Please Help: Fustrating computer problem

Hello all, I am in desperate need of help with my computer, and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas, or tips that would help. Here's the situation.

I bought this computer about 2 months ago, HP m9300t. It worked beautifully the first month or so. I added a few upgrades, an extra hdd, a new psu, and a 8800gt gpu. The addition of the new psu and gpu were done about 2 days before I had to move home and then leave for vacation so pretty much I added the psu and gpu, used it for a day and a half before it was packed up and moved. When I got back from my vacation, I set up my computer and everything seemed normal enough. Then I set up my new webcam, which caused my computer to freeze when using it with AIM. I thought nothing of it, and figured it was just some random error. Following that the computer begin to freeze randomly. At first I thought it had something to do with the web cam so I un-installed it, and it still froze. Then i noticed a trend with me surfing the net and going to flash and java heavy sites, so I uninstalled those, and it still froze. Tired of it all, I factory restored my computer thinking that it would be fine. It worked well as I begin to install things back on my computer, but then oddly enough half a day after the factory restore it froze again. Thinking it had something to do with AIM, I factory restored one more time, and it continues to freeze randomly to this day, a fustrating 2.5 weeks later.

I have also tried taking out the new gpu and replacing it with the old one that I knew had no conflict and was in working order, but it continued to freeze. I've also unplugged my extra harddrive to make sure that it was not causing the problem. The freezing seems to occur randomly when the computer is being used and not when it is sitting idle. Sometimes I can use the computer for nearly a day without it freezing, and sometimes it'll freeze, i'll do a hard shutdown, turn it back on and have it freeze again 5 minutes later. Another hard shutdown and it might work for the rest of the day.

I began to think that it was the primary hdd dying after 2 months, but I've run a few third party test to check the (S.M.A.R.T.) of the hdd for errors and everything has come back working in at 100%, I've also tried to listen to any strange sounds, but I don't hear anything, so I'm not sure if its the hdd.

Summary:
Computer freezes randomy
Tried Factory restore twice
Not the fault of the new GPU
Not the fault of the secondary HDD

Basically I really can't expect anyone to say "oh this is your problem" but I'd really appreciate it if someone has any tests or ideas or things I could run to try to solve this annoying problem. Thanks SO Much!

What brand of PSU did you get?

That would be the first place I would look from what you have posted here.

When you installed the 8800gt did you plug in the 6-pin power connector to it?

What antivirus and firewall do you have installed?

First suspect is the power supply.

List the model and specs please.

The PSU was a Rosewill RP600V2-S-SL 600W ATX12V v2.01 SLI Ready Power Supply.
Spec
Type ATX12V v2.01
Maximum Power 600W
Fans 1 x Silent 120mm Ball-bearing Blue LED Fan
PFC No
Main Connector 20+4Pin
+12V Rails 2
PCI-E Connectors 1x 6-pin
1x 6+2-pin
SLI Ready
Modular No
Power Good Signal 100-500ms
Hold-up Time > 16ms
Efficiency > 72%
Over Voltage Protection +3.3V, +5V, +12V1, +12V2
Input Voltage 115/ 230 V
Input Frequency Range 50/60 Hz
Input Current 12A/ 6A
Output +3.3@30A,+5V@55A,+12V1@19A,+12V2@19A,-12V@1A,+5V SB@2.5A
MTBF 100k hours at 25°C, max. load, nominal input
Approvals CSA,UL,TUV, FCC

And i did install the power to the 8800gt.

I also ran a CHKDSK, and It froze in stage 5 twice, the first time for about 3 hours and the second time for over 9 hours in stage 5 at before I gave up on it and just cancelled it.

Thanks for the replies

Try running Memtest86+, download one of the bootable ISO's and make either a floppy or a CD and boot to that disc, it will stress your ram and see if there are errors. Look under the error column when its running, let it run for a least and hour or until your see an error.

What was the video card before the upgrade?

