My PC is dying

[Elok]

I bought it before my son was born, and he's five, so right on schedule there. It's not dying particularly dramatically, but every now and then it'll give me the Blue Screen out of nowhere. The PC won't be struggling or taxing its abilities, I'll be doing whatever and get the blue screen. It says something like "the PC has suffered a critical error and must shut down to prevent damage to your computer. BAD KERNEL [SOMETHING]." Then a page of jargon, followed by something like "dumping physical memory" and a number that increments up somewhat rapidly. Then the computer reboots. It'd be nice if I could get a screencap, but I think BSODs preclude that, and it happens too rarely (maybe once a week) for me to get a good idea of what it's saying. I don't imagine this is helpful enough to pinpoint a specific cause, but what should I start looking at, and is this likely to be fixable? I don't need to upgrade performance or anything, I don't have time to play games anymore these days. I only need to use OpenOffice and access the internet, more or less.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that twice this has happened while watching videos, and both times the audio switched to a loud and grating buzzing noise a couple of seconds before the BSOD hit. The noise persisted through the BSOD, but could be turned off by muting the speakers (ie, it wasn't mechanical grinding of parts inside the computer). In case that matters.

[Dinner]

Over heating is usually one of the big issues so check to make sure all the fans are working and not clogged with dust or pet hair or what not. Clean out all the various air vents and consider removing the heat sink and fan from the CPU and doing the same. Also the conductive grease between the CPU and the heat sink breaks down with age so consider removing, cleaning, and reapplying said conductive grease.

Make sure you unplug it before doing this, use the regular static protections and if necessary a can of compressed air.

[BeBMan]

If cleaning does not help: before throwing it away you could see whether some driver updates or even a complete OS re-installation helps - unless you already want to buy a new machine...

[SlowwHand]

Shoot it. It's suffering.

[giblets]

maybe you installed malware?

[Dinner]

Malware is another possibility. Hell, simply doing a wipe and reinstall is something you should do every now and then anyway.

[Elok]

I think we'll go after it with some compressed air first and see if that solves the problem.

[ZEE]

Might be the nerdiness as well.

[Bereta_Eder]

This looks hardware related.

Do what dinner said, open the case, get a can of compressed air and blow to the systems fan (the big fan in the centre) and every other fan you can see (graphics card etc) Make sure to hold the ermm "scales"???? of the fan (hold the fan) while blowing the air on it because otherwise it will turn very rapidly and might break.


That's number one

If that doesn't work you need to apply new thermal paste. That's more complicated and risky if you don't know how.


If all this fails, then it's hardware related in the sens that there's a hardware mulfunction.

It could be ram. If you could get your hands on new ram sticks, try putting them on and replace the old ones (actually that would be choice number one if you can get some just for testing and not buying them straight away)

[Bereta_Eder]

unplug the PC before doing all that of course and touch the ermmmm power supply box?? to rid yourself of static electricity before touching the other components

[Dinner]

So did the compressed air work? I would also take a Kleenex and wipe things down a bit, try to unclog vents as over time stuff tends to build up. When you do replug it in make sure all the fans turn on and start spinning because those are a cheap yet critical part which are prone to failure and can cause the emergency shut down blue screen you mentioned.

If a fan is broken any parts store like Fry's can give you a new one for $5-$10. Maybe cheaper if you use price matching.

[The Mad Monk]

Just want to note that the fans spin faster than you can usually manage with a can of compressed air, so don't worry about holding them; if they break with the air they needed to be replaced anyway.

[BeBMan]

Anyone here who has one of those posh watercooling thingies in his PC? I always wondered if that would work completely silent.

Not that I plan to get this in the near future, but fans turning high can be quite annoying.

[Elok]

Eh, my wife and kids were out of town visiting relatives until this morning, and I was in full-blown bachelor inertia. Last night I came home from work, looked at the dishes in the sink, said "screw it" and finished up a tub of Haagen-Dazs for dinner. I've just gotten around to putting "can of compressed air" on the shopping list. But we've noticed significant performance improvements from past cleanings, so it wouldn't surprise me if that were the problem this time. I've got a good old machine here.

[Jon Miller]

Anyone here who has one of those posh watercooling thingies in his PC? I always wondered if that would work completely silent.

Not that I plan to get this in the near future, but fans turning high can be quite annoying.

I am using a Macbook, completely silent.

My MacPro is also almost always completely silent (there is one large fan, but I think I have heard it exactly once when it got in some weird mode and had to be restarted).

jm