Random PC Lockups

osaddictosaddict London, UK
edited October 2009 in Hardware
My colleagues PC, running Vista Ultimate, quad core processor, 4GB ram etc has recently developed a fault where by the screen turns off and the PC appears to be on, however, pressing caps lock or numlock does not change the lights on the keyboard - indicating to me that the PC has frozen.

Quite why the screen goes into power save I don't know.

The only way to bring it back to life is a hard reboot, even waiting an hour (as my colleague did when going to lunch!) nothing changes.

I looked in the event viewer, as I now have 3 times where it has happened which I know about - there's nothing before which indicates a problem.

The PC is used for publishing but it's rarely strained, when it died today she had Outlook, Firefox and Indesign open - nothing was being processed or anything heavy.

Does anyone have any ideas?!

Comments

  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited September 2009
    Sounds like video driver issues.
  • osaddictosaddict London, UK
    edited September 2009
    Thanks Kryyst, I hadn't thought of that. Seems odd it would suddenly develop an issue, I'll see if there are any updated drivers. It's a slightly better than 'stock dell' graphics card - it has 2 dvi ports for one.
  • osaddictosaddict London, UK
    edited October 2009
    I tried that, to no avail unfortunately :(

    Here's the current situation:
    * Looking in the event viewer for events prior to the machine freezing which would explain it. Nothing out of the ordinary, all information messages and nothing you wouldn't see at other times.

    * Updated the graphics drivers from NVida, it now has 19-August-09 drivers or there abouts.

    * A new DVI cable (as we have some spare ones) and it was easy to eliminate.

    * Memtest 86 - This ran for about 5 seconds then tried to boot the machine, very odd. So, I removed 1 stick of RAM from 1 slot and tried the test again, this ran for around half hour then I stopped it as nothing odd had happened. I tried it again with the same stick of RAM and it failed in the same way, so I thought I had sorted it.

    Unfortunately the same thing has happened again this morning so my memory removal didn't solve it.

    I've had PCs freeze in the past but never the monitor die straight away, this seems most odd.
  • mtroxmtrox Minnesota
    edited October 2009
    osadict you remember that batch of Dells that had bad capacitors on the mobo a few years ago? I had an office with a bunch of those. Same exact symptoms - screen went blank and you could boot back up. They'd freeze up for no apparent reason....same everything. I'm sure this isn't one of those (those were made about 7 years ago I believe) but it does make me wonder if its heat related. The classic symptom of those was capacitors that were swollen up and kind of dome-shaped on top instead of flat.

    Just a shot in the dark.....sometimes it leads somewhere.
  • osaddictosaddict London, UK
    edited October 2009
    Where would I look inside the box for these capacitors to see what they look like?

    Also, can I run some kind of app which would give me reports of the temperature and I could see if heat buildup correlated with shutdowns?
  • mtroxmtrox Minnesota
    edited October 2009
    The capcitors look like little grain silos. Usually grey plastic cover with an aluminum "roof". On the Dells (and other mobo's had bought the bargain capacitors at that time) over time the heat would swell them up and the top would look like a dome instead of a flat roof.

    But yea, you wonder about heat in general. I think I used Everest to track the heat. It logged temps right up to the point where the computer crashed. There are others.....PC Wizard is another.
  • osaddictosaddict London, UK
    edited October 2009
    I used that PCWizard thing to monitor the temperature, the graphics was running at around 110, even topping out at 116 (that's degrees c!). I popped it open and sure enough it was hot, a colleague who builds PCs looked at it and the fan wasn't spinning basically. Taking it out it looked to be moving freely so not sure what was up with it. We put in a new graphics card and it's running at 55 degrees now.

    Hopefully this sorts it, time will tell I guess.

    Thanks for the help mtrox and kryyst :)
  • mtroxmtrox Minnesota
    edited October 2009
    116 C? Yea I think you found the problem.
  • osaddictosaddict London, UK
    edited October 2009
    Aye, could have cracked an egg and fried it on the thing!
Sign In or Register to comment.