Ok I will find the program and run it. The video card before the upgrade was a geforce 9300 with 512mb.

And my anti-virus is Norton. and I believe it has a firewall as well.

Thanks for the reply.

The Rosewill RP600V2-S-SL 600W is getting mixed reviews.
Several had to return there first ones to get a good one.

Are you doing a defrag everytime you do a hard restart? You should.


If you have a lot of empty space but you are fragmented in will take a long, long time

My computer is set to defrag automatically every week and it had just defrag a couple of days ago.

What are some of the symptoms of a bad PSU?

I ran the Memory test and it said pass with 0 errors. So I guess we can rule out the memory.

Is there any chance of damage to my hard drive from all the times I had to do a hard-restart, and in that case, wouldn't the S.M.A.R.T. report something?

Random shutdowns/restarts.
Voltages out of spec as well as wavering voltages under load.

Not likely.

Check your voltages, either in the MB's BIOS, or use a utility program that looks at the voltages, one should come with your MB. Another option is to use a multi-meter (volt meter) and check the voltage at a molex connector.

Well my computer doesn't quite shutdown or restart. Well I guess freezing is as good as shutting down, but it freezes and I can actually still press the button on the cd rom drive and it'll open and close. Everything else though is frozen.

Can anyone suggest a program to check my PSU's voltage. I tried searching but I couldn't find anything. Also, as far as physically checking it with a voltmeter, I don't have the tools or skills to do that.

I think that, as much as I would dread it, I may just go ahead and switch the old psu back in and see if the computer freezes again.

SpeedFan or MotherBoardMonitor
Also, as eric93se mentioned you can go into your system's BIOS and find your voltages under "System Health" (or similar). See your manual on how to enter BIOS.
This is a good plan, it's fortunate to have an extra PSU at hand.
Before buying another PSU, post your choices here and let the members comment.

This could be a software conflict!
What new software have you recently installed? Also updated firewalls and virus programs can cause the symptom's you describe.
My machine recently went unstable and I found this was due to comodo firewall+ which updates its virus and malware database. I have been using this program with AVG for almost a year without problems until a couple of weeks ago. Luckily I use Acronis image maker and had to go back to a known good backup. This was after a day of frustration of random and frequent reboots. After 10 minutes I had a stable machine again, although I had to update Firefox, Avg etc. All is well now and I have gone back to Kerio firewall.

Can it handle your new 8800GT, if not the problem may still be there.

As jflan says it is good that you have one to test with, but that also means you may have to take the new card out also to get the real results.
Then add it and see what happens from there.

Well, the thing is, it was working fine for the first month, then all of a sudden the freezing started. Following that, I factory restored twice, and with minimal installations after the second one, and the freezing continued. I talked to HP Tech Support yesterday, and the guy told me to disable all start-up services and programs, except for the essentials, and sure enough, it froze again.


"Can it handle your new 8800GT, if not the problem may still be there."

I removed the 8800 gt for the past week and a half and replaced it with the stock 9300 thinking i had a bad gpu. But it still continues to freeze.

The last 3-4 times it froze, I noticed a trend. I don't know how relevant it is but I noticed that after prolonged use, it would completely freeze, I would do the hard-restart. After the restart, I would be able to use it for <5-10 minutes and it would freeze one more time. After another hard-restart, it would be good to go. Since the last time it froze last night, I used it for 2 hours, went to sleep leaving it on, woke up, and used it for another 2 hours with no problems. So I'm not sure if that rings a bell for anyone.

I've also been working on finding the voltage for the psu and seeing its performance, but I was not able to find it in speedfan, working on finding it in the mb soon. I'm going to be out of town all weekend, so I won't be able to work on it much, but THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU so much to everyone who has helped so far, This problem is so frustrating.

How is it going xTheGiftx?
Further to my previous post after a couple of days good computing it started freezing and rebooting at random.
At that I opened it up and although not particularly choked with dust I gave the insides a thorough clean. I also removed all cards leads drives etc and cleaned them. All contacts and leads were cleaned with switch cleaner and all reassembled.
It appears that mine was an over heating problem after all.

