soggyamphibian
Member
Hi!
I've had problems with my computer crashing.
At this point I suspect there is a hardware problem (and I'd guess motherboard), but thought I'd better leave the judgment to people better experienced than I.
Here's my system specs:
Motherboard: ECS A885GM-A2
Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 970 Processor 3.50GB
RAM: 2x4GB sticks, Crucial.
Video card: EVGA GeForce 210 1024MB DDR3, but reverted to the motherboard graphics.
Hard Drives: WD10EARX Sata 1TB (OS drive), Samsung HD154UI 15TB (Storage), there's another one too, but I unplugged it.
Optical drives: was running an LG Super Multi SATA internal thing, unplugged it and have been trying an external USB version of the same.
OS: Vista Ultimate 64-bit, also experimenting with Linux Mint on a USB stick.
Had intermittent problems with bluescreening, freezing and restarting for a while, bluescreening got really bad so I reinstalled Windows.
Some of the freezing gave some screen glitches. I had WhoCrashed installed, and not every bluescreen seemed to have been remembered by the computer. I saved the old crash reports. I'm sure I ran a Windows Fixit at some point in that previous install, I don't remember what it was for.
After reinstalling, it still crashed. I removed the graphics card (I mentioned the screen glitching), the internal optical drive and the third hard drive (the latter two were second-hand, so I thought I'd rule those out). Seemed more stable, but still crashed. Did get a Windows Fixit for "common USB problems" after a bluescreen named a USB thing, has still been crashing since. A later crash had the Windows bug report thing thinking there might be malware, a Full Microsoft Security Essentials scan didn't come up with anything.
Some extra oddities:
Sometimes the screen glitches before restarting, crashing or freezing. Usually it's a little glitch (lines of intermittent yellow over whatever else is going on), sometimes this precedes the whole screen going messed-up.
A handful of times in its crashing or freezing before getting into Windows proper, there have been a bunch of blue blocks over the screen (only noticed this since removing the graphics card).
Three times so far, it's basically reset the Bios ("CMOS time not set" or some such). The battery seems to be fine - Bios holds information the rest of the time.
It's frozen once in Linux Mint (I don't use Linux a great deal).
It's frozen once in BIOS (I don't go into BIOS often).
It's frozen in various places before reaching Windows: before the amount of memory shows, after the amount of memory shows, at various places during the list of attached drives, in the black before the Windows slidey bar appears (while it loads Windows before you get the cursor), while that slidey bar is supposed to be going, the other day once it reached Windows but before the Gadgets loaded (there was the mouse pointer with the circle next to it, and it just froze there).
This has rarely happened after I've turned the computer on, more often it happens after it's reset itself, the monitor thinks it's not getting a signal (orange light instead of green on the power light). Sometimes it'll happily sit there forever like that, sometimes it'll restart again by itself (this usually recovers the screen). If I have to hit the reset button myself at that point, sometimes the screen comes right back, sometimes not.
Uploaded the SF thing from the current install, and the zipped-up minidumps from the previous install.
Thanks for your help!
I've had problems with my computer crashing.
At this point I suspect there is a hardware problem (and I'd guess motherboard), but thought I'd better leave the judgment to people better experienced than I.
Here's my system specs:
Motherboard: ECS A885GM-A2
Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 970 Processor 3.50GB
RAM: 2x4GB sticks, Crucial.
Video card: EVGA GeForce 210 1024MB DDR3, but reverted to the motherboard graphics.
Hard Drives: WD10EARX Sata 1TB (OS drive), Samsung HD154UI 15TB (Storage), there's another one too, but I unplugged it.
Optical drives: was running an LG Super Multi SATA internal thing, unplugged it and have been trying an external USB version of the same.
OS: Vista Ultimate 64-bit, also experimenting with Linux Mint on a USB stick.
Had intermittent problems with bluescreening, freezing and restarting for a while, bluescreening got really bad so I reinstalled Windows.
Some of the freezing gave some screen glitches. I had WhoCrashed installed, and not every bluescreen seemed to have been remembered by the computer. I saved the old crash reports. I'm sure I ran a Windows Fixit at some point in that previous install, I don't remember what it was for.
After reinstalling, it still crashed. I removed the graphics card (I mentioned the screen glitching), the internal optical drive and the third hard drive (the latter two were second-hand, so I thought I'd rule those out). Seemed more stable, but still crashed. Did get a Windows Fixit for "common USB problems" after a bluescreen named a USB thing, has still been crashing since. A later crash had the Windows bug report thing thinking there might be malware, a Full Microsoft Security Essentials scan didn't come up with anything.
Some extra oddities:
Sometimes the screen glitches before restarting, crashing or freezing. Usually it's a little glitch (lines of intermittent yellow over whatever else is going on), sometimes this precedes the whole screen going messed-up.
A handful of times in its crashing or freezing before getting into Windows proper, there have been a bunch of blue blocks over the screen (only noticed this since removing the graphics card).
Three times so far, it's basically reset the Bios ("CMOS time not set" or some such). The battery seems to be fine - Bios holds information the rest of the time.
It's frozen once in Linux Mint (I don't use Linux a great deal).
It's frozen once in BIOS (I don't go into BIOS often).
It's frozen in various places before reaching Windows: before the amount of memory shows, after the amount of memory shows, at various places during the list of attached drives, in the black before the Windows slidey bar appears (while it loads Windows before you get the cursor), while that slidey bar is supposed to be going, the other day once it reached Windows but before the Gadgets loaded (there was the mouse pointer with the circle next to it, and it just froze there).
This has rarely happened after I've turned the computer on, more often it happens after it's reset itself, the monitor thinks it's not getting a signal (orange light instead of green on the power light). Sometimes it'll happily sit there forever like that, sometimes it'll restart again by itself (this usually recovers the screen). If I have to hit the reset button myself at that point, sometimes the screen comes right back, sometimes not.
Uploaded the SF thing from the current install, and the zipped-up minidumps from the previous install.
Thanks for your help!