Good day to all of you! I am not really into Hardware, but I think I have enough basic knowledge to try and diagnose my PC - with the help of the PC Troubleshooter, and hopefully, you.

My System:

AMD Athlon 700 MHz
P266 Motherboard
128Mb 3.3V DIMM SDRAM
Onboard everything

My Story:

It started out with a few crashes after long periods of use. This I dismissed for memory leaks and the general instability that Windows usually exhibits.

As time passed, the PC started freezing more often, and sometimes at boot. Still, I was complacent, and let it go by. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif

Finally, after a period where the computer was particularly stubborn (constant crashing around 5 minutes into boot), the computer displayed a CMOS Failure message after the memory test. I turned off the power, and after a while, turned it back on. It booted fine, until it got past the Windows Splash screen.

Then it started randomly freezing anywhere in the boot process to the first 5 minutes after boot. I can tolerate a computer that crashes occasionally, but this rendered the PC unusable for practical purposes... So I decided to do some tests.

I turned off all the onboard everything on the system BIOS... I also made a System Check - my CPU temperature read 80 degrees Celsius, and the CPU Fan was at 0 RPM.

I tried booting the hard disk on another computer - worked fine, ruling out the possibility of a virus(?)/software problem. I also tried booting a foreign disk on my computer, and it still exhibited the same freezing problems - except that when it tried to load HIMEM.SYS, it displayed a "Unstable XMS Memory located at address XXXXXX" message. XXXXXX changed with each bootup.

When booting to DOS instead of Windows, the computer manages to stay functional for a longer period of time - around 15 minutes to 1 hour.

I opened the computer and verified that the CPU Fan is indeed not running. I do not feel any air flowing when I place my hand over it. The Processor underneath however, doesn't look burnt. The temperature rises pretty quickly from 30 Celsius to around 80 Celsius a few minutes after a "cold boot"

My Diagnosis:

Processor Overheating - CPU Temp and System Fan certainly seem indicative of that. It could either be the fan power supply or the fan itself that is damaged. Possibly a dead Processor(?)

..or..

Bad Memory - Caused by overheating? The HIMEM.SYS error makes me throw this out as a guess.

..or..

Bad Board - Caused by The Devil?

Questions:

Is it possible for a processor to be "partially damaged", or is it an "all-or-nothing" thing where the processor either functions or it doesn't, instead of being unstable?

Is there something which I may have overlooked, or do not know that may have caused me to make a misdiagnosis?

I will be able to borrow spare RAM and a new Fan later today, and I will try replacing both (one after the other, then both) components of my system. Hopefully this will solve the problem.

Any other suggestions?

Thank you for your time.

If the CPU fan is Not working.
DO NOT BOOT the system till it is replaced.
The 80C on that chip may have done damage. Or it may have simply shorted the Life of the chip.

Yes a HOT chip can do partial damage .
Or it can make the system unstable.

If you have been able to run this system with out the CPU fan running.
Then you have a VERY GOOD heatsink.

I hope you haven’t done more damage by removing the Heatsink..
Replace the fan and connect it to the system power supply Not the mother board.