Freezing when doing anything and then freezing on startup when reset getting worse..

[Legoflamb]

Ok my friend's computer is exhibiting the symptoms as I've described in the title.

Basically it's freezing whenever you seem to be doing anything thats a little bit more system intensive than just sitting idle. Opening webpages, viewing video in full screen etc.

You restart it and it's like frozen with just the blue desktop and an egg timer on the screen.

I think this is obviously a heat issue because if you leave it a while after it's frozen and then start it up it's back to normal.

Thing is I've only jsut been able to start taking a look at it and he's been using it all the while and I think it's at a point now where some damage has been done as he says it's basically unusable now (after telling him to leave it well alone until I can look at it)

CPU is overheating...?

Graphics wouldn't cause this much of a hoo haa would it? He does have a spare card that I can fit to see if it helps....

I'm getting some compressed air in the post soon so I'll give everything a blast (seemed to help before) but do you think it's worth taking the heatsink and fan off and reapplying thermal paste etc?

Am I totally off base here? - is it possibly nothing to do with heat?

Thanks in advance guys!

 

[Route44]

It does sound like a heat issue and a malfunctioning/overheating graphics card can certainly cause these issues.

Are the issues still occuring?

 

[Legoflamb]

I took the heatsink and fan off the CPU and reapplied thermal paste.

Then I used a compressed air can to clean the rest of the computer.

Do you think I didn't do a good enough job applying thermal paste or should I have looked at the graphics card too?

 

[Route44]

Check your system temps especially for the video card.

How much thermal paste did you apply?

 

[Legoflamb]

Well to be honest I didn't completely clear off the last stuff so i should probably have a nother crack at it.

I took off what I could and put some more on and spread it.

I didn't have that much which I thought would kinda work well as there was still some on there form before.

 

[Route44]

Take a few Q-tips and with at least 80% rubbing alcohol, and 90% if you can get it, gently clean off all thermal paste.

Then with Artic Silver place in the center of the cpu a drop no larger than a rice kernal and then reattach your heatsink. The AS will spread out evenly.