Luminous

iTrader: (3)

Hiya

My machine has become unstable as of last Monday.
Initially it crashed only once, but the problem has become a lot more severe. I have also component swapped and am still having problems.

Can you please look at this question that I posted and see if you can come up with some better answers than those that have already posted!!

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-111...hreadID=176877

Hanslow

Could be a heat issue down to the mini heatwave we've just had. Mine had been faultless for the last year up until last week when I used it in the day when it was stupidly hot outside. When used under normal temps, like now, it runs fine.

As to what exactly could be suffering from heat exhaustion is anyone's guess.

mannyo

I am going to say it looks like the graphics card is at fault. Had that been run overclocked too?. I have seen that when the ram is failing, and your symptoms suggest to me its when the card switches to is more advanced modes the problems occur.

Milamber

iTrader: (2)

I tend to agree that its a gfx problem but you say that you have already tried two different gfx cards? Have you tried upgrading the drivers yet?

Have you changed ANYTHING prior to it crashing.

DrEvil

I had a problem where Norton AV crashed my PC everytime it ran a full system scan. it turned out to be corrupt files on the HD causing AV to blue screen the system.

May not be related to your issues, but one to check (easy to rule out).

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

Currently, I seem to be stable. Last night I had the brainwave to underclock my motherboard to 166Mhz for 200Mhz. Since doing this I have not had any stability issues.

I have also replaced the new graphics card that was refusing to work at all, and I'm currently writing this on my machine.

With an underclocked mobo I would assume that indicates the issues to be either CPU, mobo, or RAM. I think I can rule out the PSU and graphics card now, assuming I remain stable in this current config.

I cannot be sure that I did not change something before the problems started...I'm always tinkering with something However, by restoring the machine's whole system partition to 2 months ago (when it was stable), and then seeing it crash several times would indicate that it is not a software issue....I think.

I'm no professional at this stuff unfortunately.

Foot_Tapper

Looks like you solved it. IMO It most likely is hardware related, system components becoming fragile with age, expansion of components with heat over a time are bound to take their toll.
Thing is nowadays, it is hard to compare. Very few people probably have exactly the same components in a system running the same RAM, clock speed etc etc.

I would say it getting close to swapping most of the insides out, of your system.
MB, Proc, PSU, RAM