Overheating?

For a while my computers HDD was dying. It would boot 1 out of 20 times and generally ran shitty. While this was going on I kept having a problem with any sort of apps. Firefox was crashing every other page and games would restart my computer. I got a new HDD and it hasn't fixed this problem at all. I initially thought it was the thing overheating (which would explain it restarting) but it doesn't explain every app crashing whenever it tries to run. Think it may be the RAM or something but I'm bad at figuring out this shit.

TLDR: Not hard drive, computer run bad, game restart computer, all program crash, me angry

If it crashes during games, it could be your video card. But you are right, it could be your RAM.

Use memtest x86 to test your RAM. You can just download the ISO and burn it to a CD, just put the CD in and boot, it automatically starts running tests. You don't need to be technical to see results, if anything "bad" about the memory is found, it will show up in red on the bottom half of the screen.

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

I'll try that when I get home. If anything comes up should I replace the RAM or are some things that may come up ignorable? I have a couple of other shitty sticks that I could throw in but I don't want to freak out if what comes up turns out to be nothing.

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Originally Posted by Fuzzy Chicken

I'll try that when I get home. If anything comes up should I replace the RAM or are some things that may come up ignorable? I have a couple of other shitty sticks that I could throw in but I don't want to freak out if what comes up turns out to be nothing.

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If your RAM is ok then no errors should show. If you get errors on the memory, get new memory. But if you do get error messages, if you have more than one stick, you can try them 1 at a time to see which one(s) are bad instead of throwing good RAM away.

My next bet would be power supply.

But to check for over-heating, open the side of the case, point a regular fan at it, then see if it still crashes. If it crashes, not overheating.

OK... It is about 5 minutes into the test and already 64000+ errors have shown up... Could something be wrong with it or is my RAM fucked beyond belief? If so, what could've happened to it?

Edit: Just noticed, not one test has actually passed... Every single thing is failing.

Your ram is totally fucked... hard. If you have more than 1 stick of RAM try them 1 at a time to see if it is all of them, or just one. Bad RAM can cause all of the symptoms you have described.

Usually when RAM is bad it's not just one or two errors, it does pretty much what you have seen. It could have been a power surge, electrostatic discharge (which can degrade the component, meaning it just doesn't go bad right away), the voltage going to the RAM could be too much, but unless your ram dies over and over again, it's just a one time thing. So replacing the bad sticks should suit your just fine.

K I put my other sticks of RAM into my computer and ran the test. Everything was fine. Mozilla crashed once since but now it seems fine. Haven't tried any games yet though. Both sticks were fucked :(. Was that crash just a random coincidence you think or should I format just to be on the safe side?

Thanks a bunch for the help so far.

You shouldn't need to format. My system is fine and once in a while any Windows app will crash. Your RAM handles everything you are doing, every program, every game, the operating system... so if it is corrupt you can get reboots, system crashes, application crashes, erroneous error messages etc... If it crashed while a file was being written you might get some corrupt data (like a corrupt save game or word document), but there should be no permanent damage.

You have already replaced your hard drive, so even if there was a problem with it there likely is not now. If you want to or for in the future, there is a nice little hard drive fitness test from Hitachi that I like to use, located here:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

Download the CD image ISO, and burn it to a disc. You also boot off of the CD, this one has some options, just hit enter until you get to the screen where you select the desired hard drive from. You may get an error message or two about being unable to find certain things...that is fine. You will see a list of your drives (Hard drives, cd drives etc...). Just choose your hard drive and choose quick test. This should only take a few minutes. If it passes go ahead and do an advanced test, but be warned this can take a few hours or so. If it fails, a large red box will appear saying an error has been found on the non-Hitachi drive (unless it is actually a Hitachi drive). That means there is something wrong with the hard drive.

But you shouldn't need to do this since we have found the RAM is bad, and you mentioned that you have replaced the hard drive already.

I've had similar problems recently, ran memtest and my RAM passed some tests, some not. I replaced them with two new sticks, and about 4-5 days later the same errors kept popping up. (Most of the time my screen would just freeze, and also have problems booting up) Normal programs ran fine for me, but any large files or memory intensive programs would crash the computer.

My guess is that my motherboard was the root of the issue, not actually the RAM, which ended up in me having to replace the entire mobo/cpu/ram combo. (With something that isn't over 7 years old, so I don't feel too bad about it)

I hope replacing your RAM fixed all issues, but if your problems continue to persist it is most likely a motherboard issue. (or CPU, but at this point it gets hard to test)

Everything seems to be running fine now. Firefox hasn't crashed which it would crash like it's going out of style. Every game that I have run so far has had no problems and everything seems to be fixed. Thank you Troy for the apps and for helping me. Hopefully I'll be able to help some other people with them and pretend I'm smart.

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Originally Posted by Fuzzy Chicken

Everything seems to be running fine now. Firefox hasn't crashed which it would crash like it's going out of style. Every game that I have run so far has had no problems and everything seems to be fixed. Thank you Troy for the apps and for helping me. Hopefully I'll be able to help some other people with them and pretend I'm smart.

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That will be $300 dollars, sir.

Just kidding...

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Originally Posted by MrTroy

That will be $300 dollars, sir.

Just kidding...

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I know... by 300 you really meant 600. It will be in your account tomorrow.