Topic: shutdowns!!

[DaMike]

This has become a serious problem, when I play a video, surf on site or use programs that uses much memory my screen becomes blurry and my computer just shuts down for an unknown reason. Is it a videocard or powerproblem? Or does it have something to do with the processor? :-[ pleazz help

BTW: I use Pentium III 933mhz, NVIDIA G-force FX 5200, 128 mb sdram, windows xp, santa cruz soundcard

[Simon]

Hi Mike, and  

Whilst I'm no techie, I would take a guess at it being an overheating problem.  Have you checked the fan on the CPU to see if it's working properly, and also the fan on the graphics card?

It might also be worthwhile running some spyware checkers, as maybe something is running in the background, taking all the CPU resources?  We generally recommend Ad Aware and Spybot to start with.

Ad Aware
Spybot S&D



Hopefully one of our experts will be along to help you soon.  

[DaMike]

I use spybot everyday to clean up spyware and I don't think spyware would cause this kind of problems (I could be wrong )
My cpu fan is working properly, but I don't know about the fan on the videocard, I can't check it right now

[Sandra]

If you are using XP go to My Computer properties/Advanced then Startup and Recovery/Settings and then untick the Automatically Restart under the System Failure part.
Hopefully that will sort it out for you  

[DaMike]

Nope, that didn't had any effect because it just shuts down(no restart)
It seems that only the screen shuts down and the computer stops responding but the computer stays on (and I can't get the screen back on ofcourse)
Weird!
I think throwing the computer outtha window would be the best solution, ain't it?

[Sandra]

Sounds like the graphics card at fault then.
Have you tried removing and replacing it and updating the drivers for it  

[DaMike]

yep, with no succes

[Lona]

Hi Mike and welcome to pc-pals.

I get this frequently when playing games or watching videos.  I would say it's memory related.  I see you only have 128 mb of ram.  I would suggest you add more ram and you might find an improvement.  

[Tony]

Tend to agree with Lona [yes it happens on occasion ] Out of curiosity if you right click over the time [bottom tool bar left hand side] click Task Manager then open the Performance tab....what is the Memory reading in th PF window ?

I run Windows XP Pro with 512MB DDR 333Mhz ram, and mine says PF Usage is 236 MB and I ain't running Jack s**t apart from visiting this forum. So I reckon you will struggle with 128MB sdram on memory intensive applications.

[DaMike]

my PF usage = 173 MB and I'm running msn messenger and internet explorer at the moment

[Simon]

My PF usage is 223Mb at this moment, and I'm not doing anything particularly resource intensive.  What's the CPU usage in that same window?

[DaMike]

it's floating from 2 to 15%

[Dack]

As you only have 128M of memory you are REALLY going to be thrashing the disc as you page memory in and out. Any sort of error here (disc getting a bit full?) will cause problems.

I'd suggest downloading and running http://www.memtest86.com/ to check your computer memory - it checks all sorts of things about it including problems due to fluctuations on your power supply.

Then I'd try one of the CPU benchmarks from http://www.active-hardware.com/english/benchmarks/benchmarks.htm (Prime95?) which will fail if there is a processor problem.

[DaMike]

well I haven't done any tests for now, I downloaded memtest86 but I can't get it to work it's based on some dos s**t that's too complicated for me and I also downloaded a benchmark but I don't trust it because it can harm your hardware (it says).
The problem ain't over yet but I can live with it, i'm planning to buy a new computer anyway, because that's the only to get rid of that weird problem.

[Sandra]

Just follow the instructions to make a bootable floppy for the memtest 86 :

For windows installation begin by downloading the Pre-Compiled Windows package to build a boot-able floppy disk. After the file is downloaded an extract must be done to uncompress the file(s). To extract right click on the downloaded file and select the "Extract All" option. The extract option will let you choose where the files will be extracted to. To build a bootable floppy go the the folder where the files were extracted and click on the Install icon. The floppy disk will appear to be unformatted by Windows after the install is complete.

Once you have it on the floppy just restart the pc with the floppy disk in the floppy drive, provided the bios is set to boot from floppy first, if not change it to boot from floppy as first device and it will run the test, you dont need to know anything about DOS at all to use it