Hardware imminent failure?

[Jesusfrk611]

Playing a generally non intensive PC game my computer decides to BSOD. I forgot to read what it said as I have gotten random BSODs for the past 2 years with this computer and it always recovers. Restart it and it loads to the desktop and about 30 seconds later it freezes. Restart again. Freezes before it gets to the desktop. Try to go into startup recovery and the loading screen stops and starts. I let it load while I'm on my other computer and it takes about 15 minutes to load. I do a system restore and all of a sudden all is fine. Play a game last night no issues and put the computer to sleep like I always do. Wake it up today and it freezes again. Go through the same thing except now after system restore it still isn't loading. Just hangs at the loading screen. Then it starts loading again and eventually makes it to the desktop. Put it to sleep again and wake it up and it freezes again. Another odd behavior, one of my optical drives didn't want to open after the computer froze. I had to turn it off and back on for it to open.

I think there's a hardware problem in here somewhere because of all the BSODs I've gotten over the past couple years. It's my habit to reinstall Windows every 6 months and I just did that with this computer a couple weeks ago. I'd love to upgrade since most of the parts will be 4 years old in October, but it's really not an option right now as I'm broke.

 

[Celegorm]

Sounds like you could be onto something. First I'd run memtest and if WD makes it, a bootable disk diagnostic utility. If both of those pass then I'd try reseating the RAM and video card (if applicable). If even that doesn't help, Id try a new PSU if you have a spare laying around.

 

[Jesusfrk611]

If I can get it to do the tests I'll try. I don't have a spare PSU unfortunately. I'm typing this on my desktop right now and the only problem I see is Google Chrome gives me some type of error every time I open it but still works. I could most likely play games fine like this again until it either BSODs or I turn it off/put it to sleep. I left the computer running all day today and it works fine so far though.

Could the PSU be underpowered? I haven't updated my signature recently, but I had a GTX 260 as the main card and a 7600GT to display the 2 side monitors. I put in my 9800GT in place of the 7600GT hoping it might fix the Blu-Ray playback issue (they only played correctly if I disabled the 7600). 550W PSU powering both a GTX260 and 9800GT. I was thinking it might not work, but it turned on fine and until now everything has worked fine. The main display is the only screen I game on which is powered by the GTX260, so the 9800 wouldn't need a ton of power really I wouldn't think.

If the PSU is underpowered though, it doesn't explain the huge amount of lag at startup that it wasn't doing before the BSOD. Since I still got BSODs in game before I added the 9800... I always get the weird problems... Hopefully I'll get enough money back from my financial aid return and I can throw a bit of that into my computer replacement. Until then I still want to play my games.

UPDATE:
Ran CPU stress test, memory test, and hard drive test. All came back fine. Tried to load the OS again and it sat there for a good 3-5 minutes at the loading screen and then it has been running fine since it loaded the desktop. I'm sure the OS got screwed up somehow in all this which probably caused the start up issues, but I still think there's a hardware issue underneath it all. When I get time tomorrow I'll reseat all cards, memory and connections. For now it's working so I'm going to play some games until I get tired or it BSODs again.

 

[Celegorm]

how long did you run the Memory test? Typically I let Memtest run 8 hours just to give it a good stressing.

If the PSU is at fault, I honestly don't know if that's because it'd be underpowered or simply dying. I'd want to take a volt meter to it to be sure.

 

[krone6]

8 hours is good for memtest, but make sure it's at least 10 passes. This way you know for sure it's good or not.

 

[Jesusfrk611]

I don't know what it was. I let it run for an hour while I was doing something else. It said it passed, so I stopped it. It was one of the memory tests on the UBCD. Guess I'll get memtest and run it for awhile.

I have a volt meter, I just don't know what I'm looking for or how to test a PSU.