my computer is randomly restarting and as best as I have been able to determine it looks like my CPU is overheating and forces a reboot. The computer as purchased in 2004, the fan still works fine and I have found that opening the window seems to help.
Is there a program for XP I can use to monitor my fans rpms and the temperature of my CPU in realtime that i can have open and positionable on my second screen?
Posted by Eduardo_Sauron (Member # 5827) on :
Check it out. Although I am a (happy) Ubuntu Linux User, Speedfan seems nifty.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Okay my CPU wiht my window open in winter and the case is not open, it is 41 degrees celsius, P4s apparently have a max temp of 64-70 degrees but apparently dont do anything when they get that hot because they never get that hot >.< they have a step down system where the hotter it gets the slow it will run which doesnt help me explain why my computer is restarting.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Yup, Speedfan is what you want.
Have you tried cleaning out your case? A working fan is useless if there's a think layer of lint and dust blocking the vents. It might also be a good idea to remove your CPU heatsink, clean it and the CPU off with rubbing alcohol, and reapplying some thermal paste.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
That doesn't jibe with my (very limited) experience with P4s. My friend has one, and I think it's pretty typical for his to hang out in the 60–70 range.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
speedfan seems to have the "on fire!!!" symbol once my cpu reaches 55 degrees. I used a compressed air gun and a vaccum to clean out my computer, removing the heatsink and cleaning it hasn't occured to me, but I have no idea where to get thermic paste.
my cpu i believe is soddered to the motherboard, would the paste be under or above it?
Posted by adfectio (Member # 11070) on :
In my experience with P4s I haven't seen any problems with them. It's for that reason I fought to get a laptop with a P4 in it. Yes, it's a battery hog, and yes, it's not as good as some of the dual cores, but at the time, it was the best out there.
P4s shouldn't be getting hot enough to consider it being dangerous. And for it to be shutting down on you at 55 suggests, to me at least, that the problem is more with your motherboard. But yeah, check your fans and everything first. Maybe you changed your BIOS recently?
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
I've never actually heard of any companies soldering a CPU to a motherboard aside from VIA. But the paste needs to be between the CPU and heatsink. And you should be able to get some thermal paste from just about any computer repair shop around.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: speedfan seems to have the "on fire!!!" symbol once my cpu reaches 55 degrees.
That's just the default setting. It doesn't necessarily mean that anything above 55 is dangerous or that anything under 55 is safe.
quote: I used a compressed air gun and a vaccum to clean out my computer, removing the heatsink and cleaning it hasn't occured to me, but I have no idea where to get thermic paste.
Last time I bought some, I got it online, but I think places like CompUSA and Best Buy might carry it.
quote:my cpu i believe is soddered to the motherboard, would the paste be under or above it?
Um, no. It's definitely not soldered to the motherboard. The paste goes in a thin layer on top of the CPU die or heatspreader, where it makes contact with the heatsink. If you don't know what you're doing, though, you could very easily kill your CPU. You probably shouldn't mess with it.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
my computer was bought in 2004, its very nearly 4 years old, the CPU is soldered.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Why does its age make you think it's soldered? None of the computers I've ever built or seen have had the CPU soldered to the motherboard. As Boris said, that's something you only see from VIA mini-ITX boards and (from what I can tell) some ultralight notebooks.
Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :
Ah, I remember them days, way back in Aught-4. We soldered our chips to the motherboard. We didn't have any of those fancy pants SOCKETS like the kids these days have. No, we had to dig down and get dirty with the PCB. We soldered them CPUs down while walking uphill both ways in 6 feet of snow with no shoes and a coal-powered soldering iron.
And we liked it!
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
hmm, actually now that I look at it may not be I'm not sure, I see a kinda compartment thing with a sorta metal bar and looks like it might open up, at the buttom of my heatsink and at the top of my CPU i see what is either caked dust or dried up remnants of that thermal grease. How should I proceed?
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
I'd let someone who knows what they're doing handle it, unless you want to take your computer's life into your hands.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:Originally posted by Primal Curve: Ah, I remember them days, way back in Aught-4. We soldered our chips to the motherboard. We didn't have any of those fancy pants SOCKETS like the kids these days have. No, we had to dig down and get dirty with the PCB. We soldered them CPUs down while walking uphill both ways in 6 feet of snow with no shoes and a coal-powered soldering iron.
And we liked it!
Until you got the black lung, right?
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
i live in the middle of bum eff nowhere there is no one to look at it.
Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: Until you got the black lung, right?
Black Lung? We couldn't afford Black Lung. We had to get hand-me-down moderately grey lung.
And we liked it!
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
You always tell the best stories, Gramps!
Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: You always tell the best stories, Gramps!
Stories? I can tell you stories. Why, back in the war, my best buddy had his head blown clean off by a kraut mortar shell. It wouldna been so bad had he not just finished eating. Between the blood and the partially-dehydrated potatoes, I thought I'd never come clean.
Ah well, at least he didn't have to worry about the syphilis anymore.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
A point of interest: When I was the sysop for the school I used to work for, we had a rash of machines either coming on with their fans blowing full blast and not ever booting properly, or shutting down mid-process with a cryptic message about a "thermal event" coming up on the screen.
