Computer Issues

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a c i d.f l y

a c i d.f l y

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pharmakos said:
i've got an intel core i3. laptop is a dell. how would i check temperature throttling? been years since i've messed around with the BIOS on any machine.
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Being an i3 would pretty much explain everything. They're essentially modern Celerons. And I imagine it only has 4gb of ram. But don't want to make any assumptions.

PM me your service tag and I'll do a lookup on that particular system to see if there's been any recorded issues. (I work at Dell)
 
Slithum

Slithum

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I am having an issue where when playing games ( destiny 2 - wow - diablo 3 ... etc ) my computer will inexplicably hard freeze. Sound, video, control, everything, just stops. I cannot Alt-Tab or Ctrl+Alt+Delete, Hard booting is the only recourse. The worst part is besides the hard freezing there seems to be no apparent reason for it and it is 100% random, I can go days without an issue, and other times I can go a mere 30 min.

Downloaded the latest drivers for my Motherboard and Gpu and still hasn't fixed the problem
any help would be appreciated
 
alavaz

alavaz

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Slithum said:
I am having an issue where when playing games ( destiny 2 - wow - diablo 3 ... etc ) my computer will inexplicably hard freeze. Sound, video, control, everything, just stops. I cannot Alt-Tab or Ctrl+Alt+Delete, Hard booting is the only recourse. The worst part is besides the hard freezing there seems to be no apparent reason for it and it is 100% random, I can go days without an issue, and other times I can go a mere 30 min.

Downloaded the latest drivers for my Motherboard and Gpu and still hasn't fixed the problem
any help would be appreciated
Click to expand...

What type of motherboard? Because what you're describing is basically what happens to me on my Gigabyte motherboard and Booze also has a GB motherboard but his issue is way way worse. I think GB just has some fucked up drivers or parts or something. I first blamed it on my video card since it only happened while gaming but even when I completely pulled it out and just played EQ on the embedded graphics it would still hard lock. So now, I really believe that it is some sort of CPU voltage overdraw since through a combination of upgrading my power supply, plugging it into a UPS and setting my CPU power to the lowest setting in the BIOS has drastically reduced it - happens maybe once or twice per week now rather than every 1-2 hours. Occasionally I can get a blue screen before it hard freezes but it's just a generic driver error that doesn't really help in troubleshooting. I also tried multiple Windows versions - dunno if it's coincidental, but it happened more on 8.1 than either 7 or 10 and 7 and 10 seem to be about equal in occurence rate. I've just stuck with 10.

I'm way out of warranty so I just deal with it now that I got it down to a manageable level. I'll definitely never buy another GB motherboard.
 
Noodleface

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Id say stick to msi or Asus for motherboards, they're proven and I've worked with msi before. I've also worked with Asrock and they had some problems with their bios code.
 
a c i d.f l y

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Depends heavily on the model when you speak to different brands. The AMD Gigabyte mobos are what they use to superclock processors under heavy NO2 because the voltage is so consistent. Not sure about Intel boards.

In my personal experience, hard locking is one of the following: dying PSU, not enough juice or inconsistent power from the PSU (also basically a dying PSU, or underpowered for the system), overheating CPU. Or a dying hard drive (quick chkdsk can validate that, but an SSD can have a shitty onboard controller, work one minute, not the next). Or the mobo is dying. I tend to err on the side of a dying PSU, since they're the first piece to eat it when there's variable input voltage from the wall. The mobo goes out second, and can sometimes take the CPU with it. I've replace way more PSU's than any other piece of hardware, even though I consistently buy supposedly decent spec'd ones. Surprisingly, I've had my bronze certified 900w Antec for nearly 4 years now, and I have a shit ton of hardware plugged into it (4 HDD, 2 SSD's, a BD, and the most power hungry AMD CPU and GPU on the market). Shit RAM usually results in blue screens or other errors. A dying graphics card usually has other visual issues, not a perfectly operating system that occasionally locks.
 
Brahma

Brahma

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Has anyone recently had mouse stuttering issues recently when mousing over their desktop? I've disabled almost all unnecessary shit like moutherboard sound drivers and the like, to no avail.
 
gshurik

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A friend needs to activate a copy of windows 10, is there a good activator available online?
 
Alex

Alex

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I turned on my computer tonight and I get stuck on the ASUS BIOS bootup screen. Can't actually enter BIOS. Hitting DEL or F8 does nothing. Cleared CMOS and I still get the same issue. Recently my media HD has been acting up - not loading or causing Explorer to not respond. But I've largely ignored it because it's not consistent and I don't access too much from that drive. Regardless, even though it's not a boot drive, I took it and out and tried again. Same issue. Unfortunately I don't have any extra hardware around to swap out to troubleshoot. Any of you more experienced folks face this issue before? Thankfully there are a ton of mom and pop computer repair shops that charge a fair price but if you have some insights I would appreciate it. Really hoping I don't have to buy a new mobo and processor, but thankfully it's not a graphics card issue.
 
Noodleface

Noodleface

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Any other keyboards you can try?sometimes f11 or f2 might work (hidden bios keys)

What does it say after trying to boot or is it freezing at the Asus splash? If it is freezing I'd try removing any unnecessary hardware (go to one stick of ram, no video card, nothing in optical drive)
 
Alex

Alex

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It says nothing and responds to nothing. Just hangs on the Asus splash screen. I'll try going that route. I did use my USB HD reader with both of my hard drives and my boot drive won't even load so that might be the issue. Which sucks because there were a few files I was really hoping to not lose. But it's also my work laptop that requires encryption shit. I'll try with another computer without that when I'm in the office tomorrow.
 
