• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Computer keeps crashing - help please

also...ever since i reformatted/took out a stick of ram...it still crashes...but iit doesnt crash half as often as it used to....i dont know why...and i havent ran memtest on the stick i think is bad yet...i havent had time....schools taking a lot of my time...but ill probably do it over thanksgiving weekend....but that stick cant be the problem...because im using the one i thought was good (and the one i already ran memtest on) and its still crashing
 
Power supply is the number one cause of random restarts in Windows 2000/XP. There are more, but PSU is first. I think 300W is sufficient, but maybe a different one, or bumping up to 350W or 400W solves it. When a power supply is not delivering good power, it sometimes causes a very random and tough-to-detect instability. So I'd swap power supplies, if you can.

Earlier in this post, PCman related to your problem, and wrote, "I knew it was a heat issue cus when I took off the case it wouldnt randomly restart so I added a fan and it works perfectly now."

That sounds like a good test to me. You wrote that you have six fans. But overheating may still be an issue. In addition to taking off the case, I would give a quick look around for built-up dust bunnies maybe blocking airflow inside your computer (causing overheating) and use canned air or a vaccuum to get any built up dust out of your case. I would eyeball everything inside, for that matter, and make sure everything can breathe. I would make sure the back (or anywhere with a vent) on the computer case is not pressed against a wall. Air must go in and out of these vents. With six fans, if air is not circulating, I could see internal heat building up. I would check Motherboard Monitor, which is freeware as long as your BIOS works with it, to gauge inner temperature. Or just check the BIOS itself out of curiosity about what the processor temperature is.

Some other stuff, who knows...

Start the computer in safe mode. Isolates the drivers.

Flash the bios. Haven't heard that mentioned.

Run a Chkdsk on your hard drive. Can't hurt.
 
well my computer stays pretty cool and i checked the bios...the temperature was good..i also went through it and cleaned it out with an air compressor (turned extremely low on the pressure)...and i got rid of all the dust..i know its not the drivers, because after a reformat it crashed, and what does flash the bios mean?..and what does a chkdsk do/how do i run it?
thanks
 
If you got the computer from Dell, Gateway, HP or the like, go to their website and search for BIOS update. If you put it together yourself, go the website on the mobo manufacterer. The BIOS can be updated (or flashed, it's memory). You can think of it like updating the drivers for it.

Boot the computer in safe mode, go to my computer, right click on the c drive, properties, tools, check now. Make sure both checkboxes are checked.
 
did you by any chance, unplug and reconnect EVERY SINGLE CONNECTOR in your PC. that includes the power connectors to the drives, , drive cables, ram, cards,. everything.
just disconnect and reconnect each thing one by one. reconnectin them will clean the contacts.

even a marginal connection on a pin of a power connection can sometimes cause crashing.

i was getting ocasional blue stripes on my radeon 9800 pro ddr2 on bootup and i stopped using a cheesy power "y" adapter and it never happened again. the dvd burner got it instead, not constantly in use , and its power use is lower than the card anyways.
 
Back
Top