Verily, My Computer Bloweth Up, Even Unto Six and Seven Times A Day

[Palanan]

All day today my computer has been cutting out on me--at least six or seven times in the last 24 hours, most of which have been this afternoon. It's done this occasionally over the last few months, and more often over the past couple of weeks, but never with quite this frequency.

The machine itself is a wonky beast, and its genesis is a rather sad tale, involving a younger member of another family "who's really good with computers" who built the machine from components on the cheap. At the time, this was thought to be A Very Good Deal; but after several years of increasingly unstable service, all members of my family have finally agreed that the guy wasn't really good with computers after all.

It was originally running Windows, but had some sort of inner catastrophe a couple of years ago, and its Windows days are permanently over. I've been running it with Linux since then, and it was more or less behaving until very recently.

I should mention that I was an English major, with some history and anthro on the side, so I really don't have the technical background to make a diagnosis here. My only guess involves brownouts--perhaps the machine's slapdash, homebuilt construction makes it more vulnerable to those? Just a wild guess, especially since nothing else in the house has ever shown similar behavior.

At this point I'm planning to replace it, but I'd like it to have some semblance of stability while I make final backups and transfer everything over. If anyone can offer any insight on what's going on here, I'd certainly appreciate it.

[Grinner]

I'll give it a try.

First, what's actually happening? Is it freezing up? Turning off? Something stranger?

[FLHerne]

Could be an overheating problem - modern (and even not-so-modern) CPUs will kill everything if they reach potentially damaging temperatures. Does your dodgy box have temperature sensors? Failing that, are the fans (especially the CPU fan) working properly, and not gummed up with hair or just dead?

Other things that might cause it to suddenly cut out:
- Dodgy power connection to the motherboard or elsewhere (is the 24-way power connection to the mobo a good fit/intact?)
- Dodgy PSU, although just plain not working is more likely for that
- Bad RAM. Easy to test for and/pr replace if necessary
- Other stuff. It's 1am here...

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

I'll give it a try.

First, what's actually happening? Is it freezing up? Turning off? Something stranger?

Yeah...As Grinner asked, we're going to need a few more specifics. If there's a pattern to what exactly is happening (freezing/blue screening/black screening, etc) or exactly when it happens (during start-up, when running Firefox, when opening a program, etc) it would be great to know.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Grinner
First, what's actually happening? Is it freezing up? Turning off? Something stranger?

Ah--pardon me for not being more precise.

It just--cuts out, goes dark, without an instant's warning. No blue screen, no danger-text; just sudden, unpredictable turnoff. I have to manually restart it, tinker around, and get things back the way I like. Sometimes it's fine for hours; sometimes I don't get five minutes.

In fact, it cut out on me once or twice when I was writing the OP, and it just cut out again when I was trying to write this response. Definitely getting worse.


Originally Posted by FLHerne
Could be an overheating problem....

That was another thought of mine. The household has multiple cats, and owing to some difficult family issues this year, the house in general hasn't been as tidy as it really should be.

Also, because of space limitations, the computers are in a small, stuffy room, so I usually need a fan for myself. The wonky beast has been in here for years, and the room has been small and stuffy all that time, so I don't know if that's a first-order factor.



EDIT: Also, as to when it happens, with respect to particular operations--pretty much at random, it seems. I usually keep a few tabs in Firefox open, plus some other basic folders, gedit, etc., and there doesn't seem to be any pattern to the cutoffs vis-a-vis what I'm doing at any particular moment.

[Evandar]

One of my older laptops started spontaneously shutting down, and it turned out to be temperature related. I cleaned the dust out, bought a cooling pad and things were okay. :smallsmile:

It's hard to say what the problem is because that isn't much information to go on. While being technologically illiterate, there must be dozens of reasons a computer could shut down like that.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

That was another thought of mine. The household has multiple cats, and owing to some difficult family issues this year, the house in general hasn't been as tidy as it really should be.

Also, because of space limitations, the computers are in a small, stuffy room, so I usually need a fan for myself. The wonky beast has been in here for years, and the room has been small and stuffy all that time, so I don't know if that's a first-order factor.

Ah. Yeah...fans and overheating is the first likely candidate in these circumstances. Take some compressed air and blow out your fan vents or, better yet, if you can actually open the case (assuming it's a PC or a Windows Laptop that's easy to get the bottom off of and you're comfortable doing so) and see whether or not it's full of hair.

Get back to us on whether or not that was the issue. I suspect it'll be an easy fix.

