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Re: sudden shutdown and/or freezing of XP/ Win 7 Desktop

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R2D4 wrote:

> Yesterday, while on my desktop and using the hard drive that has XP, the 
> unit suddenly shutdown for no reason, not a normal shut down routine, 
> just went off completely, like turning off by power button.  Then, after 
> I rebooted, it would freeze after a few minutes were the only way to fix 
> was to reboot (ctrl-alt-delete wouldn't do anything).
> 
> I have had this desktop for over 5 years and haven't had any issues.  At 
> boot up, I can select either XP or Win 7 as each OS is on a separate 
> hard drive.  The first thing I decided to check was the C drive that has 
> XP on it, so I rebooted into Win 7 and then used scandisk to check for 
> and repair any errors overnight.  No shutdowns and Win 7 reported no C 
> drive errors this morning.  Right now, I am running Memtest at boot up 
> for a few hours to see if maybe I have a memory issue going on (but now 
> I'm thinking not since Win 7 was able to run overnight without shut down 
> or freezing.... but it is on a separate hard drive... could the XP hard 
> drive be doing this even though showing no errors?)

You sure the cause is not also the cause of your taskbar freeze problem
that you posted about over in alt.comp.os.windows-10?  I replied over in
that newsgroup about that problem.  Looks like you have a bigger problem
which happens to cause the taskbar freeze.

When was the last time you dusted out the inside of your unidentified
computer?  Dust, lint, and pet hair are thermal insulators.  You need to
get out the dust, especially from the heat sinks.  In the 5 years that
you owned the desktop, have you ever dusted it out?  Makes sure to blow
out the heat sinks (CPU, GPU), fans, and both ways through the PSU
grills (don't take it apart unless you are comfortable doing that).  The
crud might be impacted on the fan blades so you'll need an ear swab to
wipe them to scrub off the crud to then blow them out.  Do NOT let the
fans spin from you blowing air through them.  Use something to block the
blades from spinning when you blow through the fans (CPU, GPU, case).
NEVER use a household vacuum cleaner to dust out any electronics.  They
generate static from the airflow through the nozzle or hose.  You'll
probably want to disconnected everything from the PC to take it outside
to blow it out instead of blowing all that accumulated dust into your
residence.

When the CPU gets too hot (fan not spinning or not fast enough, dust
blocking air flow, ribbon cables in the way of airflow) it will either
turn off to save itself or throttle down the CPU duty cycle (to reduce
the power it consumes to reduce heat but that also slows the PC).  You
should also check at what temperature thresholds your BIOS/UEFI or
startup software is configured for when it will stop the PC.

Don't know anything about your hardware since you did not provide any
specifications.  PSUs lose about 5% capacity per year.  Well, that's for
a decent quality PSU, not the crappy ones that many users buy to save
some money when they build their own or the vendors stick into their
pre-builts.  Most of those cannot even meet their own specs under
/sustained/ load at their professed ratings.  You need a PSU that has
sufficient reserve capacity when you build the box so that it still has
reserve capacity after several years and because you may add more
hardware (bigger video card, more memory, more HDDs or SSDs, etc).

That desktop is old enough to warrant replacing the CMOS battery.  If it
gets too weak, you might end up with corrupted values in the CMOS table
copy of the BIOS settings, or they could revert to some presets that are
not valid for your hardware config.  Coin cells don't last forever.
Some will need replacing after 3 years.  Better ones will still die
after about 5-6 years.  

Time to do some hardware maintenance.  Get some canned air dusters, ear
swabs, and a replacement CMOS battery.  While you're inside, make sure
any flat ribbon cables are not blocking airflow (they should be sideways
to the airflow).  Check the fans spin up okay.  With all power off,
rotate the blades by hand (for the fans you can get at) to make sure
they spin freely without any grinding or other indication of wear.

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Thread

sudden shutdown and/or freezing of XP/ Win 7 Desktop R2D4 <r2d4@stwars.com> - 2017-02-10 11:34 -0500
  Re: sudden shutdown and/or freezing of XP/ Win 7 Desktop "Rodney Pont" <mlist4@infohit.me.uk> - 2017-02-10 17:23 +0000
    Re: sudden shutdown and/or freezing of XP/ Win 7 Desktop R2D4 <r2d4@stwars.com> - 2017-02-10 12:35 -0500
  Re: sudden shutdown and/or freezing of XP/ Win 7 Desktop VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2017-02-10 14:35 -0600
    Re: sudden shutdown and/or freezing of XP/ Win 7 Desktop R2D4 <r2d4@stwars.com> - 2017-02-10 15:56 -0500
      Re: sudden shutdown and/or freezing of XP/ Win 7 Desktop VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2017-02-10 16:19 -0600
        Re: sudden shutdown and/or freezing of XP/ Win 7 Desktop R2D4 <r2d4@stwars.com> - 2017-02-10 22:07 -0500
          Re: sudden shutdown and/or freezing of XP/ Win 7 Desktop VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2017-02-11 00:58 -0600

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