Memory Bad? Freezing and power offs

[Werm]

Okay.. I built a PC about 2 years ago. Everything was running great till about 8 months ago when it began to shutdown after the initial Windows XP login screen and then just stopped being able to power on. Just recently i decided that i wanted to take it in to a shop and see what they could do. They found that my MOBO's north bridge heatsink wasnt working properly, which i already knew. It basically needed to be jumpstarted with a little flick or push. I had noticed that while the computer was working fine, sometimes i forgot to start it, and my system would still just work fine. So, the PC guys installed a new heatsink for it, and said that that was probably the reason for it locking up. So, I took my PC home and booted, everything seemed fine. I started downloading updates and didnt notice anything abnormal. After a little bit, while downloading a patch for a pc game of mine and doing some other stuff, my pc froze up, and i had to shut off the PSU. I started the system again, just thinking it was just bad luck, and ran a Video game, which after a minute or two froze my entire PC again. The freezing continued, and then my PC started just powering off randomly. I could be at the XP loading screen and the computer would just poweroff, sending my screen to idol, and turning everything off. XP runs a blue screen memory check thing durring startup, and deletes some things, and restarts and i think everything is fixed, but Start up CounterStrike, get it running for a little, then it freezes everything again. I have run a successful Defrag of my Hard drive, but not a complete virus scan as of yet. I do not believe its an overheating problem because it can run for some time or no time at all and just freeze, restart, or power the entire system off. I read around, and thought that it could possibly be my RAM. I plan to run Memtest once i get home to see if it could be that. I was just wondering if there were any other possibilities. I was thinking that it would be Hardware related. The PC guys were suposed to run a Diagnosis, but i think they may have just installed the heatsink, found that it would boot, and left it at that. Any suggestions? Think i should take it back to the shop and get a free diagnostic of my system? Any help would be Valued, thanks.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

The first thing I'd do is call the shop back and see what they're willing to do for free. They might have a 30 day service guarantee/warranty etc.

If they won't do it for free, indeed test your RAM with Memtest86 for a minimum of 7 passes and test your HDD with one of the utilities here.

 

[Werm]

Okay.. I still get random Freezes, and I am trying to run MEMTEST86. I burn the image to a disc, but when I shutdown and then powerup, it never starts the test. Did i forget to set something in the BIOS or something?

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

..The CD has to be burned as an image and you'll need to make sure your optical drive is ahead of your HDD on the boot sequence in the BIOS.

 

[Tedster]

also test your PSU with a tester tool and a multimeter.

 

[Werm]

Well, I got MEMTEST86 to start. v3.4, I believe that i have passed 8 tests, and no error reports have shown. I will keep testing till i have gone 30min in. Im starting to think that its my Video card. I noticed last night that i could run windows for a long time, use iTunes, Firefox, most simple apps, but when i went to go try out Counter Strike source, it freezes a few seconds after joining a server when im waiting for a round to end. I have also noticed more problems when just turning the computer on. Sometimes all the hardware sounds on, fans and what not, but my display wont come out of Idle. It seemed that when i messed with the video cord and re-inserted the videocard that it booted up properly and is now running memtest. Could it be my Videocard that was causing the trouble?

 

[Tedster]

I repeat my last recommendation.

 

[Werm]

I Have a multimeter, but i have a hard time getting my computer to stay on long enough for me to be able to download a tool. Would swapping out the psu the only other way to check this? Also, could it be anything else.. Like my motherboard or Video card or maybe software related?