Hmmm so if the heat is not causing the freeze up.. then what is??? This is so frustrating!! Could it be the VLC player then? cause my comp is practically app free!!! only installations are Nero, Eset NOD32, VLC and MSOffice 2007 adn if this keeps continuing i will only have the browser installed!! dang!!

Could be any number of things. Try older or newer graphics drivers. Has it ever worked w/out crashing or destroying drives? If that continues it might be your PSU. Try disconnecting the drive that doesn't have your OS & see if it stops freezing. If so then your drive might have gone bad again.When you lost the drives did it ever blue screen? For a while I was losing my secondary drive & I think that it was blue screening...don't remember. Anyway the PSU was overpowering that drive & as soon as it would go my comp would crash or not even boot up. If it booted but it would crash when windows started using that drive.

Are you saying that it crashes when you use VLC player? If so then it might be a graphics driver or codec problem or your video card might be going bad or over heating.

Just re read your first post & it see that it was only in use for a month before it starting going bad. Was it brand new when you acquired it? Did you do anything to it before the drives starting going bad?

Hi there,

As of now the drives are fine, meaning there are no issues as such to report as it was when i first started the post. The crashes ahave stopped occuring but the freeze up's have been occuring in a random pattern. Sometimes it freezes when i have VLC player open, sometimes it freezes when i open up my browser (firefox) and sometimes it freezes on startup. So it is difficult to determine what is exactly causing it.since the MB is new i assume all the drivers are upto date. In your experience what is the wattage you would use for your PSU with a configuration such as mine? i use a 450w PSU... do you think that should be bumped up to 500w? I've heard that PSU problems are weird and there's no known pattern (which seems to fit the issues that i've been having). Also how do i check a graphics card that is onboard the MB to see if its over heating?

Hi there,

Just an Update:

I think i may have found the reason why the comp was shutting down/freezing, though i may be wrong.
I opened up the comp yesterday and had a look at the MB/Capacitors etc to see if i could spot any anomalies i happened to notice that one of the pins that lock the CPU fan in place was loose (not locked down) i locked it down and immedietly got a cooler temp reading (24 o C). however i would like to know if this could have caused the problems that i've been having? secondly should i continue with this without changing the thermal paste, cause i noticed that some of the thermal paste was fresh (i.e.) not spread while the other half was spread. Any thoughts on this will be welcome.
Thanks,

ReB

Your CPU is running pretty cool now so perhaps that was the problem, but how hot was it running before? 40-50 C is typically what mine runs since I don't have a very good heat sink. I really don't have to worry about mine until it hits 65 + but it doesn't shut down until it hits 75 C. Also mine doesn't freeze it just shuts off to prevent damage so if yours is freezing then perhaps you have another problem. I'm telling you this so that you will know what is abnormal when it comes to CPU temps. Something I have to do periodically is to remove the fan from my heat sink & dust it out. If you think that the thermal paste might not be on correctly then by all means, do it again. I don't however know the best way to do it or know what the best stuff is & like I said your temps are really low. If you are going to you need to clean off all of the paste that it is on the CPU & the heat sink. I think that rubbing alcohol will do that safely but I don't remember. Don't use water!!!

One thing that you should do is run your processor at 100% for a while & record the temps that you get. Speedfan will allow you to record the temps while you are running your computer.

Hello One and All (Jeph and TownsBG),

Thank you very much for all the help provided. I have not had a single freeze up or random shutdown for the past 4 days inspite of running my comp non stop. I think the CPU fan was the issue here as it did not have full contact with the chip. The Temps on startup are a very agreeable 28-30 C. I think we can close this thread. Much Appreciated guys!!! 101,400 points to both of you!!

Hi there,

Just 1 more question before we close this thread. I would like to add a graphics card to the MoBo (Nvidia GeForce 8500/8600 512 mb dedicated memory). Would i need to change anything? like the PSU for instance? Also i would like to know if i will be able to play games like Assasins Creed which require 1 GB of memory? Not sure if the 1 GB required is for the Graphics card or the RAM. could you please advise.

Thanks

ReB

I'm glad things are going well.

I'm not am expert on graphics or PSUs but you can head over to eXtreme Power Supply Calculator to help estimate your wattage requirements however you can always try to run it without buying a newer PSU. You will probably need to upgrade your graphics for extreme gaming as integrated graphics are notoriously bad. First you will need to find out what kind of slot you have for a graphics cards--I will be either pci-e (pci-express) or agp. If its a newer MB it is probably (and hopefully) pci-e. This is important for buying a new card. All of the newer & better cards are pci-e.

I'm also not a gaming expert so I don't know your game or what it requires but I know that there is a site somewhere that will tell you (after answering some questions) whether or not your system can handle a certain game however I don't know where it is. My guess would be that the requirements are for the system ram & not the graphics ram as I don't know if they make cards with that much ram. If there are any they are probably expensive. I would recommend that someone aiming to get above average use of their xp machine get at least a gb however I'm loving my 2 gb & I don't even play "big" games. I do however also have vista which is one reason why I added another gb & ram is a lot cheaper now than in recent years. However getting more is tricky as there are certain specs that have to be matched between both the existing ram & the MB so look this up in your manual & try to find out all the info that you can on your current sticks. You need to do your homework on this.

If you get a really good card & it doesn't seem to be working to well under a heavy load then you might need a stronger PSU. A card with 512 mb of ram is probably sufficient.

I hope this helps.