Computer woes: abrupt crashes
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After a particularly hot eveneing, my computer has taken to crash pretty violently after a running a whole. I hear the disk's engine stall and restart, but the comp does not reboot, and the screen stays as is.
This also has happened as I was checking set-ups in the BIOS maintenance, so I guess we can rule memory fault out.
So, as far as I know, this should be a power source overheat problem, Blowing cleaner gas into said power flushed out a ton of dustbunnies, but did not significantly improve the situation.
I'd like to get advice on that before I go ditch € out on a new power. but I'd like to be sure, so advice is sought.
I'm playing on my laptop until then, but it's running off a USB HD, which means really, really crappy performance. -
If the PSU components have been damaged by overheating, you'll end up replacing it. Most desktops take a standard form factor PSU and you can pick a 450W one up for mini bucks rather than mega bucks.
What's the dust like through the whole case? I guess you've cleaned it now. The CPU fan often clogs, but if your disk is stalling, I suspect that CPU overheating isn't the issue. That normally just shuts down on overheating and if damaged, ends up Blue Screening.
Disk stalling? Have you run a full chkdsk? You may have a damaged or cooked hard disk. Also, with your PC locking up frequently over the last few days/weeks etc, it might have corrupted your windows installation which can be repaired with a Windows Repair from the original CD + oodles of updates. However, with it stalling, I am more suspicious of hardware issues. Either on the drive, or on the power to the drive.
Hope this gives a few pointers.
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Blue screens are unheard of in my world, but I get neither panics not crash-reboots. Linux usually is quite verbose when things go wrong, but the OS doesn't reboot.
The OS does regular fsck on the disks, and nothing was noted. And yes, the dust in the casing was reminiscent of 30s midwest.
I guess I'll try to unplug the disks and proceed with a USB or CDROM boot.
