- Aug 25, 2001
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One of my friends with a fairly ancient Core2Quad and a GTX460 2GB card, is having issues.
He said that it has been freezing up solid on him, especially when he's playing D3, and "stuttering", and last night, when he left the PC running, he woke up to a black screen, about missing a boot disk.
I had him run CrystalDiskInfo, and it gives "caution" for the HDD health. It's a Hitachi 640GB, apparently, with over 2400 days of runtime. (Over 6 years!).
Reallocated sectors was only 3 for the raw value, and Pending sectors was zero. So not in horrible shape, in theory.
The "stuttering", could be caused by the HDD having to re-read or re-seek to get data, but it could also be caused by heat buildup in the CPU, due to not being cleaned regularly.
The black-screen / no boot HDD, could be caused by the HDD in the process of failing, but I'm wondering if a flaky PSU could cause that as well.
I installed a RaidMax 80Plus Bronze 730/750W PSU a few years back as a Christmas present.
Just wondering if maybe that's failing now?
So, without having physically examined the PC, I'm wondering if the HDD needs to be changed (I feel almost certain about this), the PSU needs replacing (but, if that was failing, wouldn't he see power-offs, rather than just black-screens?), and maybe just a good dusting / cleaning?
Or, maybe the mobo is just getting a bit old. It is a Core2 rig, after all.
Suggestions?
Edit: Friend is currently unemployed, so money right now IS an issue. I quoted him $45 for a brand-new 1TB HDD, and $30 to clone his old drive, so $75 total. Which I feel is pretty reasonable, but he can't afford right now.
Edit: One other solution that I suggested, was to install a fresh copy of Win7, on an SSD ($60 for 120GB, new), and keep the Hitachi HDD around as a secondary drive, and copy stuff off of it as he feels like, with the caveat that it might die on him. But if that's no longer the primary HDD, it shouldn't blue-screen or black-screen or freeze the OS if it dies, right?
He said that it has been freezing up solid on him, especially when he's playing D3, and "stuttering", and last night, when he left the PC running, he woke up to a black screen, about missing a boot disk.
I had him run CrystalDiskInfo, and it gives "caution" for the HDD health. It's a Hitachi 640GB, apparently, with over 2400 days of runtime. (Over 6 years!).
Reallocated sectors was only 3 for the raw value, and Pending sectors was zero. So not in horrible shape, in theory.
The "stuttering", could be caused by the HDD having to re-read or re-seek to get data, but it could also be caused by heat buildup in the CPU, due to not being cleaned regularly.
The black-screen / no boot HDD, could be caused by the HDD in the process of failing, but I'm wondering if a flaky PSU could cause that as well.
I installed a RaidMax 80Plus Bronze 730/750W PSU a few years back as a Christmas present.
Just wondering if maybe that's failing now?
So, without having physically examined the PC, I'm wondering if the HDD needs to be changed (I feel almost certain about this), the PSU needs replacing (but, if that was failing, wouldn't he see power-offs, rather than just black-screens?), and maybe just a good dusting / cleaning?
Or, maybe the mobo is just getting a bit old. It is a Core2 rig, after all.
Suggestions?
Edit: Friend is currently unemployed, so money right now IS an issue. I quoted him $45 for a brand-new 1TB HDD, and $30 to clone his old drive, so $75 total. Which I feel is pretty reasonable, but he can't afford right now.
Edit: One other solution that I suggested, was to install a fresh copy of Win7, on an SSD ($60 for 120GB, new), and keep the Hitachi HDD around as a secondary drive, and copy stuff off of it as he feels like, with the caveat that it might die on him. But if that's no longer the primary HDD, it shouldn't blue-screen or black-screen or freeze the OS if it dies, right?
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