Comp freezing or slowing down

[Lusiphur220]

Well, I recently bought a Compaq tower with the standard stuff installed.

Compaq 5430US
Pentium 4 CPU 1.8GHz
1 GB of DDR Ram (2 512 sticks)
Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4200 w/ AGP8X Graphics Card

Everything runs great except that it keeps bogging down when I run more then one program. It does this when I run my music player and my internet explorer, or when I'm writting something to the harddrive or a cd. I've tried everything I possible could to try and fix it. I've bought new RAM, had several diagnostics run on the motherboard and cpu, checked the video card. I even went as far as to do a complete factory restore to see if that fixes it. Nothing seems to work.
The computer when it first starts runs fine, then it does this choppy freezing that seems to affect the entire comp. It doesn't seem to be thinking when this happens, more like taking a quick nap before it continues on. It'll do this everytime I go to do something. I can't even have a screensaver run because it freezes up for a few minutes.
I'm really lost as to what to do. Any ideas?

 

[N3051M]

have you ran a defrag and a chkdsk /f?
have you got updated drivers, windows updates and firmwares for everything?
do you have a lot of startup items/active processes?
scanned for any warez and virii?

these two articles will help with removal of warez and virii:
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic47014.html
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic47240.html

 

[iss]

look in device manager are there any devices that have a yellow question mark or yellow triangle next to them?

 

[Lusiphur220]

I've run scandisk and defrag. I've scanned for spybots thousands of times and as far as I know I don't have anymore then a few startup items running. Trust me, I've run everything from defrag to virus scanners. I've also got all the most recent updates possible for windows.
As for anything in the device manager, I've checked that several times to make sure nothing went wrong there. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the probmlem either.

 

[iss]

The problem could be missing or corrupted system files. try running system file checker. witht he XP disk in the drive open a command prompt and type sfc /scannow then hit enter.

 

[Lusiphur220]

Thanks iss, I'll give that a try. Hopefully something good comes from this attempt.

 

[Lusiphur220]

The problem could be missing or corrupted system files. try running system file checker. witht he XP disk in the drive open a command prompt and type sfc /scannow then hit enter.

Well, I tried that and it didn't fix anything. Seems there's more to this then I thought. Any other ideas?

 

[N3051M]

have you tried seeing if its stable under safe mode?

well we've ruled out software, so now its hardware...
if its still under warrenty, you might as well get those technicians to look it over for you (make sure they dont charge you anything!!)

only thing you can do is probably run a memtest on the ram, hdd diagnostics, and unplug things to get bare minimum setup and troubleshoot from there.. unless that unplugging viods the warrenty...

my hunches: vid card, bios, ram or mobo.... in the case of mobo, check wierd looking marks/stains/smells or components (capacitors etc)

 

[Lusiphur220]

Well, I managed to get that problem fixed. Seems that the cpu was running to hot, and I found out that it was from dust build up on the fan. Everything works fine from there now.

Here's the other problem now, I've managed to get everything up and running smoothly and now it shuts itself down. I'm confused as to why it's doing this since it was fine up until today. I cleaned the fan two days ago and haven't touched anything since. It shuts down but not completely. The power switch is still on and it shows it's still running, but none of the fans are running and I can't get it to shut off or come back on without unplugging it.

 

[N3051M]

is the settings in control panel>power settings on "always on"?
have you disabled screensaver and hibernation/standby? (for troubleshooting purposes)
at what point does it seem to "shut down" - while surfing the net, playing a game, writing up a document, idleing.. etc?

download speedfan or everest home, then go to its sensor pages and see if your pc is still running hot or not..

 

[kirock]

Well I was reading down through your post and my first guess was CPU overheating and was about to respond as such when I saw your 2nd to last post. Explain to us what you did to remedy the CPU overheating please.

My guess is you actually made things worse, now it overheats so fast it just shuts down. You need to have thermal paste between the CPU top surface and the bottom surface of the Heatsink/Fan (HSF). The HSF must be installed correctly so that it is snug on the CPU.

Cheers.

 

[Lusiphur220]

Well I was reading down through your post and my first guess was CPU overheating and was about to respond as such when I saw your 2nd to last post. Explain to us what you did to remedy the CPU overheating please.

My guess is you actually made things worse, now it overheats so fast it just shuts down. You need to have thermal paste between the CPU top surface and the bottom surface of the Heatsink/Fan (HSF). The HSF must be installed correctly so that it is snug on the CPU.

Cheers.

