Instability problem:

**The Alcotroll** · August 04, 2006, 12:36 PM

A question on behalf of my brother, whose been bending my ear about this since I got home for the summer.
His computer is a pretty powerful one (far better than mine) and has no problem playing games like Rome and Dawn of War with sparkling graphics and no drop in performance. Only problem is, it has a habit of crashing to desk-top after half an hour or so.

The way the games play (no noticable problems) suggests that it's not to do with the machine's ability to handle stuff, but for the life of me I can't work out what is causing it to CTD at half-hourly intervals. There's bucket-loads of memory, I ramped up Virtual Memory as far as it can go, and I even cleaned the dust out of the fan. I've no idea whatsoever what's causing the problems.

Any ideas?

**Custor** · August 04, 2006, 02:38 PM

Instability and CTD is a bugger to fix. Can be all manner of things from slightly dodgy components to crappy software installation. None of which is necessarily the owners or manufacturers fault. Not alot of help that though so...

Has it always crashed or is it recentish? You could try a system restore.
Most new graphics cards come with OC software as standard (despite warning us for the last ten years about ooh the damage) turn that down to no overclocking.
If it's a self built rig or decent mobo knock up the voltage to the RAM and/or CPU a notch.
If multi RAM modules installed try running on single stick.
Reinstall the most basic of software - mobo drivers, graphics drivers.
Try to isolate single component by running different stress tests.
If all else fails and you're out of warrenty - clean install and put in the very basics of CPU, RAM, GPU, HD and single CDROM. INstall the basic drivers and run a known CTD programme. Build up teh rest of the components such as sound card, WIFI, Modem etc. Check stills table. Add optional software back in one at a time.

Pray.

Set fire to and claim on insurance.

**The Alcotroll** · August 04, 2006, 05:56 PM

Thanks. Apparently the crashes have been going on for a while, and it's not self-built (it's a Fujitsu according to the label on the front) I have to admit that I'm crap with computers, so I didn't follow a lot of that, but I'm liking the look of option C:

Set fire to and claim on insurance.

**kshcshbash** · August 04, 2006, 08:21 PM

Well you know it's happening at halfhourly intervals, so you are in a good position.

Boot in Safe Mode and see what happens. If it doesn't crash then it could be a problem in boot.ini or with drivers.
When in safe mode, remove added hardware in reverse chronological order, this includes removing drivers. Reboot. It will probably be way too time consuming so you could just remove all but the bare minimum (keyboard, monitor, mouse) and add it again step by step.

If you have ever checked a map for leaks, or been hunting a leak, do it the same way with this.

**Aristocrat** · August 04, 2006, 09:35 PM

Ok,
Download a program called Prime95. Download motherboard monitor. (Both free).
Run Prime95 torture test for a few hours and check the temperature of the cpu, if it gets high (If its an AMD cpu above 60 is high....Intel's have a bit more leeway) then it is most likely a cooling/overheating issue.
Of course if the computer reboots while running Prime95 it is a heating issue.

Prime95 will have an error if there is a problem with the cpu or ram so that will help as well.

**krazykarl** · August 04, 2006, 10:40 PM

If you have bad RAM, this could be a symptom. But it is far more likely that it is a heat issue, when the thermal threshold of certian components is hit, the hardware kill switch kicks in. You could look for inoperational fans, or take a can of air and clean the thing out and see if that helps.