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Audience Participation: Computer Woes
R. Alex Whitlock
This is a general call for assistence with my computer network in the form of brainstorming. Anyone with any ideas as to what the problem might be, please let me know.
As most of you know, I have five computers right now: Maverick, Doral, Heineken, Foster, and Corona.
Last December, Doral started exhibiting symptoms. When burning a CD it would reboot. Sometimes it would reboot without burning anything. There were signs, I ignored them, and Doral overheated in an unheated apartment that was at about 40 degrees. At the time, Doral was running off of my Uvalde drive, which has been problematic since I got it.
I plugged the Uvalde drive in to Maverick and more-or-less picked up right where I left off. Unfortunately, some of the same problems started surfacing that had existed on Doral. It would sporadically reboot and I still couldn't burn any CD's to save my life. I replaced the Uvalde drive with my Dallas drive, which at last check worked without any problem. The rebooting problems persisted.
About this time I bought Corona from my friend Linus. Corona couldn't accomplish any CD-intensive tasks up to and including installing Windows. Linus came over at one point and we worked on it and we determined that there was a heat/circulation issue. It made sense: A computer and 19" monitor on a 4'x2' desk in an apartment with no circulation would be a not good thing, even in the winter. We strapped a second internal fan on to Maverick and aimed a fan right at the two computers.
Both computers seemed to finally be functional. Corona, which lies enclosed in a small case, continued to work while Maverick (enclosed in a case without side panels to allow for greater ventilation) would work only so long as I had both internal fans on
and an external fan. If I turned the external fan away for anything more than an hour or two, it would overhead and die.
Deciding that the heat was caused in part by the heat emitted by the large 19" moniutor, I replaced it with a 17" flat-panel. I also purchased a new CD burner and new CD burning software. Overheating was no longer tied to CD burning, but still occured at the same frequency otherwise. The problem had not been solved.
I've now moved to another apartment. Because it's underground this apartment is naturally cool. For whatever reason circulation also seems better. It doesn't seem as "stale." There is no reason that a computer should overheat and reboot, but that's what happened.
So here is the basic chain of events:
- Doral was using Uvalde, a questionable harddrive, and crashed while burning a CD. Not the motherboard, case, CD burner, CD burning software, RAM, harddrive (Uvalde), PCI hardware or Windows install are still being used.
- Using the same HD, CDB, CDBS, RAM, but different MB, case, and PCI hardware, the problem continued almost unaltered.
- Switching out the HD lead to marginal improvement.
- Switching out the CDB and CDBS eradicated the problem of rebooting while burning CDs, but the general problem of random reboots persisted.
- Creating greater circulation with a fan allowed it to work without incident provided that the fan was functional and aimed directly at the naked case.
- Changing the environment by replacing the big-time, heat-producing 19" monitor with a more efficient 17" monitor had no effect.
- General temperature within the apartment (whether it was hot or cold outside and, because of open windows, inside) did not seem to make much difference.
- Corona works without needing the extra fan inside or outside, and works inside of its case. Hieneken does not appear to be working, but for unrelated reasons. Doral will not work again until I get a new case.
- With the exception of the remediated CD burning issue, the problems that existed on Doral and exist on Maverick are strikingly similar.
- Prior to last year, I had not had recurring computer overheating problems since I was staying at the UH dorms.
- I believe that the problems are related to overheating for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which that after they crash, the computers are very, very hot. The helpfulness of the fans is another indicator in my mind. However, because I believe it to be so does not make it so. I could be wrong.
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Observations
Heat analysis is a tricky issue.
Make sure your internal fans are running for starters.
And perhaps invest in some better cases rather than just slapping on more (and noisier) fans.
You might also want to make sure you're not overdriving your power supplies; that can make a difference. A CD burner when active is a pretty big draw.
Check the seating of your CPU fan as well. Especially if you moved the computer.
This happened to me recently, and the fan was dislodged slightly and not actually touching the CPU. I thought my CD-R drive was the problem too, but it was incidental as that was the action I was performing when the computer finally reached "meltdown".
In fact, to test this before ripping open the case, if your CMOS lets you monitor the CPU temperature, do that. It's not the internal case temperature that matters (ultimately), it's the CPU temperature.