All I did was pull the fan out and blasted all the dust out, never touching the actual silcone on the HSF. Even to fix that problem I removed all the old silcone and applied a new layer, making sure it was even and thin, and it still shuts down. The fan is connected to the right connection.

The computer seems to just shut down no matter what I'm doing, and I was confused as to why. Now when I boot up I get "514-CPU or Chassis Fan not dectected," and everything I've found says the same thing. I've checked the connections several times, been through BIOS more then I can count and I'm still lost.

 

[N3051M]

have you tried leaving your case open and turned on the pc - see if the fan ontop of the cpu-hs is spinning or not. it may just need to be reseated (the plug for the fan) or if its realy broken, replaced..

 

[kirock]

Did you try flipping the fan connector at the mobo? It seems the fan is either dead or the mobo has a fault detecting it and will not proceed to allow POST, thus protecting your CPU. (i.e it thinks the HSF is not there).

 

[Lusiphur220]

have you tried leaving your case open and turned on the pc - see if the fan ontop of the cpu-hs is spinning or not. it may just need to be reseated (the plug for the fan) or if its realy broken, replaced..

The case has been left open for almost a week now, and I've checked all the fans to make sure they were running. Everything checks out, I just can't get it past the start up screen now.

 

[Lusiphur220]

Did you try flipping the fan connector at the mobo? It seems the fan is either dead or the mobo has a fault detecting it and will not proceed to allow POST, thus protecting your CPU. (i.e it thinks the HSF is not there).

From what I can tell there isn't a switch on the mobo, and I don't see anywhere else to connect the HSF. Everything is running, I just can't get it to respond to anything. I either get the 514-CPU error or it doesn't boot past the Compaq start screen.

 

[kirock]

Well it's pretty hard to troubleshoot a hardware issue like this over the internet. For that matter when it comes to PCs usually the techs just switch and pray until they switch out the failing component. I'm thinking at this point either look to replace your HSF or take it into a shop and have them look at it.

What I meant about the mobo/HSF connection is not that you have it plugged into the wrong connector on the mobo, but rather it maybe plugged in in reverse. The fan will spin but in the wrong direction and thus not provide the desired cooling.

Take care and let us know how it works out or if turning the connector around in the same mobo slot works.

Cheers.

 

[Mr Papschmere]

That happened to my Daughters PC - 2500Barton.

I removed everything, tried everything known to man, swore at it...

The last thing I did in desperation was remove the CPU from the Socket, and put it back in - obviously with new thermal paste!

Hasn't missed a beat since.

I can only surmise one of the pins wasn't contacting properly.

Good luck

 

[Lusiphur220]

Well, I've managed to get past all this problems mentioned earlier except the fan problem. I've replaced both fans and even had an expert look at it, but I can't get past that 514 CPU error. It keeps going tack to the Chassis or HSF not detected. I've got a whole new CPU and it runs fine from that, but there still isn't a way for me to get around the error.

 

[kirock]

Well that really sucks. If you've replaced the CPU and the HSF, then the only thing I can think of is a failing mobo. It's the mobo that is detecting or in your case not detecting the Heat sink fan. There is sense circuits on the board associated with the connector the HSF plugs into. Maybe somehow the connector pins that are soldered to the board are broken or cracked free, or the the previous fan caused damage to the sense circuit. The yellow wire is the rpm sense wire. Check to make sure the mobo connector pin for the yellow wire is not broken free from the mobo.

Take care.

 

[Lusiphur220]

Well that really sucks. If you've replaced the CPU and the HSF, then the only thing I can think of is a failing mobo. It's the mobo that is detecting or in your case not detecting the Heat sink fan. There is sense circuits on the board associated with the connector the HSF plugs into. Maybe somehow the connector pins that are soldered to the board are broken or cracked free, or the the previous fan caused damage to the sense circuit. The yellow wire is the rpm sense wire. Check to make sure the mobo connector pin for the yellow wire is not broken free from the mobo.

Take care.

Well, I checked the connections for the fans and nothing was wrong with those. I'm still getting the error and no one knows what's wrong, especially since I had the pins tested to make sure it wasn't them. This is where things get screwy. Apparently it wasn't my Chassis or CPU fan that was screwed up, but the power supply fan. It just stopped working. I just replaced the fan, and now everything runs fine. I'm still getting that 514-CPU or Chassis fan error once in a while, but not as often as I was. After replacing that my comp runs fine now. The temp guages all read within the normal of limits, so nothing is over heating now.

I do appreciate all the suggestions.