Gareth Magennis wrote:


wrote in message
...
On Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:23:30 -0800, Daniel Prince
wrote:

The motherboard and power supply of my computer are about 6.5 years
old. I have been having problems with it lately. It has been
locking up and rebooting itself frequently. The most common problem
is lockups with a blank screen. The other problems in decreasing
order of frequency a lockups with a frozen screen, lockups with
slanted horizontal lines on the screen and spontaneous reboots.

These problems occurred more often at higher room temperatures and
when the CPU is used at 100 percent for more than 20 minutes. I
cleaned the dust out of my computer case. My computer stopped
locking up for about 36 hours and then it started locking up again.
I changed the FSB speed from 166 to 133. I still got lockups so I
changed it to 100.

With the FSB at 100 the lockups stopped. A few weeks ago, the
weather got cooler so I increased the FSB back up to 166. This
worked until today. Now my computer is locking up frequently again
and the room temperature is less than 70 degrees F. I decreased the
FSB to 133 and my computer has been running for 3 hours and 43
minutes.

What is more likely to be the problem, the motherboard or the power
supply? Is there any kind of test I could run to figure out what
the problem is? Thank you in advance for all replies.
It could very well be both. 6.5 years places it in the era where bad
capacitors were common. I'd suggest first checking teh CPU fan spins
freely. Next, look at the capacitors on the motherboard and look for
any that have bulging tops. If they look good, try replacing the
power supply. If all else fails, the holidays are coming; treat
yourself to a new computer.

www.badcaps.net/forum

PlainBill


I'll bet you could pick up a similar working computer for peanuts, if
not
for free. You could then swap parts around and establish where the
problem is, and have loads of spares left over.



Gareth.

Depending where he is I could give him one to play with.

--
Best Regards:
Baron.