One question: On all the computers that have the mystery illnesses, have they previously overheated to the point of malfunction/non-function before? How many times? My experience is once you've had a catastrophic overheat, that CPU/motherboard has problems from there on out, including random reboots. This happened to my vid editting computer between the time I took it to Ushicon, where it overheated because the CPU fan got dislodged from the CPU and overheated, to the time it finally crashed losing all Adjusters material.
You guys are not telling me what I want to hear. I don't want to hear about lingering problems, I want to hear "If you buy this $10 product, all of your computer-related problems will disappear forever and ever and ever."
But I'm telling you something better: By reseating your CPU fan (if that is in fact the culprit) you don't have to spend any money. Earlier is better, as noted by Adam.
Ethan, the second fan was only recently seated, so I'm relatively certain that one hasn't gone wrong. I'll check the first, though.
Adam, there haven't been any substantial blowups except for the one that killed Doral. It's mostly been reboots. I shut the computer down entirely and leave it off for a few hours whenever that happens.
Tefkam, overdriving power supplies? Elaborate. The fans are definitely running.
By purchasing 1 $1000 Mac, all your problems will go away. ;)
$1000 > $10
A power supply has a certain amount of power available to the various circuits.
If you look closely at your power supply you'll see it's actually a set of ratings: there's a certain amount of wattage available to the 3.3, 5, and 12-volt rails.
If you stick a large number of devices on one particular rail (such as can happen if you use a Y-cable or something) you'd better make sure that you have the wattage to cover it.
Likewise, if there's a problem in the power supply, you may not get maximum power.
Even when you're within tolerances, running at "maximum" is generally not a good idea. Any dip in the available power can be enough to cause the computer to reset or can cause other, more fun glitches to happen. The hotter the power supply gets, the harder it is for it to supply power properly.
This is why I've always had a philosophy of figuring out what I need (technically I could run my computer on a 325-watt unit) and getting the next step up or so (in my case a 450). Not only does it prevent overheats, but since the PSU isn't working as hard, its cooling fan doesn't have to be run at top speed all the time.
What you're telling me so far makes me wonder about the power supply in Doral, because you say Doral runs fine with external cooling and it's one of the few heating-related components you haven't switched out (well that and the aforementioned check on the CPU fan).
Out of curiosity, what PSU is in Doral? Is it a bargain-bin type PSU? What ratings?
Doral is dead, so it doesn't run in any form or fashion. Maverick is the one that needs extra fans. Both have the exact same case model, though. Both were inexpensively bought half a decade or so ago, so a replacement may be in order.
The general consensus around my office (it's good to work with a bunch of tech people!) is that it's a combination of old power supply and Idaho's "dirty power" that surges with unfortunate frequency (which would explain why this has only been a problem since I moved up here). More-or-less everyone has focused on getting a surge protector and perhaps a new power supply itself.
Like I told you in Instant Message RAW, Turn off XP's reboot on BSOD feature and make sure it's not windows crashing rather than a loss of good current.
If the power is really that bad, you might think about investing in a UPS as well. It could help with power fluctuations immensely.
Yeah, you didn't mention that Idaho had dirty power.
In that case, your investment isn't a $10 part, but I recommend starting with a $60 or so part - a brand new, and decent name-brand (like AOpen or similar) power supply of a relatively beefy power scale.
As Kavey suggested, you might get a UPS to go with it, that should smooth out the voltage spikes (and dips, which are more likely your problem) immensely.
I didn't know about the dirty power until after this post. More likely the spikes than dips, though, from what they say. The recommendations seem to be converging on UPS and power supplies. I prefer that to everyone saying something else.
My revamped suggestion is also try the higher-wattage power supply and get a hefty UPS. However, if you still keep getting reboots, then my original post replies. Remember, I said that afetr the major overheat to the editting machine, I had frequent random reboot problems until the day it finally crashed.
Eh, dirty power is VERY bad.
I'll second (or third or fourth) the advice to get a decent UPS, preferably a voltage regulating model. This model goes on sale from time to time for about 60 bucks (I got a couple at Microcenter at various sale times), and I've been happy with it:
http://www.compusa.com/prod...
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