PC Woes. AGAIN.

[jon_chaisson]

So what do you think--motherboard, low RAM or power source? Or something else?

Last night when trying to open MS Word, the thing froze up (along with pretty much everything else), which has been an increasing problem lately with other programs, more often than not with IE. Tried to close all programs...managed to close IE without a problem, but MS WOrd refused to close. Tried to close down the PC, that didn't want to work either, after an amount of time. Decided to do a hard-dump, which, in retrospect, may not have been the best of ideas.

Tried rebooting. I get as far as the big "e" (I have an e-Machine so that's what you see) and the selection for Boot Menu (BOOT Menu: [F10], BIOS Settings: [F2]). Aaaaaaaand, that's where it stops. Neither function key responds. During all of this, the fan starts, but quiets down (and I think stops) about three seconds later. At the moment I've just got it on, just in case *something* happens, but I'm not expecting anything.

[EDIT: Okay, update on that--after about 10 or so minutes, it finally decided to reboot, started up Windows XP, and I think it did a VERY SLOW self-fixing and boot-up, and it looks okay now. Not sure if I fully trust it, but this is a good sign that I should do another backup, just in case!]

Any idea of what happened and how I can get it up and running again? In particular, I'm curious as to why certain programs get all wonky mid-process and use up all my virtual memory. The interesting thing is that my Norton suggests that I'm low on RAM and probably need to add it if I can. I'd have to pop open the PC to see if I have room for that, but I'm sure I do. Still...think this low RAM might be it? Diagnostics say I only have 512Mb, which I'm sure is lower than it really has any right to be.

Which brings me to the question, as I rarely if ever pop open a PC to look at it--I'm guessing that this addition of RAM would entail cracking open the PC itself to add a RAM chip/card/whatever? And I'm sure I'd have room for it, as everything I've added to this PC has pretty much been software or drivers.

Thanks ahead of time!

Comments

[head58.livejournal.com]

I don't think adding RAM will help. Sounds like the motherboard is tits up, based on the combination of things. I mean, maybe it's a bad RAM chip, and throwing in a new one is pretty cheap, so that might be a good place to start (to find out what you need for your machine go to crucial.com (yes, that site always put "U Got the Look" into my head) and use the memory advisor tool, then order that RAM from a site like newegg where it will be cheapest). But the "not powering up" is the same thing that happened to my eMachines last year and replacing the motherboard was what finally fixed it. If your motherboard isn't seeing your RAM properly that could cause everything to grind to a halt.

Norton likely isn't helping. It's a massive system resources hog. But I don't think it's the prime culprit here. I'd say it's time to go shopping for a new machine. But remember to pull the old HD out of your old machine and you can slave it into the new one.

[joncwriter.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I looked at the previous "not powering up" posts (your version and mine) earlier this morning. I think this instance of not powering up was due to it wanting to fix itself since I did the hard-dump after it crashing, and I just wasn't patient enough.

If your motherboard isn't seeing your RAM properly that could cause everything to grind to a halt.
I'm really thinking this might be it. I don't remember this being a problem in the past, only over the past six or so months, so perhaps I should check for a new motherboard as well.

And dusting the inside might be good too at some point. There's a good layer of it on some parts, as I can see.

As for Norton...to be honest? Maybe it's just me, but Norton seems a lot *less* intrusive than McAfee. McAfee would run a scan even if changed all my setups to say not to auto-run, and cause all kinds of stalling. The most Norton does (I have the 360 version) is look for updates and a quick idle scan now and again. I usually run a complete scan every weekend, it's never caused it to crash.

Still, yeah...Maybe looking into a new machine might also be good, at least for the long haul. I've had this one since since April of '06...so just shy of 4 years sounds like a typical lifespan for me. Sad that it seems to be the norm, though...but it's gone through a lot, both use-wise and otherwise. I'm planning my next one to have a lot of oomph to it. I'm okay with the disk space, especially since I have externals now, it's the processing power I need. I'll keep that in mind.

[aethramyr.livejournal.com]

1. Memory. While technically you can use 512 to run XP, from a quality-of-life standpoint, not a chance. Check you motherboard, see what you can install, and if it needs to be installed in pairs. 1 gig is nice, but the more the merrier. 2 gig shouldn't run you more than 60 bucks, and it really is a good bang-for-buck trade off.

2. Run a Registry cleaner. CCleaner or the like. Download.com should have good reccomendations as well, but you shouldn't have to pay for a good one.

3. Run a defrag on it. if it's not been done, that could be a bit of the issue. The usual spyware checks as well. go to the add / remove programs and make sure there's nothing installed that you don't use anymore.

Good luck!