Pc problems(please help)

ro1798

i have a home built p4 2.8 and a radeon 256mb x800xl gc.
now the problem is general slowing down within windows. wiped the machine several times with different windows.

i assume it is a hardware problem as i have the same windowas on other machines with no problem.

the case has one basic fan and nothing else could this be the problem.

just trying to play mame and in mortal kombat 2 after about a while problems start, windows freezes and fails to repond..

any suggestions welcome

thanks

ronan

djmarkus

Are you using NTFS or fat32?

ro1798

ntfs....

humaxf1

Just curious as to what difference would the file system make?

smaller clusters>more fragments?

duridian

ro1798 wrote:

i have a home built p4 2.8 and a radeon 256mb x800xl gc.
now the problem is general slowing down within windows. wiped the machine several times with different windows.

i assume it is a hardware problem as i have the same windowas on other machines with no problem.

the case has one basic fan and nothing else could this be the problem.

just trying to play mame and in mortal kombat 2 after about a while problems start, windows freezes and fails to repond..

any suggestions welcome

thanks

ronan

Is the cpu a Prescott core? Just wondering, cos if it is then maybe the one basic fan as you described it may not be giving a good enough airflow through the system. Although you also say that windows freezes and while I'd expect a P4 to limit its speed as a reaction to overheating I did not think that it would cause Windows to lock up immediately.
I wouldn't say that MAME would stress your gfx card very much so I wouldn't become too suspicious of that item early on.
The next possibilty I would consider would be bad ram. I discovered this can cause a slowdown a few months ago with a friend's pc, which was blue screening a lot. The pc used to also perform much slower than I'd have expected. Running Memtest showed that the ram was bad and throwing out lots of erroneous data. As soon as we put some new ram into the machine it immediately started working as normal again. I guess something was happening with the bad data, checksums failing or the like, which was forcing the pc to attempt the same operations over and over, using more cpu cycles and thus the slowdown.
Ram is always a thing worth checking anyway if you find Windows is freezing, and memtest is free so why not?
http://www.memtest86.com/

Voodoo2

duridian wrote:

Is the cpu a Prescott core?

Yup this could be your problem, check the Temp in the BIOS, see what kinda temps its running after a game or something stressfull,

Another thing is to use SiSoft Sandra and do a burn in test on CPU and RAM and graphics, if it falls over during these tests then do one @ so it could be one of two things, Heat or Faulty Hardware. Also make sure you have a nice big powersupply cause those X800XL are power hungry, If you have anything less than 450/500w you need a change,

Just thought those 2.8's had speed step in them something similer to the mobile P4's if heat was high and if power was low

So check your cooling and your power! If you bought a cheap case it was a cheap power supply, I dont know whats your config on that but worth checking it!

Hope this helps

KdjaCL

How much ram have you got?
Also what motherboard have you got?
And what kind is it both ram and mobo.


kdjac

Samba

I would also investigate the PSU, I experienced similar problems when my PSU was in the process of dying.