[Palanan]

Actually, this is a tower arrangement, rather than a laptop...probably should've made that clear.

I'm not all that comfortable opening it, since I haven't done that in years. I can catch a dragonfly on the wing, but I have zero touch when it comes to electronics.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

I'm not all that comfortable opening it, since I haven't done that in years. I can catch a dragonfly on the wing, but I have zero touch when it comes to electronics.

Then take a look at wherever your fan/fans are located, and see if it appears obstructed in any way and/or see if you can see cat hair in the interior.

[Grinner]

That was another thought of mine. The household has multiple cats, and owing to some difficult family issues this year, the house in general hasn't been as tidy as it really should be.

Also, because of space limitations, the computers are in a small, stuffy room, so I usually need a fan for myself. The wonky beast has been in here for years, and the room has been small and stuffy all that time, so I don't know if that's a first-order factor.

But does it ever do so while idle?

Do this.


Turn off the computer.
Turn off the power supply. (There should be switch on the back of the machine.)
EDIT: Attempt to turn the computer on.
Take off your shoes and socks.
Touch a doorknob or something metal.
Crack open the tower and look for a fan atop a box of metal ridges (the "heatsink").
Check that the heatsink is free of detritus and that the fan spins.
Turn the computer on and check that the fan is spinning.
Replace the cover.

[Palanan]

Okay, thanks, guys. (Umm, gentlebeings?) I'll give it a try, although at this point I probably need some dinner first. Blood sugar now perilously low.

I appreciate the suggestions, and will get back to you folks when I've fed and experimented a little.



(I'll stab it with my steely knives, but I can't kill the wonky beast....)

[factotum]

Opening the case up isn't going to cause any issues--I would take the side off and try running the machine with a standard desk fan blowing into the open side; if it's more stable running like that then you probably do have overheating issues. There are other things that could cause symptoms like this--faulty PSU, blown capacitor on the motherboard, etc--but none of them are things you can easily fix, so not much point worrying about them!

(By the way, an overheating CPU won't usually take the machine down--modern CPUs don't "kill it" when they overheat, they throttle their clock speed down so things can keep running, albeit more slowly than usual).

[valadil]

All my instincts are saying power supply. Unfortunately the only real way to test that is to replace it.

[Palanan]

Okay, back again. First, an update: the computer has been stable since my previous post last night, going on twenty hours now. (Haven't had a chance to do much until now; yesterday I paddled seven miles in a kayak and then climbed a lighthouse, so I crashed as hard as the computer last night.)

To answer one previous question:


Originally Posted by Grinner
But does it ever do so while idle?

In fact, it does; sometimes I'll get up in the morning and discover it went down during the night, or at some random point during the day. It just--quits, with no correlations that I can tell.

On dust and fans, it's a mixed story. A few weeks ago I went on the dust-warpath and cleaned out a lot of dust from the back grille and vents, and just a couple days ago I picked out as much as I could from the screen on the side fan. Not perfect, but far better than it was before. --Note that I did all that cleaning before this weekend's spasm of unannounced crashes.

However, it does look like there's a fair amount of dust inside the tower, so I really couldn't say if that's causing issues or not. Because of the tight confines in here, it's actually not that easy to disconnect everything and open it up.

Also, to answer Djinn's comment, there don't seem to be any clumps of cat hair per se. Just generic dust, in quantity.

[Grinner]

Okay, back again. First, an update: the computer has been stable since my previous post last night, going on twenty hours now. (Haven't had a chance to do much until now; yesterday I paddled seven miles in a kayak and then climbed a lighthouse, so I crashed as hard as the computer last night.)

What has the weather been like? Barring new information, I'm still betting on overheating.

Actually, if you've got a thermostat like most homes, I don't think that would be a factor.


On dust and fans, it's a mixed story. A few weeks ago I went on the dust-warpath and cleaned out a lot of dust from the back grille and vents, and just a couple days ago I picked out as much as I could from the screen on the side fan. Not perfect, but far better than it was before. --Note that I did all that cleaning before this weekend's spasm of unannounced crashes.

However, it does look like there's a fair amount of dust inside the tower, so I really couldn't say if that's causing issues or not. Because of the tight confines in here, it's actually not that easy to disconnect everything and open it up.

I think you need to do so nonetheless. If you find a clot of dust in the heatsink, it'll be an easy fix, and from what you're saying, that seems to be a strong possibility.

If that's not the case, you may also want to check the connectors while you've got the case open.

