Elysian Shadows

Hey guys. My friend and I pretty much play SC2 2v2 games every day. Recently his computer froze while playing SC2 and it has been freezing 3-30 minutes after booting up. I'm no PC expert, and neither is he. Do any of you know what would be wrong if it freezes(everything stops respond, NOT bluescreen.) variable amounts of time after running fine?

He recently put in 2 gigs of RAM (total of 3, added to the 1 gig of existing mem) and a new graphics card: Nvidia Geforce PNY 210. The desktop is a Dell XPS 400. Any help would be very appreciated.

If all else fails he is looking to buy a new one (because of this problem, and its a really old computer). Any of you know some good balance between gaming/price computers? He is juuuuust becoming old enough to work so lowest price possible is great. Building a computer really isn't an option and if possible he would like to reuse the gfx card + ram.

Additional details:

We tried running diagnostics from the F12 menu (name of this?) and it ran fine and reported nothing wrong with the hard drive and the DVD drive had no diagnostics installed/.
It once froze on the "Setup" menu (pressing F2 during boot) so were pretty sure it's not an OS thing.

Thanks!!!

My first guess would be, is the computer getting enough cool air? There have been times where my computer froze, due to lack of cool air.

Hope this helps out :DD

How much he want for it? Plus shipping xD but uh seriously, you'll wanna check out air flow, try and dust out the insides (make sure the fan is good an clean) a fresh install of his OS is always wonderful, if you can. Uh if not try and get some programs for virus adware spyware removal, and for fixing registry errors and what not. General stuff like that can make a BIG difference. Also try and clean stuff off of his hard drive he doesn't need. Sometimes if its getting full it causes problems. Even if its not full it will increase read right speed. And also defrag the hard drive, if you haven't done it in forever it will take a while, but will probably free up a lot of disc space

Also get him to check all the connections inside, he might have loosened something when he was installing the new ram. It happened to me XD and if he really wants to get a new pc, maybe he should look at some custom build websites they do some pretty good deals and you can specify pretty much anything ie leaving out the graphics card. That's how i got my latest pc and it was a bargain

Sounds like overheat problem. You should check your processor. If some of the pins are bent, means you fried it. (:duh )

Make sure the PC is clean, enough dust will choke a vital fan and games do really push a machine. I recently had an issue where I just had to recede my processor, but then again that PC was 5 years old.

Overheating is a very likely issue on custom built machines. Unless you are getting popups, and venturing to questionable sites I would say there is where your culprit lies. What kind of processor does he have? What kind of heatsink (stock)?

Before you check all of your cable connections, make sure your motherboard is seated properly on the motherboard tray. NO part of the motherboard should be touching on the bottom besides the 'stands'.


Also make sure that the screws that you are using to attach the motherboard to the stands fit right and are secure. (Don't torque em down too hard though)

After that, double checking your video card/ram/ect is seated properly in their respective buses. Also check your heatsink's placement. It should be snapped/screwed in all the way, evenly and with just enough thermalpaste to ensure that there is a solid contact between the CPU and the lathed part of the cooling device. As I, and other Rifters have said, this is the most common problem. Either shitty stock thermalpaste, too little or in some cases too much; in my personal experience, the physical moving of my computer to Gyrovorbis's house being enough to jiggle a corner of my heatsink loose. (Damn rednecks and their gravel roads.)

You can check that your CPU is getting enough heat transfer by downloading and running CoreTemp. http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

CoreTemp is a utility I always run; It lets me keep an eye on my over clocked CPU as well as letting me know all is well during new builds.

Let me know what your results are and if you have any other issues.

It's all stock Dell XPS 400. He hasn't touched it other than Best Buy putting in the new GFX card + and ram.

He gave it to best buy to check, and now they are telling him its a hard drive failure... scam or plausible? They want him to buy an external HDD, not really sure why.

Haha, questionable sites, that made me laugh. Yeah, thats not a problem for him.

I worked as a retail PC technician one upon a time. They do, in fact, have a quota of $ of service per $ of merchandise that needs to be met. (hence the unusual hard drive recommendation I'm sure.) If the computer is not blue screening then it is not a hardware FAILURE, but some other fault. (Heat or software are likely suspects with usual "locking up" scenarios.)

If you know what you are doing, try going to the windows event log viewer under administrator tools (Control panel -> Admin tools -> Event viewer.) Dig around a bit in the system and software sub-logs to see if there is a "X ERROR" or "X WARNING". These will tell you if drivers are crashing, or if the system is shutting down to protect it's self for heat damage. As long as your drive is seen in the BIOS, boots normally, sounds normal (No clicking or grinding sounds that make you doubt it's validity, although some drives are 'loud') and you don't BSOD to a "STOP: 0x0000007B/50 or 0x000000FA" you shouldn't need to replace your drive.

Retail technicians are bound to unknowing customers like a beast unto it's prey. Knowledge and good bullshitting skills paired with a white shirt and tie can convince any exasperated PC owner that he/she has a "boot sector virus", and that they really need that $100 hard drive replacement and $200 OS install and "PC tune up". (lol msconfig )

Albionremain wrote:I worked as a retail PC technician one upon a time. They do, in fact, have a quota of $ of service per $ of merchandise that needs to be met. (hence the unusual hard drive recommendation I'm sure.) If the computer is not blue screening then it is not a hardware FAILURE, but some other fault. (Heat or software are likely suspects with usual "locking up" scenarios.)

If you know what you are doing, try going to the windows event log viewer under administrator tools (Control panel -> Admin tools -> Event viewer.) Dig around a bit in the system and software sub-logs to see if there is a "X ERROR" or "X WARNING". These will tell you if drivers are crashing, or if the system is shutting down to protect it's self for heat damage. As long as your drive is seen in the BIOS, boots normally, sounds normal (No clicking or grinding sounds that make you doubt it's validity, although some drives are 'loud') and you don't BSOD to a "STOP: 0x0000007B/50 or 0x000000FA" you shouldn't need to replace your drive.

Retail technicians are bound to unknowing customers like a beast unto it's prey. Knowledge and good bullshitting skills paired with a white shirt and tie can convince any exasperated PC owner that he/she has a "boot sector virus", and that they really need that $100 hard drive replacement and $200 OS install and "PC tune up". (lol msconfig )

#&@$ "tech support". Having an OEM laptop is amazing. I called the four guys in New Jersey for tech support one time and he was busy working on something and requested I call back in an hour or so. When he answered the phone the second time I stated my name and he was like, "Yeah I remember who you are, here's the solution man..." Last time I called Dell tech support I spent two hours trying to tell the dumbass on the other end of the phone that was no LED where the power supply plugged into the computer, hence the reason I answered "no" to the previous question regarding whether or not it was lit.
[/tech support rant]

Albion's recommendations are good ones if you have some idea of what you're doing.

Make sure the ram he just put in doesn't have errors. Run memtest on it.

If he is looking to buy a new computer, tell him to wait for black Friday to get the most out of his money from NewEgg (assuming he is going to order online).

Also, if you want, add a noob at SC2 (me) Xiphirx #920

Now this time develop new computer it is really very good and interesting view. It has to provide some new facility so now,many people buying it and more selling in that generally, student want to new technology so new computer are produced in market. it contain new feathers and facility. I have to install fresh OS in my computer.