PC crashes even after format/reinstall

[reisender]

I had a username here a while ago, guess you guys cleaned house.

Windows 7
Acer Aspire M3203
AMD Athlon II X3 425 Processor 2.7 GHz
3GB RAM

PC keeps crashing.  At first I was having issues with firefox and flash I think, whenever I played multiple youtube tabs, I would have problems with firefox crashing.   Don't know if it's related, thought I'd mention it.

Kept crashing more frequently, so I decided to back everything up and format and reinstall windows.  Managed to get all the way through the install and when it was all done, it crashed a few minutes later.  I have a partitioned drive *split the original in half* and formatted it too.  Everything is formatted and clean and I have no external drives intefering. 

I felt like a fool because I opened up the PC, which I don't do unless it's a last resort because I hardly know what I'm doing with hardware, and found it was terribly dusty.  The fan for the motherboard was caked.  Cleaned it up really nice, the fans move smooth with no sound. But, it still crashes without warning.

The screen will turn black and it will read "no input' or something, but the speakers, pc lgihts, mouse, etc all have their lights on.  I try to restart using c/alt/del and doesn't work.  I try to hold down the power button, but it doesn't work.  I have to unplug the machine.  When I plug it back in, it starts up automatically without me pushing the button.  It asks to start in safe mode, etc. 

Any ideas?  Fried video card?  I can't even locate it I"m so helpless with hardware (software I;m not bad with)

[Computer_Commando]

...and found it was terribly dusty.  The fan for the motherboard was caked.  Cleaned it up really nice, the fans move smooth with no sound. But, it still crashes without warning...

If it was that dirty inside, the psu will be the same; is his fan moving?.  You can look inside, but they are not user serviceable, unless you know what you're doing.

[Geek-9pm]

You said it was dusty. There also may be a buildup of grime on contacts and plugs. How old is the PC? Have you ever replaced the CMOS battery?
Cmos battery replacement a simple how to and when to change them
In some cases the CMOS failure prevents the PC from starting properly.

[reisender]

I took a look at the psu, and it does lok a bit dusty, but not that much.  I'll try to get an air-spray can to clean it out.  The fan for it works fine and is running softly/smoothly, no noise and it doesn't feel hot at all.   As for the CMOS which I know zero about, I'll go watch the video.

The PC is 1.5 years old bought, but it was a display PC which I got at a cheaper price so was likely running a lot beforehand.
 

[jason2074]

The screen will turn black and it will read "no input' or something, but the speakers, pc lgihts, mouse, etc all have their lights on

About a couple of weeks ago, I have just encountered this type of problem from someone who gave up on replacing certain components so he asked me to look on to it. Before the problem occured, he told me it was running fine and it was after he upgraded his Videocard and PSU for better performance it became recurring. Obviously it was in those components they tried swapping old and new components and I suggested to clean out the CPU tower first with no luck. What they never tried as I look for other things to troubleshoot was to simply clean out the RAM modules gold contacts, slots making sure they are communicating well with the CPU/mobo. If all parts tested are in good running condition, the simple things are overlooked. Since you mentioned dust buildup when you first took out casing, look up to important but simple solutions such as these. It's been almost a month now and since then it never gave him those annoying problems.

[quaxo]

Speaking of memory, you might run a memory test for a number of hours.

I had someone bring me a computer last week with the exact same issue. She said she'd tried everything. Installation would freeze or when successful would freeze shortly after booting, tried a repair install, tried formatting then installing, tried a different hard drive.

The one thing she didn't try was changing memory or removing one of the chips. I ran memtest86 overnight and it came up with an error. Ran it again, same error. Replaced memory, no problems anymore.

You can download memtest86 here:
http://www.memtest86.com/

Click "Downloads". You'll want the first one, ISO image for creating bootable CD (Windows - zip). Use CD burning software to burn this ISO onto a CD. If you computer isn't working well enough to do this, you can download and make the CD from any computer with a CD burner.

Boot your computer from this CD, choose option 1 (run version 4) from the menu and let it run (overnight if you can). It will run a number of scans, and do the batch repeatedly. It may not find and error on the first pass, it may not find one for a few passes.

Anyway, it's a free diagnostic and worth a try. Just need to spend a little of your time (and money for the CD-R).

[reisender]

I&ve come to realise that my PC has an integrated videocard, which is why I couldn&t find it.  Went to the store to get a cmos battery and they were $7 and the spray can was $10....for air.  Gotta find a cheaper place.

Anyway, yesterday it didn't crash at all after crashing 10 or more times the previous couple of days.  So the cleaning may have done the trick, though it was cleaned when it crashed a few times, but getting better.   

I've downloaded the memtest and will do it tonight and report back.
Thank you very much guys!
I can always count on computerhope and swi forums!

[quaxo]

I&ve come to realise that my PC has an integrated videocard, which is why I couldn&t find it.  Went to the store to get a cmos battery and they were $7 and the spray can was $10....for air.  Gotta find a cheaper place.

Anyway, yesterday it didn't crash at all after crashing 10 or more times the previous couple of days.  So the cleaning may have done the trick, though it was cleaned when it crashed a few times, but getting better.   

I've downloaded the memtest and will do it tonight and report back.
Thank you very much guys!
I can always count on computerhope and swi forums!

If you did a cleaning and have no issues, that's probably what it was. Go ahead with the memory test though, just to be sure. Won't harm anything. 

[reisender]

i can't figure out that link for the memtest.  I downloaded it as a zip file, unzipped it into another zip file (or iso file?) and then unzipped the zipped and so on.  Couldn't figure it out exactly, but managed to burn the iso/zip.   
Put it into the machine twice, it said 'ready' and since none of the keys on the keyboard responded, I figured it was doing its job. Left it overnight, same thing reading in the morning.  So, no memcheck.

[Allan]

Did you burn the image correctly? Here are complete instructions: download memtest (http://memtest.org/). Burn it to a cd using a dedicated .iso burning utility (http://www.petri.co.il/how_to_write_iso_files_to_cd.htm), make sure the cd drive is at the top of the boot order in bios, then boot to the newly created cd and run the utility.

[patio]

You don't want the zip...you want the .ISO...follow the info on MemTest on creating a bootable CD...

ImgBurn is an excellent Free app for this task...

[patio]

1 minute...56 seconds....

I'm losin my touch...

Allan 17
Patio 13

[Allan]

[reisender]

The memtest really threw me because when I unzip the original download, it unzips to a new zip file *at least the icon of the file has a winrar icon, and then more zipped files within that one.  Anyway, it seems I did burn the correct file, but it didn't work.  Will burn a new one and try again tonight. 

Thanks again

[patio]

NP...