rec.autos.simulators

I know this is OT, but you lot are such a knowledgable bunch (Grovel,
grovel....)

8-)

One of my pc's has (over the last couple of weeks) developed the habit
of randomly locking up/shutting down.

The pc shuts itself down and goes into some sort of hibernation mode?
The power LED on the case flashes but nothing works, screen shuts down,
hard disk stops, everything appears to be dead, but the case LED light
flashes?

I have to press and hold the power button for a couple of seconds before
the pc shuts off properly (the light stops flashing and goes out). Then
I can re-boot and the pc will restart as normal.

I've checked to ensure that there is no power saving mode enabled and
afaik there is none (in control panel and in the bios).

I've done a virus check and nothing is found, and I've also tried
Ad-Aware and Spybot and nothing appears, so I do not think its a
virus/worm, etc.

The pc shuts down after about half an hour, but the time varies and it
can be 10 minutes or up to an hour before this happens, but using M/B
monitor I don't see any rise in temps prior to the shutdown.

It does not appear to matter what program is running prior to the
problem, or even if the pc is just sitting there doing nothing.

I've renewed the cpu fan with a new one anyway just in case, but that
made no difference, still the random shutdown's...

The PC Hardware is as follows:

Athlon 1.3Gb Duron based pc (home built, it was overclocked previously,
but since I built a newer pc two years ago, this one runs at normal
speed and is not overclocked).
512Mb pc133 SDram.
Asus A7V m/b.
X6 Toshiba DVD (32x CD) drive.
15Gb IBM HD & 80Gb Seagate HD
64Mb NVidia Ti200 GeForce3 AGP card
Hercules Fortissimo 2 PCI sound card.
PCI network card.
17" SVGA Monitor.
HP mono laser printer attached via usb.

And I'm using (up to date) McAfee anti virus/firewall and Win98 (SE)
with all latest McAfee & MS updates.

I've had no major hardware upgrades lately, last one was a new HD last
year, and the pc worked fine after this.

I've had no major software installs lately either, so I'm scratching my
head as to what might be causing this?

I'd be grateful for any ideas....

Thanx

I'd still say that it's a heat issue.  Run a fan onto or near where the
processor is located and see if the shutdowns continue.  I'm talking about a
regular fan, one you'd use in your home.

Alanb

Indeed, you might need to put new heatsink compound between your CPU and the
cooler. Took a similar system (Gigatech mainboard) apart only last Sunday
(different reason: keyboard fuse blown) and it had completely dried up.

Might also be a power problem, though, do you have a spare PSU you could
swap out? -or do any of the electrolytic capacitors on the mainboard look
"stressed" (i.e. bulging a bit at the top)?

Jan.
=---

I'll check, thanx

*Peter* -  http://homepage.ntlworld.com/petergagg/

Another thing to check might be the RAM. Bad memory can cause
unpredictable resets. Things will work fine for a while, then you hit
the bad memory location, and the computer throws a fit.

There are free memory test programs you can download. I can't really
endorse one myself, not having played around with any of them for too
long. http://www.memtest86.com/ is one I know of offhand. You can google
for more.

Or, if you have more than one RAM stick in your machine, you can just
try swapping each stick out, one at a time, to see if that makes the
problem go away.

Good luck!

Doug.

1 is inside the dsiplay settings, on the screensaver tab ( your looking for
that energy"Star" power & montor settings...  I have mine to shut disks off
after like 5 hours, monitor off after 5 hours...  this is much more than I
sit in front of it at any given time.  adjust these to never to test it
IMHO.

2 there is a 'bug' and I dont recall what one it was called that seemed to
crash a machine at work anytime it tried to communicate with the
'mothership' website or chatroom, that has been more or less abandoned by
the 'bugwriters' of that particular bug...  Dunno, if it was actual virus or
Hikacker though...  It was about a year ago I dealt with it, sorry.

get adaware, spybotSD, Hijack this, Spywareguard, make sure you update each
of them (of course read what each one does for you) I keep them installed...

Had the pc on for about 5 hours last night, no shutdowns at all, had it
on for about four hours today, no shutdowns, so maybe it was an old psu
problem, maybe the fan wasn't working properly and it was overheating?

Seems sorted now anyway, thanx all for the advice anyway...

8-)

*Peter* -  http://homepage.ntlworld.com/petergagg/