Computer Over Heats!! Help

Try using a program like Everest, it will run a diagnostic on you PC and tell you what MB and hardware you have.

alright thanks ill try that when i get home, but quick ? when i took off my old heat sink i cleaned off the old thermal grease that was on there, and put a drop of the arctic silver 5 grease in the middle, and i was going to put the new heatsink on but it doesnt fit, so i then put the old heatsink back on, and now the pc cant even stay on for 10minutes before overheating. SHould i take the heatsink off and put more back on? Let me know, thanx guys!
 
If you ever take the heatsink off, you must clean and then reapply thermal paste, so you're going to have to clean the heatsink and CPU off again before you put the AS5 back on. Are you 100% sure the HSF is secure and properly mounted?
 
If you ever take the heatsink off, you must clean and then reapply thermal paste, so you're going to have to clean the heatsink and CPU off again before you put the AS5 back on. Are you 100% sure the HSF is secure and properly mounted?

I just did all that, and i'm sure its mounted. but the bad news is is when i put the heat sink back on and mounted it etc, i booted my computer back up and it said WINDOWS CANNOT START NORMALLY blah blah blah blah

when i try to start windows normally it says system/drivers/isa.pnp/sys is corrupt or missing!!!!!!!!!!! now i know thats bad!

So i got a hold of dell tech yesterday and told them the whole story and they said theyare going to ship me out a new motherboard/cpu/heatsink tommorw thatss refurbished ! And i asked them if i can get any of my info back there like no because we will have to re install the OS after you get your new mother boardback ! so now i'm really screwed i cant access anything on my harddrive and i had soo much important files music etc
 
The Dimension 3000 uses a BTX motherboard (although the power supply is standard ATX). There is a system fan, but because it is a BTX chassis the fan is set up to pull air through the heatsink assembly and out of the back of the system.
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim3000/en/SM/parts.htm#wp1055121 is the section of the service manual dealing with removing the heatsink and CPU. http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim3000/en/SM/parts.htm#wp1055464 is the next section, which deals with the system fan. The power connector for the system fan is between the memory slots and the CPU socket, towards the left (back) part of the board.

When removing the it, I highly recommend gently but firmly twisting the heatsink assembly back and forth to break it lose from the CPU. If you don't do this you run the risk of pulling the CPU out of the socket while it is still "locked", which has the chance to pull one or more pins out of the CPU (which is not a fixable problem).

As others have stated, you will need to clean the old thermal grease off the heatsink and CPU, and then apply new if you remove the heatsink from the CPU. This is so you have no gaps between the CPU and the heatsink for heat to get trapped in.

If you have any questions about the Dell system I will be happy to answer them.

[edit]

Apparently, we were both typing replies at the same time. ;)

If the only problem is corrupt Windows files (probably due to the system shutting down unexpectedly) then you should be able to do a repair using the Windows CD. If you want to make sure your data is safe first, then I would recommend either pulling your hard drive and mounting it in a working computer as a secondary drive or getting a second hard drive and installing Windows on it with your original drive as a second hard drive. With your hard drive as a secondary in a working computer, you should be able to access the files and back up your information.

You might be able to fix the problem by booting from the XP CD and using the recovery console to run "chkdsk /f /r /p" to have it check windows files for problems and repair them). If the only problem is a few corrupted files your data should be safe, but unfortunately there is no way to garuntee it, so you may want to back up your data first anyway.

Larry
Dell Customer Advocate
 
The Dimension 3000 uses a BTX motherboard (although the power supply is standard ATX). There is a system fan, but because it is a BTX chassis the fan is set up to pull air through the heatsink assembly and out of the back of the system.
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim3000/en/SM/parts.htm#wp1055121 is the section of the service manual dealing with removing the heatsink and CPU. http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim3000/en/SM/parts.htm#wp1055464 is the next section, which deals with the system fan. The power connector for the system fan is between the memory slots and the CPU socket, towards the left (back) part of the board.

When removing the it, I highly recommend gently but firmly twisting the heatsink assembly back and forth to break it lose from the CPU. If you don't do this you run the risk of pulling the CPU out of the socket while it is still "locked", which has the chance to pull one or more pins out of the CPU (which is not a fixable problem).

As others have stated, you will need to clean the old thermal grease off the heatsink and CPU, and then apply new if you remove the heatsink from the CPU. This is so you have no gaps between the CPU and the heatsink for heat to get trapped in.

If you have any questions about the Dell system I will be happy to answer them.

[edit]

Apparently, we were both typing replies at the same time. ;)

If the only problem is corrupt Windows files (probably due to the system shutting down unexpectedly) then you should be able to do a repair using the Windows CD. If you want to make sure your data is safe first, then I would recommend either pulling your hard drive and mounting it in a working computer as a secondary drive or getting a second hard drive and installing Windows on it with your original drive as a second hard drive. With your hard drive as a secondary in a working computer, you should be able to access the files and back up your information.

You might be able to fix the problem by booting from the XP CD and using the recovery console to run "chkdsk /f /r /p" to have it check windows files for problems and repair them). If the only problem is a few corrupted files your data should be safe, but unfortunately there is no way to garuntee it, so you may want to back up your data first anyway.