I have been able to go back to Comodo firewall and it is running sweet.
So for you it could be a power supply problem or overheating or a screwed registry. I would go for one of the first two myself at this stage and use a process of elimination. You could purchase a cheap a digital multimeter or borrow one and measure the power supply voltages with the computer on and see what happens under load.
Best of luck on your endeavours.

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." ( Sherlock Holmes )

Prolonged use ( Gaming ) ? 50 % , 70 % . 90 % cpu usage ?

Did you try and do a defrag and then a normal ( manual ) reboot before doing anything else?

For how long?

weedougie


Good Point , I was assuming this was allready done.

Once I open a case I clean it before working on it.

xTheGiftx
Did you blow out the cpu fan and heatsink,not sure how much dust there is there, but I try and clean my out every 6 months, unless I open one to upgrade it sooner.

Okay I see that you said that a move with the system was made so was the system handled with
extreme care while it was being moved? The slightest bump while moving a system can cause you
problems as I've had first hand experience with people that bring their systems to me for repair after
they have moved across town/State/Country or moved the system down/up stairs or even just across
the room and bumped or even dropped their systems. The first place I look at is the RAM to make sure
that it is still seated correctly and if so I then check the CPU HS/Fan to make sure it hasn't came loose.
Then again I've seen the RAM, CPU HS/Fan check out alright but replacing the PS cured it maybe its the
capacitors coming loose or something else but most of the time it is the RAM being a little bit loose.
I would more likely be suspecting that Rosewill PS as that brand is known not to be of the highest quality.
Rosewill and another brand that I will never use again is the Coolmax brand of PS's both brands are IMO
for a lack of a better word CRAP.

Hey guys, I've been out of town and I just got back yesterday, thanks for all the reply. I opened the computer up and it wasn't super dusty or really dusty at all, but I will look into clearing that out. Haven't had a chance to check the PSU, but something came up. I was using it fine last night, and it froze on me, so I defraged right after i did the hard restart, and it worked fine till this morning. Then I was using google maps, and while zooming into the satellite picture, it froze. I opened the computer up and made sure the memory wasn't loose or out of place, and then turned the computer back on. Now it won't even load up. It just freezes at the HP system start up screen.

Its very strange..pretty much, I can't do anything at this screen..it seems to be frozen here. I can't press the options (setup, boot menu, system recovery, disagnostic). Looks like my computers dead or something. Can anyone help me with this recent event, this is so ridiculous.

Ok, i just switched back to the old PSU, and it started up fine. So you guys are brilliant and were definitely right about the PSU being bad. Now i'm gonna try to use this PSU and see if it freezes at all over the next 2-3 days. If it doesn't freeze, then for sure all my problems were due to a bad Rosewill PSU. But if it freezes again, then I'll have to see what else it could be.

It may still freeze up,you may still need a new PSU , one with a little more gusto than the older one that you are using now.
Just letting you know that it may still freeze up and it still may be the PSU.

bean55

You were right. I'm pretty dusappointed, because it froze again. I don't get why it is freezing if its the PSU. The old psu worked fine and its in the exact same factory condition it was in that worked for the first month until I changed it.

I'm going to try to clear the dust out of the computer.

Things eliminated as not the problem: The new Video Card, the New PSU, software problems, the memory (ran memory test).

It still may be a heat problem. Clean all the dust out of the processor heat sink, make sure there is good airflow around the processor and graphics card. Leave the side open and use a desk fan to blow extra air into the case. If it freezes again then its probably not heat related but something else.
If so it looks like the best course of action is to put it back the way it was when you first bought it and run it for a few days upgrading it a little at a time until it becomes unstable then you will know what is causing it.
I know this way is long winded but a logical approach to eliminate components one at a time may be the only way other than taking it to a computer shop and paying through the nose for them to sort it out for you.