Why is my Computer Suddenly overheating??

[karling07]

Well, I made a post a while back about me possibly having a virus/spyware because my PC constantly got all laggy with the mouse and then froze

Well, I reformatted, and it all went fine. Then, it went into the XP setup (graphical area), and did it there too! By this point, I knew it had to be a hardware problem. I rebooted and the BIOS thing said that my CPU temps were getting up @ 100 degrees F. Its never been this high before so I turned it off and put a couple of fans pointing at the CPU and vid card.

I restarted and the setup finished fine, no freezing. So here is my question: I have had this computer for over a month and these things had never happened. Why is my computer suddenly getting too hot to function NOW? What exactly have I changed and how can I get it back on track?

The heatsink is fine, the fan on the heatsink works, i applied thermal paste correctly, and its not a very hard processor to keep cool (AMD XP 2000+)

Any ideas?

 

[TRDCorolla1]

May be time to flash that BIOS.

 

[karling07]

How exactly will upgrading the BIOS help?

 

[HRHunteRHR]

How exactly will upgrading the BIOS help?

Yea I'm with mackenzie.... What will upgrading the BIOS do for his heating?

As for your question about why it's heating up, how old is your computer, and do you have any custom fans in it? Like ones you out in.

 

[TRDCorolla1]

Actually, forget what I said. I thought your CPU was 100 C!!! If it's 100 F, then you have no heating problems. I'm use to reading in Celsius, not Farenheit. If it was the other way around and your CPU seems cool, then the BIOS is all screwed up.

Is this a home built computer or a retail PC you got from the store? If so, then take it in for warranty purposes. I'm suspecting the hard drive. If you have a Startup Disk with the Scandisk utility on there, it wouldn't hurt to try it there. Try using another hard drive if you got one.

 

[HRHunteRHR]

HAHAH if it was 100C he'd have like two minutes to turn it off before it lit a fire in his walls! lololol

 

[karling07]

hahahaha yeah... I think Id be worrying more about fire extinguishers than BIOS flashing

So, you think it might be hard drive related? I think that makes sense because I built the PC from scratch and I have been a little rough with my processor but I dont think that should make a huge difference on randomly freezing or not starting up... Ill look into another HD

 

[TRDCorolla1]

I don't know if he is having heating problems. It's hard to tell when the PC won't even boot. But BIOS says 100 F, so it should be fine. If the heatsink is warm, but not hot, it should be fine too. I'm thinking just swap hard drives and if that doesn't work, then what else could it be? It did a RAM count at the beginning and he did get all the way to the installtion of Windows part, so don't know if it's RAM doing this. Video card? Hard to say. I was in the tech room, I would have enough parts to test each component in the computer.

 

[karling07]

Well, Windows did install after a few tries. It was random, but it did. It seems like if I leave the comp on for a long enough amt of time, then it will freeze.

But yeah, I am able to boot WIndows now, it just still gives me this problem!

 

[TRDCorolla1]

After a clean reformat and still giving that same problem. That's wierd. I know at work, we would just take out the old hard drive, get another one (already been imaged) and pop it in the PC. If it didn't work, we would replace the whole PC (boss doesn't like us spending too much time troubleshooting a PC when we have a lot of new ones for spare).

Before you go any further, I'd suggest throwing your hard drive in a friends computer and backing up your stuff. I'm thinking it (could) still be a heat problem, at least to start. Do you have a PC speaker in your case, and if so, does it make any noise? Try and download the drivers you are missing and drop them in when you hook it up to a friends computer. This is a lot of work and the problem might not go away despite all the work. It's got to be a hardware issue...