing happens when I hit the power-switch.


The long story:
It all started friday evening. At that dreaded relic-raid, my PC died in the middle of the action, when we were at the base of the keep-hill. Screen went black and the PC went dead. When I tried to reboot, it would run for about 5 minutes, then go dead again. I opened the computer and cleaned the dust away, then left it alone for about an hour. After that, the PC booted up again and everything went well.
On saturday, after about 2 hours playing, it went dead again. Same problem, screen got dark, PC stopped working. After booting up it would shut down after 5 minutes. So I leave it alone again for a while and it works again. But only for about an hour...
Quite angry I take out the ventilator-cooling-thingy and clean every single piece of dust from it. After this the PC works again for about an hour, then dies. But now I could not even get the thing to boot up, absolutely nothing happened when I hit the power switch. It stayed like that thru saturday night and all sunday. I started to think that maybe my power adaptor is broken, but there was this small greenish light on the mainboard alight all the time, even though the PC did not work at all. Now this morning I press the Power-Button, and lo! it boots up. I could not really check anything as I had to go to work, but all of a sudden it worked again.

Anybody got any ideas?

I have an Athlon 800 mhz processor
Asus K7V mainboard
Leadtek GF4 MX graphics card
A 300 Watt power-adaptor
and a perfectly clean cooler
running windows 98
512 MB RAM
the whole system was asembled in mid 1999, except for the graphics card and some ram additions. Could it be that the parts are just getting old and tired? The PC has been running like mad the last few weeks, I must admit.

Thanks for your time.

 

[old.Jessica]

Oddly, you're not alone.

Similar problems, happened to me twice now.

Athlon 1G
MIS Mainboard K7xxx
GEForce MX200
512MB RAM
300W PSU
etc etc.

Full system diagnostics after death reported fluctations suddenly eminating from the PSU. PSU replaced, system working fine for 3-4 days.
playing DAOC again solidly, as we do, for most of the weekend. Sunday morning... crash, boot fails, random crashes. Check PSU again and... tada! PSU fried again.


I have a background in computing, assembly, components, etc etc for the best part of 10 years, 7 of which professionally.

The setup where that box is consistes of server farm of about 8 machines, all run off surgeprotect/regulated supply. Lots of very similar boxes...

The only box I've ever had problems with is the DAOC machine.

He's what investigations have come up with so far:

1) Overheat
2) Potential powerspike feedback from monitor.

The box was soak tested with numberous diagnostic and load tools. Each one soaked for 48 hours after PSU was replaced the first time. No problems reported, no crashes, no errors.

Soon after the machine goes into high load (that's good ole DAOC for you) GEForce card is running at a somewhat high temperature. The PSU responds in the manner in which it was designed: Kill Itself before the components fry.

Solution:

1) Add fan assisted cooler to GEForce GPU
2) Add system fan to the case. (imporve air -flow- through the box, not just leave the case off)
3) Replace with 350-400W PSU.
4) Install air conditioning in the room. (lol)


If anyone else has had these issues and it was resolved in a different manner, I would be interesting in hearing from you.

Happy hunting!

 

[old.Irrelevant]

So no beep codes at power up? Does the power supply fan work?

 

[old.Jessica]

okay... after PSU fry the PC is in the following condition:

Flucuating voltage to mainboard.


The result of this is the PC will work fine for about 5-6 minutes until some spot of memory or a register in the PCU gets wiped by the power fluctuation.

I should revise the term 'fry' when associtated with the PSU.. It doesn't go 'pop'... Fry is the technical term used when something stops functioning correctly. *smiles*

PSU fans, CPU fans, System fans get cleaned at least monthly with air blow cans.

Nice clean syetems I keep.

 

[old.Hendrick]

Thanks, I'll try and get me a better PSU now. Hope this will help.I must admit that I am a bit scared by your long explanation, being a PC-illiterate and all, but it sounds pretty much like what is happening to me.

 

[old.Jessica]

Ahh, forgot to mention...

In your case Hendrick, it was the thermal fuse in the PSU blowing. To explain, these are temperature sensing devices that, when too hot, cause a break in the power to your system.

You get nothing from the power button until this has cooled down. i.e. It worked after you left it for an hour.. this is because it cooled down.

Replacing your PSU won't help you in this case. Buying and installing fans and better heatsink/fanassisted cooling stuff to your GPU's and CPU's will help you.

