My computar is going spastic, halp!

[Blue123]

Well, it seems this week that there's a trend of people's computers breaking. Anyway, my computer's begun to play up. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I'll explain what's going on.

My computer's normally fine. However, if I start a game (well, I've only seen it on games so far), it'll work fine for the first five minutes, but then, after that, at regular intervals- about every 2 minutes or so- there'll be a massive slowdown for around 30 seconds where I seem to get the amazing framerate of about 0.35 a second. Sounds starts to stutter as well, and it's nearly impossible to play anything online. It's quite a change from playing half life 2 at 60FPS with full detail!

Can anybody help me? Thanks.

[herenvardo]

Although I can't say for sure, the symptoms seem to point to overheating (ie: the CPU temperature raising above the normal working range). You might try to use some monitoring utility to check if this is indeed what's going on (I normally use SpeedFan).
If it's indeed overheating, the most common cause for this is dirt and dust clutching the fans and heatsinks, and cleaning the computer would most probably solve the issue (and even if it doesn't, it's still a good thing to do from time to time ).

HTH

[monele]

Does the hard drive thrash around at those particular moments? I had slowdowns because of that once ô_o

[Blue123]

Hmm, dirt build-up sounds like a cause as I haven't cleaned it since I built the thing (about a year and a half ago)! I'll be sure to check the CPU heat as well.

Monele, my hard drive doesn't do anything out of the ordinary (i.e. make loud noises) when the slow down occurs. Thanks anyway.

Thanks for the advice guys. Looks like I'll be getting out the toolkit this week... oh yes, and how should one go about cleaning the inside of a computer? Is a vacuum cleaner, albeit a small hand held one fine? I don't really want to fry anything.

[herenvardo]

Thanks for the advice guys. Looks like I'll be getting out the toolkit this week... oh yes, and how should one go about cleaning the inside of a computer? Is a vacuum cleaner, albeit a small hand held one fine? I don't really want to fry anything.

A powerful handheld vacuum cleaner would be ideal, rather than just fine (and if the cleaner is not too powerful, it will just take longer). I used to clean my desktop with toilet paper, and a lot of care; but the cleaner is far better. You should only remove the cover, and avoid touching anything inside, just get the dust out from where you see it; with some special atention to the fans and the heatsinks: these are the parts that mostly need the cleaning to solve the overheating.
If you are not sure about what a heatsink looks like, this might be helpful: http://img.diytrade.com/cdimg/64131/133 ... t_Sink.jpg.
BTW, while hovering near the fans, it's very likely that they'll spin: that's normal (the same way the fan spining causes the air to move, moving air causes the fan to spin). I got a bit surprised the first time I saw it

As long as you don't touch anything but the shell and plastic elements with neither your bare skin nor the cleaner, there should be no risk (static electricity charges on you or on the cleaner may harm the components in case of contact): keep the cleaner close enough to do its job, but leave a bit of margin to avoid contact (between half and one cm or, in the imperial way, 1/4" to 1/2" would be fine).

In theory, dismantling the PC and cleaning piece by piece is supposed to yield a better result, but in practice there is not too much difference; and it requires quite specific tools and deep know-how; so it's not worth the extra effort unless you are experienced in PC tunning. Specially, don't remove the sinks from their places unless you know both how to apply coolant gel and why you'd need to do so. In summary, I'd rather discourage you from taking this approach, and suggest you limit this to taking away the bulk of dust you'll find in there.

HTH

[PyTom]

Personally, I get decent results from turning the computer off, popping the case, and simply blowing on the CPU fan/heatsink. I think it works better than vacuuming, since you're reversing the direction of airflow. It'll kick up a horrible cloud of dust, and then the heatsink starts working better.

[Blue123]

Ah, right! Looks like this might not be as hard and as laborious as I thought. Anyway, so I could just go over it with a small hand-held vacuum cleaner or just pop off the side panel and blow on it (but then wouldn't that nasty dust cloud scatter all over the other components)? Nice.