Both of these problems were solved by unseating and reseating the memory on the motherboard. It seems that the computers got some kind of signal that the board had overheated, and then kept malfunctioning based on a code that was kept in memory, rather than an actual event.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Blayne, don't mention this the next time you apply for a hardware tech support position. Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
The current computer issue has never occured during or before booting but always after it had completed loading windows, once it did this when I left it idle at the loading menu where you choose which user account to log in as, but almsot always after this point ala when playing a game.
But nonetheless it will not hurt to try, by memory do you mean the BIOS battery or do you mean the RAM?
Also everytime it reboots I do not believe it has actually ever did a POST except on 2 occasions but always seemed to skip it to a black screen with the blinky cursor at the top left then proceeded to boot windows.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: But nonetheless it will not hurt to try, by memory do you mean the BIOS battery or do you mean the RAM?
*slaps forehead*
What do you think, Blayne?
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
The "M" in RAM stands for "Memory". The "M" is "BIOS battery" is... Nonexistant.
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Not to mention the fact that it's a CMOS battery, not a BIOS battery.
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
I don't know...I always figured it could go either way, since the Battery gives power to CMOS which holds BIOS data...And...BIOS Battery is more alliterated
Anyway, You have a Prescott CPU, in an LGA 775 Socket. Those mothers ran hot as hell (And no, I'm not exagerating). Get one of these and throw it on there . Should keep you cool(I'm going to assume you know how to replace a 775 CPU fan, since you've obviously taken the one you have off...not a great idea if you don't have Thermal paste already)...assuming the CPU hasn't, you know...fried itself already. Pretty likely the fan that's cooling the CPU is dying and can't spin as fast as it used to. Those Intel CPU fans are mostly garbage to begin with.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Although it's worth noting that there is a relevant "M" in CMOS. And in the sort of "kept in memory" situation discussed here, CMOS might actually be more relevant than RAM. So that really wasn't a particularly foolish question.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Relevant? The "m" in CMOS stands for "metal."
I really can't imagine that someone would say "remove the memory" to mean "remove the battery."
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
It is not a prescott. I am fairly certain of that.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
Reseating the RAM can be a good idea. Faulty memory can also lead to restarts.
If you don't have things like spare parts you can swap in to troubleshoot, thermal paste, and a general idea of how to handle the parts inside the box, I think you better either take the trip to a repair shop or buy a new computer.
Check your BIOS settings for the safety shutdown temp setting for your CPU. My mom's computer had this set at 60 C for some reason, and it was causing a lot of reboots. The CPU itself was capable of running at 85-90 with no trouble.
Posted by adfectio (Member # 11070) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: hmm, actually now that I look at it may not be I'm not sure, I see a kinda compartment thing with a sorta metal bar and looks like it might open up, at the buttom of my heatsink and at the top of my CPU i see what is either caked dust or dried up remnants of that thermal grease. How should I proceed?
....... Have you never messed with a computer before? Ever?
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: It is not a prescott. I am fairly certain of that.
As certain as you were about it being soldered to the motherboard? You bought it new in 2004. Prescott came out in Feb 2004. There is a very great likelihood that it is a prescott. If not, it is still a Pentium 4, which means it has a tendency to run hot. You had the normal thermal gunk that comes with a Pentium 4 processor on it before, which means that now that you've removed the heatsink, your overheating will only get worse until you replace the thermal paste.
Posted by adfectio (Member # 11070) on :
I was talking to a friend, and in all seriousness, he mentioned the PSU. If it were to have a short in it, it could be causing the computer to restart without warning. It might not be over heating at all.
Just thought I'd though in something else to check.
Posted by Wonder Dog (Member # 5691) on :
Hey - stupid question - but are we sure we're talking temps on the same scale here? Is everyone aware that the numbers Blayne has been giving are (most likely) in celsius? Blayne, can you confirm that?
Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
Blayne mentioned Celsius specifically in his second post, so I'd take that as a yes, it's Celsius. Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Nothing in dxdiag, my motherboard, or anything writton on my cpu implies that it is a Prescott, if you know of a way for me to confirm this then I will do so but I lack any documentation inregards ot what my cpu is beyond "Pentium 4 3 Ghz with multithreading".
Also my BIOS is not helpful and lacks any means of setting my cpu heat threshold any higher.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
And yes I replaced the thermal paste without incident I bought a syringe of it for 8$.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Blayne, how do you think you'd check to see whether or not you have a Prescott CPU?
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Normally itld be in the documentation, dxdiag should also say or under system, nothing says Prescott.Currently im running hotcpu tester to do a stress test of my cpu, if the cpu is the culprit ill find out this way.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Aha after running CPUID it turns out it is a Prescott, my friend was wrong.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
okay for some wierd reason sometime during today out of nowhere my bios is reporting that my cpu temperature is flucturating between 1 degree celsius to 250 degrees celsisus, so its for seconds 1 degree then its 250, 5 seconds layter bak down to 1-3 degree rinse and repeat.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Given that 250C is probably out of the realm of physical possibility, I think we can conclude that there's either something wrong with the thermometer or the reporting BIOS.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Well a good night off fixed that wierd reporting problem but I still get random resets, I just tried resetting the BIOS and pulled out/put back in the RAM.
Is there a way to set the CPU-restart thresold if the BIOS isnt helpful in that regard?
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Hmm problem may have been fixed, left the computer on over night and it didnt restart.
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