Computer Help

I can't figure this dang computer out.

I have a serious problem here. And I need some help.

Basicly it's like this...

Every program I use crashes spontaneously at some point. It could be a minute into use, [firefox just crashed here] it could 20 minutes. And it's every program. It crashes and brings up the debugger option. Every time. [firefox just crashed here] Occasionally the whole computer restarts itself. Either very [crashed again] quick or with a weird machine sound through the speakers like it halted for a second. I don't get blue-screen-of-death which is weird for this. But after restarts I get the "The system has recovered from a serious problem" or however that message goes. It may restart maybe once or twice a day, but program crashes are constant (as my notes should have noted)

Now the hard-drive has been reformatted a few times. Maybe 3 or 4 do to OS Failure and previous problems. I'm inclined to think it might not be my hard-drive cause I never get blatant READ/WRITE errors, and it doesn't matter which partition is being loaded. I haven't had the chance to see if CD/DVD ROM stuff crashes but I'm pretty sure that does t[crashed once more]oo.

Now the motherboard has been replaced, but not the ram or processor.
I'm starting to suspect the RAM but that's just cause I'm out of options.

ANY IDEAS OR HELP IS GREATLY APPRECIATED.

My system is...
Intel P4 2.3Ghz
160GB WesternDigital (partitioned into 2)
1GB DDR RAM
Creative Sound Blaster Z 24Bit
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256Mb

Process of elimination, I'm afraid.

How many RAM sticks do you have? Take one or more out if you can and see how it runs like that.

Run Checkdisk - click Start>>Run, and type 'chkdsk /r'. Press 'Y', then reboot.

You could also have a faulty CPU or PSU, but neither are especially cheap to test unless you have spare parts lying around that you can replace them with.

Thanks for the input. Thats what I was afraid of... well here goes!

I think it's the RAM too. download a ram checking program. Luckily rams quite cheap so it should be no problem to replace it.

I agree RAM or CPU - PSU may be more likely to cause resets rather than just app. crashes.

IPete2.

Another vote for the RAM. Especially since it's a random time into the application, it will probably reach a certain piece of code that is stored on the fault part of your RAM.

I vote for JAM, check your toaster too.

I vote RAM as a likely candidate too.

Could also be:

-CPU is getting hot enough to destabilise but not hot enough to trigger a shutdown (i had one like that before problm went away when i cleaned out the heatsink+fan).
-Harddisk on the way out (Although as you said probably isnt. Is it happening during moments of heavy disk swapping?)
-Some kind of malware screwing with windows's runtime. (although very unlikely as you said you have wiped it a few times)

on a similar note when i first got this pc it was prone to rebooting every odd cd insertion, it was a pain when ripping CD's and killed a multi disc installer, i couldnt resume it i had to restart it from disc one after manually finding the installer folder and deleting it ... its been fin for a very long time now (nothing taken out or removed*) but it was a strong problem for the first 3 or more months

*on second thoughts i did take the dvd drive out once to link up my old hard drive but that was some time after the reboot issue started and iir also still happened after putting the cable back in

Have you tried swapping out the IDE cable?

only the once when slapping all the old hard drive stuff into a folder
iir it was still gyping after but touch wood hasnt done for a long time

perhaps it was fine right after that and i forgot about ever taking it out as i had semi abandoned cd ripping till i got a hungry iPod to feed then cd ripping began again in earnest and i awaited the next sudden reboot which hasnt happened :)

Same as D4NM4N

But.... Don't rule out the DVD/CD drive as I have seen something similar happen. you could test this by using a spare if you have one (or remove it).

If you have XP the latest service pack installed as I have been having a little problem with XP on the iMac since installing SP3. I haven't tried the other machine that I have XP installed on as it's in storage while I'm doing some decorating of the room.

RAM seems likely, run a RAM checker.

You could download Puppy Linux that runs from cd, and try that. No need to install it. I don't think it actually requires you to have a hard disk in your machine. You get GIMP with it, so you can make some big pictures to try to use up your RAM. If nothing crashes, it might just be Windows.

As a side note. I just reinstalled my machine, and the ULI Raid program that installs with the machine was complete and utter garbage. It would boot at startup with an ugly splash screen, put itself in the taskbar, and make the machine take a tiny pause once every second...enough to make games and video jerky. Uninstalling it would wipe out the SATA driver from the machine, basically killing the Windows install and make you go back to square one (re-install). :-P You could disable it though, but not through any preference in the program.

RAM then CPU/motherboard...