PC Experts. I need help!!

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Christian and Beccy
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PC Experts. I need help!!

Post by Christian and Beccy »

Our PC is around 4 years old and at the time was a VERY high spec entertainment machine. However, of late, it is behaving oddly. Every couple of hours and sometimes several times within a few minutes, a cooling fan inside the PC kicks up a serious notch. I mean way beyond anything that it should do. I'm talking VERY loud. Could this be a kind of emergency setting saved for when it gets VERY hot?

Also, the PC runs VERY slowly. Takes ages to boot and you can often here a noise as though something is working hard.

A couple of years ago we had a near-miss with the hard drive (it is a 200gb Western Digital Caviar SE by the way), but managed to bring it back from the dead and it's seemingly worked fine since. The PC is fitted with two 512kb PC3200 RAM sticks too, incidentally.

Now, my question is this. Could this slow running and possible over-heating be caused by a tired component? Should I replace the hard-drive first or the memory?
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Gerry H
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Post by Gerry H »

I'm no expert but I reckon a shovelful of coal in the steam boiler and it'll be fine. :D
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Stuart
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Post by Stuart »

Too much porn Christian. Tell Becky to stop downloading it ;)
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duncan
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Post by duncan »

Build up of dust inside the machine - open the cover and hoover it gently.

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Ben
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Post by Ben »

dust buddy ... when was the last time you pulled this bad boy apart?
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RX7
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Post by RX7 »

Yeah I am inclined to agree that dust is the cause. You wont believe how much there will be. Check all the fans in the case and the one on the cpu. Be careful when removing it all.

If that doesnt work then use the pc without the panel on the case to see if it still does it.

Have you installed any new software eg antivirus that boots on startup, look in the bottom right where the clock is when it boots. You can either right click on the items and then in the options/preferences just untick any option that says 'boot on startup' etc. Another good way is by going to 'Start', 'Run' then typing 'MSCONFIG'. This will bring a window up and the last tab is 'Startup'. DO NOT untick anything on there you dont know what it is. The obvious ones will be there by name eg messenger, quicktime, any Printer software you have. These will all slow pcs down on startup, you can double click the line with the ^ arrow is and this should expand the 'Location' section to enable you to go and look where the item is and hopefully help identify. There are some you have to keep though so be warned however you can go back into this anytime. When clicking it will say it needs to reboot. Try it and when rebooted make sure you put a tick in the box that comes up otherwise everytime it'll say it needs to be rebooted.

Also have you overclocked the cpu too high ? Mine used to do that when I did. Easiest way to tell what the pc is running is by going 'start', 'run' then type 'dxdiag' It will tell you the processer and the speed it is running eg mine says 'AMD Athlon XP 2500+, MMX, 3d Now, ~1.8Ghz'. Just check the speed isnt higher than the chip rating otherwise this will cause loads of heat if set too high.

4 years is a long time in pc world, have you wiped the harddrives and reinstalled windows ? I try and do this every couple of years because the pc picks up all sorts of sht that slow it down. Especially as Stu says if it is the pron machine :lol:
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Christian and Beccy
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Post by Christian and Beccy »

I do clean the tower out every few months and yes it is shocking how much dust is in there. The tower sits on a little trolley about 3-4" off the ground, but the room it is in has a wood floor so dust is a nightmare. It's weird that it needs doing more often now than ever before.

Regarding the speed, I do look after the PC, I run scans often and delete what I don't need. I do think that I am going to upgrade both the main hard drive and the memory to try and bring it a little more up to date. I cant see the point reinstalling Windows onto that drive as it is possible that it is the cause of this slow running. My next questions are :

I have a secondary 500GB hard drive that I use for storage, all my pics/movies and so on are on there, to try and keep the main drive as clean as possible. Is this a good approach? So, with that in mind, should I buy a small hard drive (say 80-100GB) to install as the main drive just to run Windows and other programs from?

If I do this, should I install Windows from my recovery disk that came with the PC or use another Windows product? I'm not that bothered about Vista.

The memory that my Mo-Bo uses, apparently, is DDR2 PC3200. Where is the best place to buy this from cost effectively? I have 4 slots each able to take 1GB, but do not use this machine for gaming. The most demanding thing I use it for is to run Photoshop/Dreamweaver etc, which needs 2GB RAM.

Thanks for your help guys. Stuart., I have had a look and found Beccys folder of Porn. Tut Tut. :o :lol: :o
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Christian and Beccy
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Post by Christian and Beccy »

P.S. It is not overclocked. ;)
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paul4400
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Post by paul4400 »

Memory and hard drives are fairly cheap at the mo, a memory upgrade would certainly help.
I would check to see if your pc could handle faster memory first, you can check using a online check from Crucial memory http://www.crucial.com/uk/?cpe=pd_googl ... Qwodmi-6lw then decide what you want from there. 1gb of memory now is now considered minimal,

I always buy anything i need pc wise from either of these two sites, never had any probs from either and both fast del times and fairly cheap, always check out their offers
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/
http://www.ebuyer.com/

Hard drive wise i have a 500gb W/D and a 750gb Samsung spinpoint the samsung is much faster and completely silent, all games and software load 3 times faster on the samsung and considering they are no more expensive than any other drive i can highly recomend it

Have case off and check how much crap is lodged in cpu cooler as have had problems with that before, if all else fails stick everything you need on your 500gb back up drive and either pop in a new hard drive or format and reload your old one.

What cpu are you running? had similar probs with a pentium 4 3.2 and it turned out to be the cpu in the end on its last legs, was ok on idle but soon as it had to do something temps soared and fans went mad.

Hope you get it sorted, if you run out of space you could always put all your porn on garys mapping laptop :pmsl:

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ScoobieWRX
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Post by ScoobieWRX »

As for your funny noise are you sure it's a fan.

Power supply's can make a loud whirring sound sometimes on startup and stay noisy until warmed up, as can hard drives and CD/DVD drives.

Fan's wouldn't normally make that sort of noise unless the bearings had gone but they normally last for donkeys years and most of them are brushless anyway so quieter and more reliable as there is less to go wrong.

I suspect power supply or one of your drives.
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