PC Shutting Down

[paulp1]

Im having a problem with my PC shutting down.

Its fine for an hour or so if the PC has cold started, but after that
its shuts down every 20 minutes or so, even if the PC has been off
for a couple of hours. It only happens when I'm either using DVD shrink, or Hornby Virtual Railway but its fine when surfing or the PC is just left on, apart from that I rarely use any software for more than a few minutes

My first thought was heat, but the fans are fine, and my motheboard monitoring software is about 85c for the proccessor, and 50c for the case regardless of whats being run.

I turned to auto restart off, and captured this error

driver_irql_not_less_or_equal

I've removed the Hornby software and it still shuts down, but no
longer gives me this error.

I've posted this in hardware as I belive its a hardware related fault due the the differece whent he PC is cold or warm

Thanks in advance for any advice :) !

[rmackie]

What kind of processor do you have? Can you give details such as motheboard type, ram amount, etc.? IT would help.

85C is very high as far as temps are concerned. I have an AMD Sempron and
85 is the max temp..but it gets no higher than 50C under FULL load (100% CPU usage)

I would say that your temps are too high and are causing crashes since they
occur when you are running a CPU intensive program.


Try removing a side panel from your computer and if possible blow a fan into that side. Try to run the same programs and see if you get a crash.

The IRQ_not less_or equal message can also be a sign of hardware sharing resources...but it's possible to get that message for heat related problems.
It won't hurt to check under device manager to see if any two hardware devices share the same IRQ.

Let me know what you find.

Raymond Mackie
Technical Support Manager
rmackie@microtailors.com
www.microtailors.com

[Whyzman]

Indeed, 85c is much too warm! Are you reading these temps from your BIOS?

I would suspect that there's some sort of problem with the thermal interface between your processor and heatsink if the temps reported are accurate. The fact that you're shutting down with a slight load above normal certainly would point to overheating....

[paulp1]

My proccessor is an athlon XP2400, the heatsink and fan came as a package with it so they should be the right ones. The board is an ecs, and I have 256k of ram.

I'm using motherboard monitor software for monitoring the temperatures. How can I read it from the bios.

It certainly seems to be the more intensive programs that cause the shut down so I did suspect heat. The PC also "smells" hot if you know what I mean, theres a slight odour of cooking plastic when its been on for a while.

[Whyzman]

We've had it sometimes where folks have not removed the protective film that protects the thermal pad before installation...

To read temps from the BIOS you enter Setup, (usually by tapping the Delete key during initial bootup). When your bootup screen is displaying, it usually tells you how to enter setup. Then, I would check your motherboard manual to find exacly where you will find BIOS temps dislpayed...

However, I would suggest that you have a peek at the thermal interface between the processor and sink. At 85c and "smelling" hot, something's not right....

[paulp1]

I checked the bios and the temps were 85/50

I took the fan/heat sink off the proccessor and the themal tape was pretty much burnt through. I cut a piece of the remaining tape and positioned it over the proccessor as a temporary measure

I also noticed that the heat sink was full of dust :eek: so I took the fan off and cleaned every thing

The temperature of the proccessor has dropped to 81, not much of an improvement but its heading in the right direction :).

I'll get some new thermal tape ASAP and see if that improves things even more.

Thanks for the advice.

[Whyzman]

You might want to consider lapping the heatsink. You can expect 3-5c temp drop...

http://www.overclockersclub.com/guides/heatsinklappingguide.php

Also, rather than thermal tape you might want to also consider arctic

silver:http://www.arcticsilver.com/

It sounds as though the dust buildup on the sink caused the rise in temps and the eventual breakdown of the thermal tape...

You might want to put some type of filter behind your intake fans to catch dust, or remember to routinely clean the heatsink and innards of your computer...