[Palanan]

Well, we've now gone 25 hours without a hitch. I was doing some backing up earlier, which I would've thought would stress the CPU with constant activity, but nary a hiccup today.

Not that it's in any way "better," and I'm planning to open it up; but this has now become a Project, with all that this entails.

:smallfrown:

[Feytalist]

My old PC had this problem a couple of years back. Turned out the problem was the power supply. I'm still not exactly sure what the exact problem was, but I just replaced the whole thing without a problem.

If you know someone with one of those circuit checker things (whatever they are called in English) who knows how to use it, that might help. Otherwise, if all the fans and heatsinks are working and no metre-thick piles of dust all over the place, chances are it's the power supply.

[Palanan]

Not long after I posted last night, it cut out on me again--and then cut out almost immediately afterward, while it was restarting. It's done that before, sometimes taking several attempts to get itself back to quasi-stability.

Once it was back up, it demonstrated another neat trick: the inability to read most of my files, claiming some sort of I/O error. The solution, as I've found before, is to go through a controlled power-down and then restart, after which it (usually) gets back to operating trim and remembers where the files are.

One time a couple of years ago it started up and didn't recognize the partition, which at the time had me fairly worried. Power-down and restart, and the partition reappeared. Always lovely to have that back.

[Erloas]

While dust is a common concern, even just reading the first part that wasn't what I was thinking (and especially not after the last post). My thought was probably the motherboard going out or possibly the power supply. The power supply doesn't seem as likely simply because it isn't happening when the system is drawing a lot of power.

As for the family friend that build the computer, I wouldn't necessarily blame it on them without knowing more of the story. Parts fail, it just happens. There wouldn't be warranties and return policies on components if they never failed. It could have been a marginal part in the first place or it could have been someone really wanting to save an extra $20 and so they had to go extra cheap on a few key parts.
You will after all find that a good number of people build computers from components without problems at all (and I bet everyone on this forum giving you the advice you are asking for did).

If the system is more then about 3-4 years old it might be difficult, if not almost impossible, to change out the motherboard without replacing virtually everything.
I would stay with testing the overheating issue to start with simply because it is something you can test without any parts or a whole lot of knowledge so it is a good issue to eliminate first.

And just open up the computer and blow it out. There is nothing mystical inside the box and you have to do something really stupid to actually break anything.

[nedz]

It's almost certainly the power supply unit, which are fairly cheap and easy enough to replace. A quick surf should give you an instruction guide for this task. How old is the machine incidental ?

[Palanan]

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions so far. Haven't had time to do much on this the past couple of days, although I've been backing up whatever stray files I hadn't gotten before.

As usual, the machine has been going down several times a day. As Grinner surmised, the room is at a more or less stable temperature, and I'm inclined to think the power supply might well be the issue.

It'll have to wait until I can open the thing up, though, which will be a little involved. The computer room is also now a temporary storeroom, thanks to a recent flood in the workroom. (The workroom is my personal Nile delta; it seems to flood on an annual basis.)

Also....


Originally Posted by Erloas
There is nothing mystical inside the box and you have to do something really stupid to actually break anything.

English major.

:smallsmile:


Originally Posted by nedz
It's almost certainly the power supply unit, which are fairly cheap and easy enough to replace.

English major.

:smallsmile:

[Crow]

I have no idea what to do about your clunker of a computer, but I am posting to say that I enjoyed your thread title.

[Bulldog Psion]

Your thread title is indeed a gem. Bravo! :smallcool:

[Palanan]

Thank you. English major.

:smallsmile:

[nedz]

It's not much more complicated than Lego with the odd screw. Even the connectors are designed so that you can't plug them in the wrong way.

Ideally you should take static precautions, but there be no CMOS in a PSU.

[Karoht]

Just a quick precautionary question.
Do you have the computer hooked up through a surge protector or APC?
By the description, sure it could be the power supply. It could also be a bit of a screwy outlet. I had my first PC plugged into a bad outlet (which turned out later to be a symptom the whole block experienced for about 3 months while the city worked on some of the lines). Once it damaged the power supply, I had the same symptoms. Went through 3 power supplies and 1 video card before I realized that it might be the outlet. Bought a surge protector and never had the problem again.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Karoht
Just a quick precautionary question.
Do you have the computer hooked up through a surge protector or APC?

Good question on the surge protector. As it happens, I have it connected to a moderately beefy one I picked up a few years ago. I've had an old laptop running from the same surge protector for the same amount of time, and it's never had this sort of issue.