And I just remembered, I've also been having another problem: Very rarely, just after starting up the computer and having passed the motherboard screen (for want of a better name- it's the first image that shows on startup), before loading windows XP the whole things stops- and I get a message similar to "Disk Read Error, Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart". Is this a bad thing? The last one was about a week ago.

[PyTom]

but then wouldn't that nasty dust cloud scatter all over the other components?

Actually, it's been my experience it tends to scatter all over the room, choking out all life.

And I just remembered, I've also been having another problem: Very rarely, just after starting up the computer and having passed the motherboard screen (for want of a better name- it's the first image that shows on startup), before loading windows XP the whole things stops- and I get a message similar to "Disk Read Error, Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart". Is this a bad thing? The last one was about a week ago.

Yes. This is buy-a-new-hard-drive-now bad, and until it comes make sure you're making backups. Seriously.

[herenvardo]

Personally, I get decent results from turning the computer off, popping the case, and simply blowing on the CPU fan/heatsink. I think it works better than vacuuming, since you're reversing the direction of airflow. It'll kick up a horrible cloud of dust, and then the heatsink starts working better.

I can't say which approach is better for the PC's health, but I can tell for sure that vacuuming is less destructive for human health. Honestly, my lungs still regret the last and only time I tried the blow method; and it was years ago.

Yes. This is buy-a-new-hard-drive-now bad, and until it comes make sure you're making backups.

Let me put it more graphically:
The disk is going through a slow and agonizing death: at any moment its strength will be spent, then it won't be able to fight anymore and will exhale its last breath. When this happens, the disk will be dead, and its memories will die with it; forever gone. The only chance to save such memories is to get them from it before it's too late.

I love drama
BTW: after you replace the disk, keep making backups .

[PyTom]

Personally, I anthromorphize filesystems, rather than hard drives. Eileen has been through two root hard drives already, but she's still the same computer she always was.

[Blue123]

I guess I have no choice here, but to get a new HD ASAP. A Western Digital RaptorX, costed me loads... shame. The Western Digital Diagnostic tool (and a few others) say that the drive's fine and that it passes a SMART test. Just for future knowledge, what does that mean?

[Vatina]

BTW: after you replace the disk, keep making backups .

Yes please do! And don't wait too long between them like me... ^^;

[herenvardo]

Personally, I anthromorphize filesystems, rather than hard drives.

Normally, I anthromorphize whole computers (despite I can't define that too preciselly): when poor old Fizban died, there was nothing left from the original machine beyond the screen and the shell... but in this case I anthromorphized the disk for the sake of drama .

I guess I have no choice here, but to get a new HD ASAP.

Actually, as long as you back it up often enough (I'd suggest daily at least), you can stay with your current disk for as long as it lasts. It could die tomorrow, but it could last for a year as well. The point is that, since it could die tomorrow, you'd better start backing up today.

A Western Digital RaptorX, costed me loads...

Curiosly, the external drive that betrayed me some weeks ago was also made by WD. Most probably, that's just a coincidence.

Yes please do! And don't wait too long between them like me... ^^;

As I mentioned above, I think backups should be done daily. But, of course, there are some aspects to keep in mind: burning backup CDs (or DVDs for that matter) daily can be quite an annoyance. Off-site backups (backing up to a remote computer through internet) are a really good thing; but you rely on your connection and having online storage somewhere. LAN backups are less resilient, but if you have a LAN they are quite easy to keep up to date and can get you out of many troubles. Personally, I'm doing LAN backups daily (which include downloads such as the Ren'py distros, for convenience), and off-site backups weekly (but I don't include on those anything that I can recover by other means); and with this I feel relaxed enough.
The point is that how and how often you make your backups depends on your resources and needs; but if you don't make them often enough, it's exactly the same as if you didn't make them at all.