When you get power supply problems, the problem 99% of the time is NOT the power supply. Something else is causing the PSU to do it's job properly.

Hope this all helps anyway.

 

[old.Hendrick]

Thanks again, that prevented me from spending 100 bucks on something I do not need. I'll try and get me some extra cooling-devices then, I just hope this stuff is not too complicated to insert (I already managed to put in new RAM, a new graphics card and even take out the CPU-cooler and de-dust it. I am learning fast, am I not? ). If all does not work, I'll buy that big ventilator and just place it next to my open box.

 

[old.Jessica]

Okay, low cost option for keeping a system cool.

1) Go down to hardware store buy a desk top fan. i.e. one of them things you get in offices.. nice big one. In the us I think they're about $20, over here in the UK, about £15.

2) Go home, put the case ON you computer. VERY important note here. Computer cases are designed to aid cooling. Leaving them off causes you more problems. Why? The idea is to have air -flow- through the system. Leaving the case off just lets the box sit there with all the hot air it generates hanging around it, not disipating around the room. This is why 'system fans' work so well - they sit at the back/front sucking air into/out of the case (depends on case) and shoving all that nasty hot air out.

3) Pop the fan on your desk and point it at the air vents on the case. (again, front back or side depending on the case. Just look for vent holes. If you can't see them obviously, then they'll be on the back of the case.

4) Turn on fan, turn on your nice superfan cooled PC.

It works And it's cheap and no hastle. Don't even have to remove the case. Just have to remember to turn the fan on.

 

[old.Hendrick]

I'll try that Looks like I will finally have to change my desktop-layout and clean the thing. Duh, the pain. And if it still does not work, there's always the PS2, and the cube, and the box and the DC to go to...

Why can't they make games like this for those wonderful convenient consoles you play while sitting on your sofa? No bugs, no boot-up trouble, no hardware-upgrading, no patches, no trouble

/em sigh

 

[Jupitus]

Seems to be a few experts hovering around this thread, so I thought I'd be a well-behaved poster and add my problem in a thread of similar nature...

<waves at Hendrick>


I have a brand new DELL unit, 2Gb pentium4, 512Mb RAM, Win2k and GeForce3 Ti200 64Mb GFX.

In general the game runs very nicely, and I have few problems despite a crappy 56k connection (adsl or cable not available). However, once in a while, my PC is restarting itself during DAoC time. Observations so far:

1) Never happens any other time, although I don't play many other graphics intensive games on it.

2) Hard to say if it happens during particularly stressful times for the GFX processing (such as heavy RvR) although I wouldn't rule this out.

3) After reboot, and able to start again straight without any problem.

Question really is this: Do you folks think this could also be an overheating problem? I think the ventilation probably COULD be improved around the box, but it is pretty well designed IMHO and I was hoping not to have to rethink my layout....

Drivers are the latest generic nvidia ones btw... and I don't have any other crashing problems at all.

Comments / suggestions most welcome guys and gals...

Thanks,
Jup.

 

[old.stroke]

Do you have the service packs for w2k? If not i recommend you to download them. Had problems during beta (although i suspect mine to have been network problems) and they were solved by doing so.

 

[Jupitus]

Thanks Stroke.... yes I do

 

[Danya]

The Ti range of cards from nvidia have crap drivers, I'm yet to find anything that works properly. (Though I blew my gf3 ti200 so it went back anyway).
As for case on/off, I have run a computer for months with the case off with no problems... It does have some rather interesting cooling equipment on it though (hoses full of blue fluid etc.)

 

[old.Jessica]

Well...

If you're lucky enough to have nice water cooled stuff you don't have to worry too much about case on/off. The case on/off is more for people that don't have nice fans/coolers on the cpu, gpu, gfx mem, northbridge etc chips. And again it comes down to ambient temperature in the room.

On the subject of DAOC crashes, sorry to say, some of this is simply down to a combination of DAOC and your hardware/drivers. Not really a 'fault' with either, but more an undocmented feature. DAOC does crash, and horribly at times, but you do need to ensure you system is in tip top condiction so you can, litterally blame DAOC/Drivers for your crashes.

A point on the Nvidia Drivers... Don't just upgrade the gfx drivers. You also need to make sure your motherboard has latest BIOS and that you have the latest motherboard drivers for your OS. MSI have released an AGP fix for some of their boards (BIOS) which need the latest VIA chipset drivers. To help any of you that need it.. here is a list of the things you need to install and in order when you 'build' your machine.

