Computer Locks Up, Freezes Completely After Being On About an Hour

[lacywest]

Okay with the fan on my work table ... blowing on the video card ... here are the specs now ... if you look closely ... you can see the small fan glued to my video card ... I use silicone rubber cement glue ... works great. That table fan works great too ... blows air directly at what it's aimed at. Check the video card temps ... the temp dropped quite a lot ... with the air blowing on it. Oh and it's 90 degrees in here ... temps from other post ... hours ago ... it was 3 AM in the morning.

[p_l]

I'll have mine over easy, please.

[p_l]

Postscript: Maybe it wasn't the video card after all.

About a week after swapping out the video card, the exact same symptoms showed up again - frozen computer and only BSODs when I tried to reboot.

By this time, the replacement video card had arrived from newegg, but putting that in didn't help either. Still unable to get beyond a BSOD when trying to boot. The odds that now a third video card wasn't working were starting to look a little long.

Perhaps a corrupt boot HDD, so I ordered a new 2 TB HDD to clone my OEM boot drive.

While waiting for it to arrive, I thought maybe a loose SATA cable, so I checked all 7 of my internal SATA connections and even swapped the boot drive SATA cable for a SATA cable with a clip:



Still unable to boot beyond a BSOD. Finally, as suggested several times toward the beginning of this thread, I took out the RAM and tried rebooting with just one pair in at a time, then just the other, and got one of those permutations to work after I cleaned the contacts with 70% isopropyl alcohol on the end of a Q-tip. Yay!

I ran Memtest again and everything passed. I had run it before, I think, and it had seemed to pass everything for the first 15 minutes so I had just ended it. Why did the computer reboot OK after changing the video card April 19th? Well, one possible explanation is I seem to recall doing a kind of fingertip wiggle verification that the RAM modules were well seated, but without actually disengaging them and reseating them anew or cleaning the contacts as I did this time.

The machine has been solid a good couple of weeks now, so knock on silicon.

[lacywest]

I hope it keeps working ... but if it messes up again ... take each device out ... one at a time and fire it up. Do the USB cables too.

Unplug everything that wont stop the PC from running. USB cables to the front panel ... PATA cables going to a DVD Burner ... the whole shebang.

If your mobo has built in video ... take the video card and use the built in video and see if it boots.

For your memory sticks ... I would do this if I was in your situation ... I would take the memory sticks ... go to my bathroom sink and use a toothbrush and some toothpaste ... toothpaste with baking soda or I would actually use scouring powder ... Comet or other brands to clean the contacts.

Then with weather being warm ... have some air blowing on them to dry them out. I have a air compressor in my garage ... and after using a toothbrush on them ... I use the high compressed air to blow out the excess water ... I clean my video cards this way ... I have had no bad results doing this.