PC PROB Please Help!

[Fender357]

K.... here's my long story of whats happening with my computer right now. People here that know stuff about computers please read this and tell me what you think it might be.

Today I got home from school....I'd left my pc on like usual. The screen was off as usual because I have it set to turn off insted of doing a screen saver. Imove the mouse around to get it going again... It does nothing. Pressing keys, yelling words...it does nothing.

I hit the reset button on the pc, Oh, and all the lights on the pc are on, reset does nothing. Power button does nothing.

I've got to cut the power and turn it back on. It starts up with the DOS start up stuff, I can see that all fine.

When it gets to the part where it loads windows, the screen goes black, and all the lights on the pc go on. The one over the reset button, the one over the power button, and the one on my CD drive. It just locks up again.

SO, I keep trying it off and on off and on, it does the same thing. Called my mom to have her ask someone at work what to do. They said try dissableing the video card. Tryed doing that, still froze up.

I tried starting in Safe Mode. That didn't work the first time, but the second time it did. But then a minute later...screen goes black and it does teh same shit.

So....trying to do anything dosn't work for me....I give up....I fall asleep on the couch.

I tryed it again a couple of hours later. Didn't even get to the DOS start up. Just went straight to black. On off a couple of times, it started up. This time it didn't even ask me about safe mode...just started.
Everything started up as normal. Now I'm here, not knowing wtF to do, or whats wrong.

Do any of you have any idea what might be causing this? First thought is that it could be my video card. Its a GeForce 4 Ti 4200, about a year and a half old. Never had any problem with it.

I've never had anything like this happen with my PC. Since I got it its been doing great.
So, someone who's knoledgable about this stuff....what do you think it is?

 

[Revisedsoul]

could be tons of things. im thinking maybe your cpu or gfx card is getting to hot and locking up. check all the fans in your computer.

 

[blahblahblah]

You may want to scan your harddrive for errors.

Open up "My Computer" -> Right click on your harddrive -> Select Properties -> Select the "Tools Tab" -> Check now for disk errors.

There can be many things wrong with your computer. Has it done anything unusual before this (ie noises, operating behavior, etc)

 

[Fender357]

No...nothing weird before.

I even thought about it heating up too....I haven't been leaving it on as much as I do now (even though some people say its best to leave your pc on all the time) It still wasn't hot or anything. I'll try what you said to do Blah.

 

[Fender357]

could be tons of things. im thinking maybe your cpu or gfx card is getting to hot and locking up. check all the fans in your computer.

And, yeah. The fans are running just fine. Even when it locks up the fans run and stuff. Actually when it locks up, it seems that everything runs. The CD starts spinning and all the lights stay on.

 

[Revisedsoul]

And, yeah. The fans are running just fine. Even when it locks up the fans run and stuff. Actually when it locks up, it seems that everything runs. The CD starts spinning and all the lights stay on.

weird. maybe a virus. ive see things clsoe to that, but not exactly.

 

[Fender357]

K, i ran the error check. It said my drive was clean.

And I hope that it isn't a virus. I did run Norton and all it found were some ad ware things.

And so far, the pc's been running better. I mean....I hasn't shut off on me.

But it still did it enough for me to keep worrying about what ever it was.

 

[Fender357]

I left it on over night to see if it would mess up and it sort of did. But it didn't just stay like that. It just restarted.

 

[Ecthe|ioN]

Computers.. We aren't supposed to understand them .. They are like women. They do strange things sometimes Sounds like hardware failure anyway. If you have the possibility to borrow another videocard I would suggest doing that. That way you might exclude a GPU failure.

 

[Kyorisu]

Computers.. We aren't supposed to understand them .. They are like women. They do strange things sometimes

This is why you should allways treat your women right with proper mantainence

 

[Fender357]

K, but the weird thing is that now it isn't shutting off on me. I've had it on for a wile and it isn't messing up. And I downloaded the Windows Service Pack 2, since I needed to anyway.

So what do you think it could be that it isn't constantly having the problem? I haven't really changed anything. It just started going again...

 

[blahblahblah]

Have you added any hardware to your computer recently? If so, it might be a wise idea to make sure all of your IDE cables and molex plugs are firmly in place. Also reseat your RAM and video card as well.

 

[Fender357]

Nope...no new hardware. Well, depends what you call hard ware. I got a Wacom Tablet a couple of weeks ago. But thats not exactly a big system change.
How do you reset your RAM and video card? And what does that do?

 

[blahblahblah]

Nope...no new hardware. Well, depends what you call hard ware. I got a Wacom Tablet a couple of weeks ago. But thats not exactly a big system change.
How do you reset your RAM and video card? And what does that do?

Reseating your RAM and video card is taking it out of the slots and putting them back in. Sometimes computer hardware gets a bit loose and that can be causing your problems.

You have such a generic problem it is almost impossible to diagnose.

 

[Fender357]

well....i've got the guy that put it together for me comming to look at it tomorrow. He's really good with computers. So hopefully he'll know what's wrong.

 

[BIG]

Either you have issues with the A)videocard overheating or B) Processor over-heating. I'd suspect the videocard first.

Alternatively - many of those symptoms can be caused by a power supply that is either not large enough for the job - or on the fritz and in need of replacement. Minimum PSU I'd run given a low level Ahthlon or P4 is a 300W...350W if it's not the best brand.

Best of luck finding the problem - could be nearly anything.

 

[Fender357]

Whats that in Voltage? I've got a monitor thing that can see all my information but it shows it in voltage.

CPU voltage 1.52v
Aux voltage 1.54v