Originally Posted by nedz
Ideally you should take static precautions, but there be no CMOS in a PSU.

Apart from clearing enough space to work, static is my main concern. Grinner mentioned touching a doorknob, but I've heard various other warnings as well. Anything else I should know about static?

[factotum]

As far as static is concerned I find the best way to deal with it is to ensure the PC is still plugged in (but switched off, obviously) and to touch the metal of the case--that should be earthed through the PSU and the mains cable. As for the damage it can do, the components that are likely to sustain static damage are the things that have integrated circuits on them, like the CPU and the RAM sticks--a static discharge into one of those can easily provide enough voltage to blow transistors and connecting links, wrecking the chip. If you're only fiddling around with the PSU then you're not likely to cause any static damage to anything--the connections between the PSU and the other components are all insulated, and you can't really open up the PSU itself, so there's not a lot of risk there.

[TuggyNE]

As far as static is concerned I find the best way to deal with it is to ensure the PC is still plugged in (but switched off, obviously) and to touch the metal of the case--that should be earthed through the PSU and the mains cable.

Better yet, clip an anti-static wrist strap to the bare metal. :smallwink:

(And then wear it. Do I have to think of everything around here?)

[Erloas]

To help alleviate some of the worry of static, take into account that things have changed a lot over the years. While static discharge can easily blow out transistors and there used to be many issues caused by it, manufacturers realized the same thing and have done a lot to make it less likely to happen. It is still standard practice to have anti-static equipment when working with components but the possibility of problems has been greatly reduced. Because the manufacturer spends significantly more time handling the parts then the consumer will they want to limit the amount of product their own people break.

If you look closely at almost all consumer electronics they now have a clear-coat of insulating plastic/rubber over everything but the connecting pins. So as long as you aren't touching the pins specifically there is actually a barrier between your finger and those metal lines and contact points on the boards themselves. It is also why a spill on electronics is no longer necessarily a death sentence for the electronics either.

[Brother Oni]

As far as static is concerned I find the best way to deal with it is to ensure the PC is still plugged in (but switched off, obviously) and to touch the metal of the case--that should be earthed through the PSU and the mains cable.

Side question - is this applicable only to the UK with its plugs that have a third earthing pin, or does it also work for two pin US plugs?

[TuggyNE]

Side question - is this applicable only to the UK with its plugs that have a third earthing pin, or does it also work for two pin US plugs?

Um.

No sane computer manufacturer would ship a two-prong PSU to any location in the US. Grounding is serious business, and three-prong outlets are nigh-ubiquitous here.

So the point is blessedly irrelevant.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by TuggyNE
No sane computer manufacturer would ship a two-prong PSU to any location in the US. Grounding is serious business, and three-prong outlets are nigh-ubiquitous here.

So the point is blessedly irrelevant.

Not entirely irrelevant, because three-prong outlets aren't entirely ubiquitous. In newer homes, probably, but my house was built when the Apollo program was just gathering steam, and there's a mix of two- and three-prong outlets throughout the house.

Fortunately, the room with the computer has some three-prong outlets, but it's pretty random otherwise. For some items in some rooms I have to use an adapter plug.

[factotum]

Side question - is this applicable only to the UK with its plugs that have a third earthing pin, or does it also work for two pin US plugs?

It didn't actually occur to me that the US had an electrical system without an earth pin, to be honest with you!

[Gnoman]

Not entirely irrelevant, because three-prong outlets aren't entirely ubiquitous. In newer homes, probably, but my house was built when the Apollo program was just gathering steam, and there's a mix of two- and three-prong outlets throughout the house.

Fortunately, the room with the computer has some three-prong outlets, but it's pretty random otherwise. For some items in some rooms I have to use an adapter plug.

There is a very high (approaching 100%) chance that the grounding pin in those outlets is not connected to anything. It was fairly common between the mid-70's until the mid 80's (when the pre-1962 (when two-prong outlets were banned for new construction) housing began to be upgraded for the outlets to simply be swapped out, with the third pin wired to the white wire. As for the two-prong to three-prong adapters, those are effectively never safe and should not be used due to risk of fire.

[Palanan]

Just as an update, the machine has been strangely placid the past few days; it's had longer periods of stability lasting a day or two at a time.

Family issues have kept me from tearing into it here lately, but I'll see if I can take a look inside this coming weekend. Thanks to everyone for the advice and suggestions so far.