Flaky Computer

[awraynor]

I have a homebuilt Q9550 with 8GB of RAM that seems to get more flaky all the time.

It has been running for over 6 months and had done well, except for paperport12, but

that is another story. Lately, Outlook(IMAP) has been giving me problems with hanging,

and over time more and more programs behave the same. Explorer itself will sometimes freeze

and reboot, but the OS itself does okay.

 

I used Everest to check temps. The MB seems to be about 40C and all four cores stay about

50-53C. I thought it may be heat or a bad PSU, it is an Antec 500W unit that came with the

Sonata III case? The computer in brief is an Intel Q9550, nVidia 9800GTX+, 8GB of G-Skill

DDR2 PC26400 RAM, and 2 WD 1GB black drives in dual boot with OSX and Win7 Ultimate.

 

I have an SSD from my ill-fated HTPC build that I was going to reinstall Win7 on if I can't figure

it out. Any ideas about where to look?

[Guest no-control]

defrag the HDD lately?

[awraynor]

I have been running Perfect Disk Pro and it reports excellent defragmentation, but

will try a manual scan. Probably me treating my production machine like a test box

with so many installs and uninstalls of software?

[awraynor]

Still a bit odd. I changed the PSU to the 600W CoolerMaster, reinstalled Win7 Ultimate on a 60GB OCZ Vertex2 SSD.

Nothing but updated windows installed along with office. Setup Outlook, send/receive, hit the menu bar and a freeze.

Could the imap config be causing issues, any sharepoint software? My old install was doing the same thing, but more

programs than just Outlook.

[jmwills]

There could be no SharePoint issues unless you have a site you are connecting to. Is everything else okay with the exception of Office? Double check you configuration on the Outlook side, especially the ports.

[awraynor]

No, actually a number of programs will hang, sometimes Windows Explorer itself.

After I built the machine it was initially PaperPort, then Outlook started and

now even more programs. Now that the new clean install does it too, was thinking

hardware or heat? The monitored temps seem to be okay? Kind of scratching my head

on this one? It's a quad core Q9550 and if Sandy Bridge is reasonable enough, or it

drops the prices enough on Corei7, may change over to get the stability I need?

[Guest no-control]

Any memory leak issues?

 

Any BSOD?

 

I would go troubleshooting 101 on this thing with 1 RAM stick, no GPU, and see what happens.

 

Sounds like the mobo may be having an issue check for:

 

Damage to the board

 

Grounding

 

Cuts, fractures, etc... in the substrate

It could be a break internal to the board between layers. sounds like something is getting dropped from point a to b

[awraynor]

No BSOD, but apps crash, Outlook last night even when not being used. Funny thing is that

on the other side of the dual boot, OSX, this doesn't happen. Will try the one piece at

a time approach as soon as I can.

[awraynor]

I changed from the factory default to standard BIOS settings, guess they try to

tweak it from the factory. Didn't really make much of a difference. Removed and

replaced all the RAM no difference. Checked the customer ratings on Newegg and

lots of people reported Slot 3 and 4 RAM problems. Reinstalled 1 slot at a time

without issue. Now back up to 2GB x 4 and seems to work okay. Guess I will have to

wait and see if it gets flaky again? I am using a Q9550 which is adequate for me, but

it's hard to find a replacement board with 4 memory slots. The WAF would be low to replace

a computer that is fairly new to me after just buying everything for a new server, a

Dell Zino and a new document scanner, which BTW is so much better than an AIO printer.