1) Plug all the bits in.
2) get latest bios and flash your bios. (nb: this is NOT nearly as risky as you think: Positivly Identify your motherboards exact manufactuer, model and revison and just tripple check you download the right files ONLY from your manufacturers website.)
3) Install OS
4) Install latest motherboard drivers
5) install all OS service packs (including DirectX)
6) install gfx drivers
7) install sound, etc etc

This should help you find problems on route to a fully installed system. If you find problems after you install a set of drivers, go back uninstall them, and download the previous version of the drivers until you reach a point where your system seems stable.

Lastly... Yes there are some problems with the latest version of the Nvidia drivers. If you have problems with the, do what it says on the website: Use a previous version.

Once again, hope some of this helps.

 

[Danya]

The best nvidia drivers I have found are 12.41, absolutely rock solid. Alas they don't work with Ti cards...

 

[Jupitus]

Thanks for the advice... I suspect Nvidia driver vs DAoC is to blame, although there are a couple more things for me to double check...

The box is almost brand new, and was built by DELL. Its probably unwise to assume that the BIOS is the latest so I will check.

Given that it ALWAYS restarts without problem, would you say that it is therefore unlikely to be an overheating problem or not?

Cheers!

Jup.

 

[old.NickC101]

Well, I too run Win2k Prof, but on hardware based around AMD with ATI graphics. From time to time I get exactly the same thing, (normally just after I pull something big & nasty ) ie drops right out of Windows & reboots. Overheating is definately not the cause for me, nor is lack of power from the PSU - I think its a DAoC / DirectX / Device Driver problem, but havent really got to the bottom of it. Every couple of months I spend a day upgrading device drivers & the like but as yet nothings made this one go away.

 

[old.trigali]

I don't know how relevant this is going to be to this thread:

I had had a lag problem for weeks, since I purchased the game, and no one was able to sort it out for me. i downloaded the latest drivers for my gfx card, upgraded, downgrade said card, downloaded the latest patches, upgrades for my OS (Win2k) etc.

Until someone at GoA was hired/had a brainwave and told me to upgrade the motherboard's driver.

Since then I run DAoC like a breeze... try it, it can't hurt I suppose.

 

[old.Jessica]

Yes, I mentioned to upgrade motherboard drivers earlier in this thread.

The gfx card drivers sit on top of the motherboard drivers... As it's the motherboard that controls information flow from AGP->Memory->CPU... It does kinda help to make sure you have the drivers for your motherboard installed to the latest ones. (And hence you may need a BIOS flash at this point)

Often is the case when 'latest' graphics drivers 'don't work' is simply becuase the motherboard drivers have not been updated.

If you need help finding them, 9/10 times you visit:
www.<insert-manufacturer-of-mainboard.com.tw

e.g.

www.asus.com.tw
www.abit.com.tw
www.chaintech.com.tw
www.msi.com.tw
www.via.com.tw

etc etc

 

[Jupitus]

Thanks for the advice guys... its a brand new unit, so I'm a bit reluctant to start on the motherboard, but I'll check versions and at least find out the status.

Thanks,
Jup.

 

[Gef]

Fear not Gef is here, all you need is to set up your PC like this and you will never have any heat problems ever again:

LOL, seriously though heat it king in computers 90% of the time if your machine is locking up, resetting itself, random errors its to do with heat. Try setting your FSB down a little and multiplier up, have a look at the VCore voltages. If they are way above or below the norm 3.3v, 5v or 12v then you will get problems.

 

[old.fat]

On the matter of drivers not working with doac. ATI radeon all in wonder 7500 with latest drivers refuses to work with doac. I spent 3 weeks talking with goa and no luck. In the end, up on the US site there it said. Almost all ati drivers dont work with doac. so you have to try these unsuported drivers.
Yes it is very helpfull of the us rightnow site to have this info, but why was goa not informed of this "glitch" as it took so long for me to find out. With these unsuported drivers, I can now play doac but at most times I am running like 2 - 4 frames a sec. I am hoping that mythic and Ati wil beable to come out with a driver soon that is suported and does Work Well. (not a rant, just annoying that all my other games run so amazing and doac struggles so badly, makes doac look like a poorly written program and im sure it isnt)


Athlon 1700+
512mb mem
ATI radoen AiW 7500
Sonicfury
Cable modem (configured as internet server)