I have a Sony DVD RW DW-U14A SCSI CdRom Device and lately my computer will randomly undergo these bouts of freezing for a minute or two where I can't move anything. Then unlocking for 30 seconds where I can move the mouse around (but can't close/open anything) and repeating. Sometimes If I wait 5 minutes it goes away, sometimes I have to hit the reset button.
Its not like a normal freeze because I can still move around the mouse between freezes and sometimes close programs and what not, but I can't ctrl+alt+del or anything. And I'm not running like 50 programs at once either. Maybe like 2-3 of my regular ones I always use.
At first I thought it was the HD because its making this clicking noise. And its been nearly full and I've been moving large amounts of data via ipod back and forth when its below 15% free space and I was also burning lots of dvds to clear space as well.
However, I just cleaned up 15% free and ran a defrag.
Then I noticed that the clicking was also accompanied by an orange light on the dvd drive. It seems to have a sort of pattern; click - - click - - click, then a few fast clicks, 1 holding click, and then it repeats. ALso the last 3 DVDs I tried to burn failed after like 2% T_T.
Lately its starting to freeze/delay during windows load up (win xp sp2) the same way it does when windows is running.
I went into bios/cmos and the drive wasn't even listed in the boot order so I applied it as second boot device (dunno if that is important).
Just now I had left my comp on standby and came back a few hours later and there was no signal to the monitor, and It seemed my computer was off (maybe I just shut it down and thought I hit standby?). But after I hit the power button one of the fans seemed to be going really fast and loud and there was still no signal to the monitor and no sign of windows loading (no sound fx). So its not the video card or monitor, right? Ctrl+Alt+Del wouldn't reboot either. Had to do a manual reset.
Its weird though, even if it is the video card I should still see the boot screen and shit right? And windows will still load and I would hear the windows sound (and eventually be able to use hotkeys to reset) right?
After a few more attempts hitting the reset button and still no signal every time I decided to take my comp apart and clean out some dust (btw I was running programs to check temps lately and all was fine) even though I don't think it has to do with overheating.
I changed the 5 fan molexes to all connect to the same molex and left the opti drive molex and hd molex each solo (does that matter?). I also disconnected the video card cleaned it and replugged it, as well as unplugging monitor for a minute and repowered.
It is stable now that I am writing this. I just don't know what the fuck is causing this.
My computer is 13 months old and I built it myself.
Could my HD be dying? Would that even cause this kind of locking up? Likewise could my opti be dying/cause this?
Or is it something like cpu, ram, or video card? Does anyone know any tricks to test each part without just taking each in a new comp one by one?
Sorry if this is long winded or whatever, I figure the more details the better. Any ideas?
PS- I listed my comp specs here previously: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2135680&enterthread=y
Its not like a normal freeze because I can still move around the mouse between freezes and sometimes close programs and what not, but I can't ctrl+alt+del or anything. And I'm not running like 50 programs at once either. Maybe like 2-3 of my regular ones I always use.
At first I thought it was the HD because its making this clicking noise. And its been nearly full and I've been moving large amounts of data via ipod back and forth when its below 15% free space and I was also burning lots of dvds to clear space as well.
However, I just cleaned up 15% free and ran a defrag.
Then I noticed that the clicking was also accompanied by an orange light on the dvd drive. It seems to have a sort of pattern; click - - click - - click, then a few fast clicks, 1 holding click, and then it repeats. ALso the last 3 DVDs I tried to burn failed after like 2% T_T.
Lately its starting to freeze/delay during windows load up (win xp sp2) the same way it does when windows is running.
I went into bios/cmos and the drive wasn't even listed in the boot order so I applied it as second boot device (dunno if that is important).
Just now I had left my comp on standby and came back a few hours later and there was no signal to the monitor, and It seemed my computer was off (maybe I just shut it down and thought I hit standby?). But after I hit the power button one of the fans seemed to be going really fast and loud and there was still no signal to the monitor and no sign of windows loading (no sound fx). So its not the video card or monitor, right? Ctrl+Alt+Del wouldn't reboot either. Had to do a manual reset.
Its weird though, even if it is the video card I should still see the boot screen and shit right? And windows will still load and I would hear the windows sound (and eventually be able to use hotkeys to reset) right?
After a few more attempts hitting the reset button and still no signal every time I decided to take my comp apart and clean out some dust (btw I was running programs to check temps lately and all was fine) even though I don't think it has to do with overheating.
I changed the 5 fan molexes to all connect to the same molex and left the opti drive molex and hd molex each solo (does that matter?). I also disconnected the video card cleaned it and replugged it, as well as unplugging monitor for a minute and repowered.
It is stable now that I am writing this. I just don't know what the fuck is causing this.
My computer is 13 months old and I built it myself.
Could my HD be dying? Would that even cause this kind of locking up? Likewise could my opti be dying/cause this?
Or is it something like cpu, ram, or video card? Does anyone know any tricks to test each part without just taking each in a new comp one by one?
Sorry if this is long winded or whatever, I figure the more details the better. Any ideas?
PS- I listed my comp specs here previously: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2135680&enterthread=y