Bizarre Computer Problems

[kozak6]

My computer now does this bizarre thing, but it seem to be unrelated to Nexuiz.

After it has been on for some time, all of a sudden the mouse is paralyzed, and it shuts itself down and turns itself off.

My brother thinks it is overheating, but doesn't really know.

This is with XP Home Edition, btw.

Also, if I need to take it in for service, what would be a good way to hide or encrypt sensitive information?

[esteel]

A good virus scanner is also quite handy in such cases

[Ed]

System specs?

Download Speedfan (or MBM but thats not as thorough) and set it logging temperatures and voltages. Then play until the machine locks up and reboots. Examine the log file for bad temperatures. You should disable Speedfans fan modulation features to do this.

Post any temps you find along with idle temps.

Athlon's can take about 90C although most systems will have safegaurds below that. My Shuttle shuts down at 75C for instance, I tested that once by purposefully disabling the CPU fan.

Another possibility is the computer shorting out. This is possible when thermal paste bridges the contacts around the CPU core. It can be terminal.

[kern]

Also, if I need to take it in for service, what would be a good way to hide or encrypt sensitive information?

Virus:
agree esteel - sounds Trojanish - virus type of thing.
Full scan with reputable AV program first thing. if at all possible, your dodgy drive shouldnt be the one running the AV, if its tied a bad .dll to a windows process, itl have trouble removing it if your drive is actually running as the OS.

Hardware:
you could try a stress test program. see -> http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

If it is a heat problem its usually when your busiest, or graphically intensive.
If thats the case, amongst other things like cleaning dust, crap, from heatsinks, checking fans and airflow, check the CPU to Heatsink joining.
bad contact or poorly applied heat transfer compound and you get glitches all day everyday.


sensitive data :
It depends on whats sensitive.

Windows stores data all over the damn place. its very hard to cover up sensitive data. just a few basic utils and i can have all your (deleted) photos recovered, as well as documents, websites, passwords et al. and not just from the filesystem. The slack space and registry have residual info too.

You're quite right to be wary of this stuff. Technicians are renowned for looking where they shouldnt..

have you an old hard drive you can wipe and then re install a basic Windows on that?

[kozak6]

My brother ran a virus scan, except it didn't turn up anything relevant. However, the dodgy drive was indeed the one running the virus scan.

We don't have any spare hard drives. At one time, we did have some 4 gig hard drives from an obsolete pc, except those were rather ...violently dissassembled, you might say. Oops.

As for sensitive information, it consists mostly of downloaded music and pornography, some of it tremendously disturbing.

I'll run the heat testing stuff and tell you how that went.

I'd open it up and see if I could clean it out or see if it needed heat transfer paste, except that opening it would void our warranty and service plan.

Here are my system specs from the "If 1.5 doesn't run well..." thread.

Win XP Home Edition
2800+ AMD Athlon XP processor
512 mb DDR SDRAM at 333 mhz
Nvidia GeForce 4 MX
160 GB Hard Drive

[kern]

some of it tremendously disturbing.

yes, i know, Status Quo and the like. Get caught with that and you're well in the shit

re the Processor, if you havent had the heatsink off, to change cpu or anything, best not to mess. it really is a last resort, and usually happens if you've had the thing to bits.
i had overheating probs, highlighted funny enough by the Nexgun intensive maps. now have a Desktop fan tied to the side of the case, where the metal side panel used to be that and anothwer 512M of ram , sorted it out.

[Urmel]

Shit I'm sure I already know that problem. It's too easy iirc. Not really serious and no virus.

Have to call it into mind..... wtf

Okay sometimes this happens with a cordless mouse, if You got one You shouldn't use rechargables or cheap batteries.

But there was another one, a laptop, something else...

sorry, I tell You when I called it to mind again.

[kozak6]

No, I don't use a cordless mouse.

*Sigh*

I still use a corded ball mouse. It's terrible, especially since I don't have a mousepad. I'm going to run some diagnostics in a minute here, and see if I can get any useful results.

EDIT: Ok, here is Speedfan.




Temp1 and Temp2 hold fairly steady. Temp3 is extremely erratic and ranges from what you see to about 54 degrees.

[tChr]

-31 C.. thats kinda.. lol..

Somewhere somethign is wrong.

[kozak6]

Hm.

Now Temp1 is a degree higher.
Temp 2 is two degrees higher.
Temp 3 seems to have stabilized a little and varies between 35-51, with a recorded mean of 49.1 and a max of 71.