PC freezing up.

[Dave the Insane]

It could be more of my monitor freezing, but anyway.

At random times, but mostly when i just boot up. My monitor seems to freeze for a few seconds then goes blank, and the little light turns orange. The only way to get it working again is too reboot the whole PC.

I've tried turning it off and on again, taking the plug out and putting it back in (my monitor plugs into the power supply). I've replaced the MB and the PSU (it's a 300watt now), and i have no clue. I'm hoping it's not my graphics card or monitor becuase i didn't plan on upgrading till christmas.

Specs:
1.3Ghz AMD Duron
512mb PC3200 DDR Ram
ATIRaedon9600
300watt PSU
K7S8XE+

 

[Clayeth]

You could try a different monitor, but it's most likely the PC.

The orange blinking light means there is no signal coming from the computer. The same thing will happen if your computer is set to go into sleep mode.

If you dont have another monitor, one way to test and see if the computer is really running, is to put an mp3 in the upper right corner of the screen, where you can find it without actually seeing your cursor.

Next time this happens, move the mouse until you're 100% sure you've reached the extreme corner, and then come back toward the middle just slightly. Then double click. If it's the monitor, the song will play normally through your speakers. If it does, then it's either your monitor or videocard.

If it doesn't play, I'd start by looking to see if you might have a virus or something that's simply shutting down your computer.

 

[Beowolf]

Mine kept freezing a while back. What tech support said to try, and it worked, is going into the BIOS and setting the voltage (forget what option it is under) up a notch. It is probably on 5%, set it to 7.5%

 

[Dave the Insane]

I should have mentioned that the screen will freeze, but the mouse will be able to move around then screen goes blank.

BeoWolf - I'll give your idea a shot.

EDIT - i didn't see an option for to change the voltage.

 

[Rukee]

the voltage would be the AGP voltage to up it for the VC, or the chipset voltage, or the memory voltage, or the CPU core voltage. Most MB BIOS`s have an option to adjust them, but you may have to enable it somewere before it allows you to change the values. Bumping them up a step or two usually will not hurt if it gets you over a lock-up or past a problem like this. But you don`t wanna increase them just for no reason. It could also be any number of things causing it from a trogan program loading, to a VC failing, to a monitor cable, to the monitor itself. If you can test the VC in another computer would help. Wiggle the cable coming out of the bvack of the VC too when this happens, however, with the mouse being able to be seen and moved, I don`t think it will be the cable, I`m betting it`s going to be drivers, voltages or a program in the background.

 

[BinarySystem]

Does the hard-drive light flash after the display is gone? Can you hear the disk spinning, or the CPU fan?

 

[Dave the Insane]

I don't think it's drivers coz I've been through several and i'm not using the latest Omega drivers.

I'll try again and see what i can do.

EDIT - BinarySystem - Not sure, i think so.

 

[Clayeth]

That's definately not the monitor then.

Also, check and see if your videocard is sharing an IRQ with something, especially a creative soundcard. That can be a major couse of lockups. Usually it will show up while listening to music, watching a movie, playing a game, or something like that... but I suppose it could happen at startup too, especially if you have a startup sound.

 

[Dave the Insane]

I have a Sound Blaster Live! Wave Device.

How do i find the IRQ thing?

EDIT - Figured it out, it isn't sharing an IRQ with anything.

EDIT2 - Yea the CPU and everything still runs when the monitor goes out.

 

[Dave the Insane]

Nobody got any ideas?

 

[Beowolf]

Did you end up finding the voltage option in BIOS?

 

[FireSlash]

What I would suggest is (if its not under any warrenty) crack the case open, and remove non-vital cards and components one by one.

For instance, pull the sound card, and wait and see if it crashes again. If so, pull the LAN, wait for another crash, repeat.
Once you run out of non-vitals, start swapping vitals out with another system. Start with the video, then ram and CPU (If you have compatable spares sitting around)
A cheap old PCI video card shouldn't be hard to pick up from an used computer store.

 

[Dave the Insane]

I found an option called Over Vcore Voltage which i enabled, but still didn't an option to change any volt stuff.

Although in the system monitor menu the vcore readout looked a little like this.

Vcore 1.863V
+3.30V 3.242V
+5.00V 4.863V
+12.00V 12.193V

It looked like that before i enable Over Vcore Voltage.