I've recently started having new troubles with my PC. In the past day it's started to completely freeze up at random times. I'm given no error message at all to explain the problem, and it can happen at any time, either while actually working in Windows, sitting idly at the login screen, or even when it's booting up. I originally thought it could be my RAM faltering again, but I've started to suspect that perhaps something in my computer is overheating.

Would I be looking at an overheating issue, or is it failing hardware? If it is overheating, what would be the best way to handle the problem besides the obvious advice of more fans?

Alberd fucked around with this message on 05-27-2007 at 11:18 AM.

Run memtest for a couple of hours to see if memory is the problem.

Run Sandra burn in to see if you can force a crash. If you force the crash, run it again with the case off. If you can't reproduce the crash then it's probably heat.

If all else fails back up your important stuff and reformat and hope it was something with drivers/registry.

To resolve heat make sure your cables are routed properly. Possibly look at getting round IDE cables. Zip ties to keep all your cables bundled and going down the frame as opposed to across the middle. Make sure your fans are in a push-pull configuration and they aren't all pushing or all pulling, can't move air if there isn't any to move.