Computer Running Slow

[wither 3]

It's hard to say how to procede from here. If you repeatedly click on Del before the F2 comes up. does it enter the BIOS? You might try removing the CMOS battery for a minute and putting it back in to see if you can clear the motherboard light and boot.

 

[koberulz]

Pressing Del didn't appear to do anything. Once the "press F2" screen popped up, I tried pressing that. Got a message about unsuccesful POST attempts, press Y to enter BIOS or N to boot with previous settings. Then it shut down.

 

[townsbg]

I still can't get it to boot up at all, though. It gets to the "press F2 for menu" screen and shuts down. No beeping, though.

No beeps at all? Usually there is at least one. Is the ram in correctly? Is the heatsink back on correctly?

 

[koberulz]

There probably was the usual one beep, but I'm so used to it that I really took no notice.

Just tried it again, to double check, and I'm getting the "insufficient fan speed, low voltage" beep again. It shut down at the "press F2" screen. I tried again, twice, and got the same beep error and it immediately shut down, even before the beeps had completed.

The two sticks of RAM I removed to access the heatsink screws are sitting in their slots, but aren't clipped in, because I have nowhere else to store them. I'm not getting any RAM-related POST beeps. The heatsink is, at least as far as I can tell, fully secured.

 

[wither 3]

The first thing that happens on bootup is a RAM and PCI-E check. If there's no problem, you only get one beep. At this point, I'd do the CMOS battery removal. If you can test it, make sure the battery isn't dead.

 

[townsbg]

Can you not get the ram sticks all the way in?

 

[koberulz]

Got my dad to come over and help out. Got the RAM in, the heatskink out, the fan off the heatsink, and all the dust off both.

Managed to then boot up and log in, but while it was starting up all the startup programs, it died again. So it's better, and manages to boot into the OS, but as soon as it tries to actually do anything...

Heading out now to try and get some thermal paste, see if that makes a difference. Other than that...he's thinking replace the CPU and/or motherboard. Any other ideas?


ETA: Got further with the thermal paste, got all the startup programs loaded, but when I tried to start Firefox it shut down again.

 

[ilikefree]

Will it start in safe mode?

 

[townsbg]

How much thermal paste did you add? Not much is required in fact too much won't work at all. I'm sure that there are guides that you can get through google. You might want to inspect the cpu but do so carefully. Look for any bent or broken pins. If there are any the cpu will need to be replaced and likely the motherboard if there are broken pins. You might also try running a linux distribution like knoppix or ubuntu. That will give you a chance to rule out windows. Also try safemode.

 

[koberulz]

There wasn't much thermal paste added.

Surely the fact that we've only just got it functional enough to boot into Windows at all would rule out Windows? The only thing that changed between it refusing to boot into Windows at all and it now being quite happy to sit at the login screen all day was the amount of dust in and around the CPU heatsink/fan. Unless there are two completely unrelated overheating issues simultaneously affecting the machine...

Is it possible that it overheating did some damage to something, making it more prone to overheat quicker?

 

[townsbg]

I'm concerned that you did something to the cpu. With my desktop I had it shutting down randomly. It turned out that the power supply had gone bad. I don't know much about those so I'm not sure how to advise you to test it. To answer your question yes overheating can ruin the cpu. You might want to check the capacitors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqkntTBkPfM

 

[wither 3]

We mentioned the PSU previously, when he mentioned low fan speed and voltage errors. If I was him, I would be backing up my personal files as quickly as possible, in case the CPU is failing. He still hasn't mentioned trying the CMOS battery removal.

ilikefree asked him if he could get to safe mode. I'd like to know if he can get to safe mode with networking and launch FireFox.

 

[townsbg]

@OP: did you ever inspect the cpu for bent/broken pins? Did you check the capacitors as I suggested? Also we need to know more information about your computer. I don't think that you ever told us make/model and mother board if you know it. If we have to help you with hardware replacement we will need to know that.

 

[koberulz]

System specs:
Vista Home Premium SP2
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz 2.66GHz
16GB RAM
64-bit OS

[The motherboard is] an intel DX58SO.

We mentioned the PSU previously, when he mentioned low fan speed and voltage errors. If I was him, I would be backing up my personal files as quickly as possible, in case the CPU is failing.

CPU failure wouldn't affect my files, would it?

He still hasn't mentioned trying the CMOS battery removal.

I don't know what or where that is, and last time I tried removing something from the motherboard...

ilikefree asked him if he could get to safe mode. I'd like to know if he can get to safe mode with networking and launch FireFox.

Yes, but it shut down after a few minutes, and the overheating light was on on the motherboard.

Getting the heatsink on and off is a two-person operation, and there's only one of me here at the moment, so anything involving visual inspection of the CPU is going to have to wait. Am I going to have to redo the thermal paste after removing the heatsink again?

 

[townsbg]

If the heatsink is back on I don't want you to take it off. The cmos battery looks like a watch battery. It is mettalic in color and about the size of a nickel. It is is the lower right hand corner furthest away from the ram sticks. see page 11 of the tech spec. http://downloadmirror.intel.com/18128/eng/DX58SO_TechProdSpec.pdf

 

[wither 3]

My comment to back up files was out to lunch. Replacing the CPU shouldn't affect that.

 

[koberulz]

If it makes you feel any better, I figured out the cause of the last overheat: I got the heatsink back on, but didn't plug the fan in.

Currently running in Safe Mode. Slowish but reasonable, no red light. Haven't tried anything more than Firefox though.

Not sure I can get to the CMOS battery; literally every cable in the entire computer is in the way.


ETA: Running Firefox after a standard boot. Flash keeps "not responding", and a couple of scripts on various tabs have followed suit, but no red light and no shutdown. Guess I'll try encoding that video again.

EDIT 2: Encode time down to around four hours, but a couple of minutes in and the red light was back. Disappeared as soon as I hit 'pause'.

 

[wither 3]

Since you're able to boot normally, you shouldn't worry about the CMOS battery anymore.

I don't know what else to do in regards to the overheating issue. You could try reinstalling the motherboard drivers just to make sure everything is working correctly. If the graphics aren't working correctly or the CPU isn't handing off to the graphics, it could cause an overheating problem for the CPU. Overheating of the graphics normally results in a BSOD.

 

[townsbg]

I suggest that you run the following stress test program to test your cpu and see if it crashes or overheats. Be sure to watch speedfan while doing so. GIMPS - Free Prime95 software downloads - PrimeNet

 

[koberulz]

When you say "speedtest"...do you mean SpeedFan, or is there something in the program I'm not seeing?