Computer Woes

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lance
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Computer Woes

Post by lance » Nov 24th 2005, 12:56 am

Okay,

My computer is driving me nuts. Thought some of the more technical inclined could help out.

I have a Dell Dimension 4400 with XP and a Gig of RAM. My computer tends to lock up when I am away from computer and the screen saver is running. Also for a while Photoshop 5.5 would lock up, that have never happened before. Also for some bizarre reason Control C does not seem to be working well. Takes me two or three times before if finally copies what I want.

Any ideas?

I have already replaced one of the sticks or RAM and the Photoshop problem seems to have gone away, the other problems remain. Other than replacing the second RAM strip anything else I should check?

Thanks,

LanceMan

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Sascha
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Re: Computer Woes

Post by Sascha » Nov 24th 2005, 4:23 am

lance wrote: Any ideas?

I have already replaced one of the sticks or RAM and the Photoshop problem seems to have gone away, the other problems remain. Other than replacing the second RAM strip anything else I should check?
Yeah, faulty RAM would be my first guess too. Sounds very much like a RAM problem. Maybe just take the second RAM stick out for a while (don't replace it yet with a new one) and see if the problems still occur. But it's very unlikely that two RAM strips are faulty at once. This would indicate some problem with the mainboard or the power supply (see below).

My second guess would be a few damaged sectors on your hard drive. Download an application like Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test (DFT), it should work with any hard disk manufacturer. You will need a floppy disk to boot this application (I think there are instructions on Hitachi's website). It will check your entire hard disk, sector for sector.

And last but not least: Faulty mainboard or faulty power supply unit. Problems with those two can be very difficult to diagnose, it's basically "replace and test". One thing you can do very easily though is checking your board for blown capacitors. A year ago, I had some weird stability problems with my Windows box until I finally found out that two capacitors on my mainboard were defective. More informations on how to check your mainboard are here: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195

On the other hand it could even be something like a hardware driver incompatibility with Windows. Or even a virus (I've seen the weirdest things...). If you haven't done so lately, just check your computer with an antivirus software and run Windows Update.

Good luck in finding the roots of the problem!

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