Alex

Alex

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Well I removed every component one at a time and I'm getting the same issue. Guess it's the mobo or the CPU. Shitty.

EDIT: I should just buy both at the same time shouldn't I? Don't really want to find a mobo to support my two year old CPU or vice versa.
 
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alavaz

alavaz

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Alex said:
Well I removed every component one at a time and I'm getting the same issue. Guess it's the mobo or the CPU. Shitty.

EDIT: I should just buy both at the same time shouldn't I? Don't really want to find a mobo to support my two year old CPU or vice versa.
Click to expand...

Up to you but if your gear is only two years old you should be able to replace either without much trouble. I'd start with mobo since that will probably be the cheaper item.
 
Noodleface

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That's really weird that it's failing like that. Usually you'd at least get into bios/uefi.

I'd bet if either of those two components went bad it'd be the Mobo but tough to diagnose
 
Alex

Alex

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I bought a mobo from Newegg earlier today. Should get it by Friday. We'll see.
 
Void

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I've got a guy here at work who thinks he knows a lot about computers, but doesn't. His computer is routinely the most fucked up, and we've straight up replaced it more often than any other computer here. As a side note, we only have about 15 employees and tech support is not my job, but I'm the only one that knows shit about anything electronic so I get to fix shit. There are no disk images or shit like a real company with real tech support might have. Anyway, this guy is making noise about yet another new computer because his is slow and acting up. Granted, it truly is running like shit, taking upwards of 15 seconds to load an excel file that mine loads in 3, for example, but I'm certain it is because he constantly fucks with it because he thinks he's smart. Not to mention he has fucking iTunes on there that never even syncs with his phone properly, so I'm sure that's a giant clusterfuck.

Sorry, he riles me up something fierce. Anyway, since I told the boss that this guy is fucking up his computers himself, they aren't just spontaneously going bad unlike every other computer here, I'm being given a shot next month to "clean it up" and see if I can get it running smoother to prove to him that the machine itself is still just fine. Of course I'm going to uninstall almost everything that I didn't install myself when I gave him the computer, and I'm going to uninstall and reinstall stuff like Office, etc. But my question is, since I can't just re-image it or take it back to factory settings, what is the best way to go about this? Will deleting his user folder and everything associated with it and then recreating it help any, or is that just extra work I don't need to do? I've already run every virus scan under the sun, so either it's clean or the viruses are bleeding edge. I'll also do simple things like sfc /scannow, and I've got all the software that would need to be reinstalled except the operating system, I just don't have any way to really "reset" it that I'm aware of. Oh, Windows 7 Pro btw, so I don't think that one had the option to refresh to fresh Windows install, unless I'm mistaken. And no, I can't upgrade it to Windows 10 either.

I realize there are ways to completely reinstall Win 7 and then activate it, but one of the owners is a big stickler about all of that and if I do anything remotely grey area with it I'll eventually get in trouble for it, and this isn't worth it to me to risk it, so as I said, I'm basically stuck with the current install that it has on it. I just need to "fix" it. I've listed the ideas I have, but I'm sure there are better ways to go about this, given my restrictions, so any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
Ao-

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Void said:
I've got a guy here at work who thinks he knows a lot about computers, but doesn't. His computer is routinely the most fucked up, and we've straight up replaced it more often than any other computer here. As a side note, we only have about 15 employees and tech support is not my job, but I'm the only one that knows shit about anything electronic so I get to fix shit. There are no disk images or shit like a real company with real tech support might have. Anyway, this guy is making noise about yet another new computer because his is slow and acting up. Granted, it truly is running like shit, taking upwards of 15 seconds to load an excel file that mine loads in 3, for example, but I'm certain it is because he constantly fucks with it because he thinks he's smart. Not to mention he has fucking iTunes on there that never even syncs with his phone properly, so I'm sure that's a giant clusterfuck.

Sorry, he riles me up something fierce. Anyway, since I told the boss that this guy is fucking up his computers himself, they aren't just spontaneously going bad unlike every other computer here, I'm being given a shot next month to "clean it up" and see if I can get it running smoother to prove to him that the machine itself is still just fine. Of course I'm going to uninstall almost everything that I didn't install myself when I gave him the computer, and I'm going to uninstall and reinstall stuff like Office, etc. But my question is, since I can't just re-image it or take it back to factory settings, what is the best way to go about this? Will deleting his user folder and everything associated with it and then recreating it help any, or is that just extra work I don't need to do? I've already run every virus scan under the sun, so either it's clean or the viruses are bleeding edge. I'll also do simple things like sfc /scannow, and I've got all the software that would need to be reinstalled except the operating system, I just don't have any way to really "reset" it that I'm aware of. Oh, Windows 7 Pro btw, so I don't think that one had the option to refresh to fresh Windows install, unless I'm mistaken. And no, I can't upgrade it to Windows 10 either.

I realize there are ways to completely reinstall Win 7 and then activate it, but one of the owners is a big stickler about all of that and if I do anything remotely grey area with it I'll eventually get in trouble for it, and this isn't worth it to me to risk it, so as I said, I'm basically stuck with the current install that it has on it. I just need to "fix" it. I've listed the ideas I have, but I'm sure there are better ways to go about this, given my restrictions, so any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Give him a chromebook.

Sorry, I ain't got shit on how to actually fix it. I'd set him up and "have him self-upgrade to Win10" before you get to cleaning it.
 
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