[Jake]

As it goes, it's pretty easy to damage the inside of a computer with a vacuum cleaner. More the regular full-size ones than the hand-held ones, but - well, vacuum cleaners are a notorious source of static charges. Computers do not like static charges. They're are also relatively unwieldy tools, if you don't have a hand-held one, and it's too easy to knock things inside with them.

Personally, when my computer needs cleaning I take it outside (It's the bright blue room past the back door; it took me a while to find it the first time), take the sides off and shoot air at it with my airbrush (without paint, obviously). Failing that, even fanning air with a book or something would probably be OK, and you can get cans of compressed air for running airbrushes or for cleaning computers. It doesn't matter if you blow dust all over the outside, 'cause you're not going to hang around out there for long - you need to escape the carcinogenic space radiation and get into shelter as soon as you've got rid of the dust.

Of course, the best option is prevention rather than cure, and just vacuum the room with the computer in frequently. But let's not get silly.





But really, there's another possibility other than dust buildup. And I'll be honest, it doesn't sound like overheating to me - if you get problems due to overheating, they usually dont go away until you stop putting load on your system, so you wouldn't see the symptoms you're seeing. Instead, you'd play for a few minutes and then you would lose framerate and then your framerate would stay low until you quit the game.

For example, you also might have some software which performs periodic tasks. At work, for example, we found that we had problems a bit like this after we switched to McAfee Antivirus, which was set into ultra-paranoid mode and would take it upon itself to perform periodic scans and do things like scan the entire Outlook database when you recieved a new email. Not that I would suggest you should remove your antivirus, but consider - have you installed anything new recently? Have you checked for viruses and spyware and that kind of thing which may be polling an external server or trying to spread to other machines every three minutes?

Another problem which would result in this kind of behaviour is low RAM. If your game doesn't quite have enough actual RAM available to fit everything in, then periodically the operating system is going to page some out to virtual memory - copy the contents of some RAM to your hard disk because it's not being used /right now/ - and this will often slow the system down while the paging's happening and speed up once it finishes. Check your RAM levels in Task Manager, Performance tab - maybe one of your DIMMs failed recently and you just haven't noticed yet, because let's face it - nobody looks at how much RAM they have all the time. Maybe some program you're using (I tend to blame Firefox at times like this) is eating more RAM than usual.

[LVUER]

It's hard without seeing your PC firsthand, but may be:

- Program crash, perhaps you install something new lately that conflict with your existing software. I experience it more than once (like when I tried to install two anti-virus at once or when my brother install System Mechanic on my OS). SOLUTION: Just uninstall the softwares.

- Overheating, causing slowdown especially when "heavy-duty" software is running. SOLUTION: Add more fan, open your PC case (works for me) and ensure that the ventilation shafts of your PC aren't blocked by anything. Move your PC to different location/position.

- Not enough RAM. There are too many programs running on your PC. Surprisingly, there are lots of program that running without you knowing. SOLUTION: Close the program using CTRL+ALT+DEL, close the program that shows up in the notification area (right click, close/exit), close your anti-virus/spyware. Close them all ONLY if you want to play a game or whenever you experiencing slowdown (but don't do that when you surfing on the internet).

- There are lots of Trojan Horse, Worms, or other malicious programs in your PC. Most of them will bog down your PC performance (and internet). SOLUTION: Wipe them all with anti-virus and anti-spyware (both of them are needed). Scan them over and over (may be 3 or 4 times, especially with spyware).

- Lack of power. Not enough power supplied from your power-supply although I think this is very unlikely the problem. SOLUTION: Unattached several hardware from your PC (may be fan, DVD-Roms, or anything that sucks power from your PC).

Oh, and about the disk-read-error, yeah, perhaps your HD is about to die (don't know the problem though, bad sector, bad connection, cable, port, could be anything). May be formatting the HD will help? Before you buy a new one, no hurt to try a last struggle.