Larry
Dell Customer Advocate


Since my mobo is being replaced in a couple of days, i'm just worried about the info on my hdd,and i have no way of puttin the HDD in another persons computer etc etc, so how exactly do i repair the windows file? I have a windows xp sp2 reinstallation disk , if thats the CD ROM ur talking about, SOrry i'm kind of a noob
 
Since my mobo is being replaced in a couple of days, i'm just worried about the info on my hdd,and i have no way of puttin the HDD in another persons computer etc etc, so how exactly do i repair the windows file? I have a windows xp sp2 reinstallation disk , if thats the CD ROM ur talking about, SOrry i'm kind of a noob

If that is the Windows XP SP2 disk you got with the computer then yes, that is the disk I am talking about.

Simply boot from that disk (press the F12 key at the Dell splash screen, just after powering on the computer, put in the disk and select the "Optical Drive (CD/DVD)" option (I'm not sure exactly how it is listed). If your computer does not have the F12 boot option then press F2 instead to enter the BIOS (aka System Setup) to change the boot order (what devices the computer looks at for the operating system it will boot from ... the first one found to have a bootable OS "wins", which is why leaving a floppy in the drive back in the "old days" would cause problems).

Once the computer has booted from the Windows CD it will go to a blue screen with white/grey text and it will ask you if you want to do a Repair of Windows or anew installation; select the Repair option. The next question it will ask is if you want to do a Repair Installation or open the Recovery Console; select the Recovery Console option. It should ask you for the Administrator account password to enter the Recovery Console. If you did not give it a password then try pressing Enter (a blank password). If you did give it a password, you will have to enter that password to get to the Recovery Console.

Once in the Recovery Console type in "chkdsk /f /r /p" (without the quotes) and press Enter. It will then check the Windows files on your hard drive and try to repair any that are broken. Even if this fails to fix Windows, your data will still be on the drive and accessible if you put the drive in another computer as I described before.

Once it finishes its testing just exit the Recovery Console (type Exit and press Enter) and then reboot without the CD in the drive.

If anyone spots mistakes in my instructions feel free to correct me. ;) It has been at least two years since I've walked anyone through these particular instructions.

If you have questions on these steps feel free to ask.

Larry
Dell Customer Advocate
 
On some of the cases there is a fan in the front pulling in air that has a shroud over it leading to the cpu's heatsink. If the shroud is removed or if the fan is running at below minimum rpm's or not at all you'll get a high temp thermal event. Intel cpu's are smart in the respect they are by design not going to let you burn them up. The internal temp sensor is constantly on guard to prevent that from happening. The way it normally goes is first it will back off a preset amount somewhere in the hood of 50%. Then monitor for a set time. If it's still too hot it issues a panic shut down command and that's it.
It doesn't care what you're doing or how important you think what you're doing is. It drops in to a power off state. That will lead to the shut down logs being corrupted and problems booting back up.

You took the heatsink off and tried to replace it with an aftermarket one. Dell is proprietary. First the board is not drilled out for any other than their own. Second they cling to that hood system. It's old school and has some inherant drawbacks that can be bad on a system or fatal.
Let me explain.
The intake fan draws air in from the outside and channels it through the shroud accross the heatsink fins. Past that the back has large vents with no fans. The PSU draws out some of the heat but it's fighting a losing battle. The air basicly stagnates in the case. A quick and dirty way to fix that is to mask off the vents in the back with duct tape and cut out the outline of a fan. Then mount the fan with screws and nuts and plug it in to the PSU or a fan controller spot on the motherboard.
As for the Artic Silver 5, if you use too much it acts like a blanket. Too little and the heat doesn't transfer to the heatsink well enough. Think, a grain of rice. That's about the right amount. Spread it around some and apply the heatsink.
Long winded answer, huh?
 
You took the heatsink off and tried to replace it with an aftermarket one. Dell is proprietary. First the board is not drilled out for any other than their own. Second they cling to that hood system. It's old school and has some inherant drawbacks that can be bad on a system or fatal.
Let me explain.
The intake fan draws air in from the outside and channels it through the shroud accross the heatsink fins. Past that the back has large vents with no fans. The PSU draws out some of the heat but it's fighting a losing battle. The air basicly stagnates in the case. A quick and dirty way to fix that is to mask off the vents in the back with duct tape and cut out the outline of a fan. Then mount the fan with screws and nuts and plug it in to the PSU or a fan controller spot on the motherboard.

Actually, on the Dell desktops like the Dimension 3000 the BTX fan setup is being used. This is a fan on the CPU that pulls air from inside the chassis over the CPU and blows it out the back. This means that air comes in from the front, the either up through the PSU and out, or over the CPU and out, creating a front to back airflow through the entire system.

Normally, this set up will work fine, however, if the CPU heatsink and fan assembly gets clogged up with dust (which, unfortunately, is something to check for) it can cause problems. Fans running slow, as you mention, are also a potential problem.

Masking the vents in the back, however, would cause problems with airflow and is not something I would recommend doing on any chassis design. The air vents included on a chassis were added by the designers for a reason. Usually to ensure air flow in a particular direction and in a particular amount.

Larry
Dell Customer Advocate
 
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