OT I know - Question for you computer/IT folks

Michael Paul said...

I'm having a major issue with my system right now that just started a few
days ago. Basically, my computer (P IV, XP, 512 MB RAM) crashed a few times
for no apparent reason. I simply restarted and went about my business.
However, this AM, I was about to archive some data files onto CD when the
proverbial sh!t seemed to hit the fan.

I put in a new CD-RW a few weeks ago and everything worked fine with it. I
installed some SW from it, and burned several with my own information. This
morning, I put in a blank CD and closed the tray when WHAM! Crash. I let
the system restore itself and tried again. Same result. Thinking maybe
something was wrong with the CD, I took a CD that I previously had burned
with the burner and the same thing happened again. The weird thing is that
if I open and then close the CD tray without putting a CD in then nothing
bad happens.

This time though, during the re-boot process, the system would get partway
through the scandisk and it would crash again thus creating a seemingly
endless cycle of boot - start recovery - crash - reboot - start recovery -
crash - etc. etc. etc.

So, what coudl be the cause?

I don't think it's the OS (although with Microsoft anything is possible).
My initial though is that maybe something is jacked with a power managment
circuit on either the motherboard or CPU. I only was thinking this because
the crash seems to always occur when multiple power consumption tasks are in
process.

Any ideas? Some guidance would be nice before I head down to Fry's and blow
money I would rather spend on my bike on new hardware.

Thanks

Michael

You aren't over clocking are you? I guess not or you would have thought
of that. Any chance the BIOS memory timings got monkeyed with? Is the
CPU fan working? Any chance there are other fans not working that once
were, like on the power supply? It really sounds like hardware or
hardware configuration. In my experience catastrophic hardware failure
of the power supply, hard drive, memory modules, CPU, or motherboard is
very rare, but maybe I have been lucky. If there is a failure, it could
be any one of those things. My guess would be hard drive, power supply
or memory in that order. One thing you can try is to remove the memory,
wipe off the contacts with alcohol and reinstall them. I have had bad
sectors appear on a hard drive before that caused mysterious problems,
but once I used a utility to fix them, it worked great from then on.
Find out the make and model of your hard drive and go to the
manufacturer's web site and download a diagnostic/repair program. It is
worth a try.