To the software gurus out there-

Mistra

Mistra

Over Analyzer
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Sep 2, 2005
Messages
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morbidityadendum.blogspot.com
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Ninja-Male
I'm a hardware brain, I know nothing about software that's significant.

I've recently built myself a brand new dream machine, roughly 2-3 months ago. Lately it's been really, really slow. (Dual, dual core mobo, w/ 3.2ghz DC's, a 640mb 8800GTS, and 4GB of RAM, with a custom ASUS Mobo), anyways, having some issues. Slowdowns, big-f**kin time. Certain applications are crashing a lot (even fire fox) where normally they never did. WoW crashes a LOT now too, or any other game I play.

Also, here's the cool part. Network connections are gone. I can't open up ipconfig anymore, it crashes as soon as it opens. Occasionally the router will lock and the comp will bluescreen, due to network issues. Also, I constantly hear (like every 10 minutes) a little click in the background somewhere (like that click you hear on IE when you click on a link). I've run spybot, antivirus. Detected nothing out of the ordinary, and I'm stumped now. Ready to just backup the data and start over with a fresh wipe, but thought I'd see if any of you software junkies could help me out with a solution first, or even tell me what the f*ckin problem is, because I can't figure it out.

Thanks,
Mist-
 
Which virus/adware programs did you use to scan?
 
Bumping this - really don't want to have to reformat, if anyone can help me out I'd be appreciative. If you're all as stumped as me I'll just backup the data and reformat this weekend. Tired of stupid windows slowdowns for no reason. >:(
 
Download ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu
After burning onto a cd, restart computer with it on and use it to browse the internet for a few hours, use all its programs and play around with it (no need to install anything). If it works fine, you should reformat, if it crashes just as much as your main system is, it may actually be a hardware issue.

Have you checked to make sure all voltages/temperatures are within normal range in your computer? Basically the problem is one of two things: Serious software failure/virus (as in, it's not gonna be fixed easily, just reformat) or a hardware component is on the fritz (Hard drive, CPU, and video card most common offenders, reformatting won't fix)
 
Daveman tells no lies~

Just hope that Ubuntu recognizes the NIC (which it is pretty good at doing).

Are you getting any stop errors; BSoD (Blue screen)? Go to Control Panel (Classic View) > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer. Look for errors in the application and system groups. Microsoft may be able to diagnose any conflicts you have. I say 'may' because it is pretty spotty, but i have gotten very useful assistance using the Event Viewer and microsoft help database.

What is immediately popping to mind is a bad stick of RAM or a stick of RAM that is loosely seated. If that isn't it, then it is more than likely a problem with the windows install~
 
Torture it.
  1. Download Prime95 from http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
  2. Install & Run, say "No thanks, just stress testing"
  3. Go to Options » Torture Test
  4. Run each of the 3 tests for a minimum of 2 hours each (I recommend 8 hours each)
When you're picking each test, it details what components will be stressed. If any errors return during the stress test then you know you may have defective hardware and can narrow it down from there.

Are you overclocking? If so, drop your bus speed back to normal. That may revert network operations.
 
True true, an overclock could potentially cause drastic slow downs if shit went wonky, though more likely to receive a stop error or artifacts.
 
Daveman said:
Download ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu
After burning onto a cd, restart computer with it on and use it to browse the internet for a few hours, use all its programs and play around with it (no need to install anything). If it works fine, you should reformat, if it crashes just as much as your main system is, it may actually be a hardware issue.

Have you checked to make sure all voltages/temperatures are within normal range in your computer? Basically the problem is one of two things: Serious software failure/virus (as in, it's not gonna be fixed easily, just reformat) or a hardware component is on the fritz (Hard drive, CPU, and video card most common offenders, reformatting won't fix)
Click to expand...


Edit, didn't see everyone else respond yet. I'll try all of this first, although I'm suspecting a bad windows install. It's unfortunate, but oh well. Time to test it first.

No, not overclocking fortunately. BSoD happens whenever the network is disconnected or halts a second (always network related). Had a system lock-up while playing Halo on the PC a while back (like a literal freeze). BSoD, just to reiterate only happens when the modem is unplugged, or there's a hiccup in my internet connection. And again, also getting that IE click noise every so often in the background. Drives me batty.
 
Last edited:
Arctyrael said:
True true, an overclock could potentially cause drastic slow downs if shit went wonky, though more likely to receive a stop error or artifacts.
Click to expand...
That's what I thought too.

Over Christmas, that exact scenario happened. Buddy was pushing his clocks as high as he could, and by bumping his bus up 11mhz, his NIC died. It wouldn't even give L1 light.

Tried everything from swapping known-good cables & appliances in, to reinstalling his TCP/IP stack. Nothing changed. External NIC worked. So he dropped his clocks back down to normal, and his onboard NIC immediately came back to operational status.
 
Hmm, I need to check my clock speeds again, maybe I did overclock and just forgot about it. My network connection seems to be the biggest thing at the moment. Literally can't even open IPconfig. Opens in the window and crashes again. I hate reformatting so much -.-
 
See, I bet your Error log (hardware) is spammed with error messages. First guess being errors with NIC or error in getting an IP.
 
CmdrFly said:
That's what I thought too.

Over Christmas, that exact scenario happened. Buddy was pushing his clocks as high as he could, and by bumping his bus up 11mhz, his NIC died. It wouldn't even give L1 light.

Tried everything from swapping known-good cables & appliances in, to reinstalling his TCP/IP stack. Nothing changed. External NIC worked. So he dropped his clocks back down to normal, and his onboard NIC immediately came back to operational status.
Click to expand...

The PCI bus (and by extension the AGP bus) is surprisingly timing-sensitive. There are many old sound cards that are especially fickle, some only allowing +/- up to like 3MHz on the PCI bus before going absolutely haywire.

Newer devices are designed to be more tolerant for the most part but +/- 11MHz is a terrifyingly huge change when the base is only 33MHz, lol.

PCI-E can't take over soon enough...

edit: amusingly enough though as I recall the ISA bus is, by contrast, extremely resilient. Two steps forward, one step back... or in this case three
 
Well as it seems, the PC goes BSoD when the network adapter is disabled. I have 2 LANs, and the first doesn't work (dunno why, the light fires up fine) and the second one does, but when disabled, the pc restarts (only when disabled through windows), I disabled the second LAN port, and the system was fine, but I don't know how to get the first one fired up (left it enabled but no internet connection could be established with the cord plugged into it). Enabled the second LAN port again via bios and it's been stable so far.
 
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