Roomate with several weird problems.

[Nume]

I have been trying to help my roomate, as he is having a lot of issues with his home built pc, but I am running out of answers for some of his problems. The first one he told me about that has me pretty stumped is that whenever he shuts his computer down, and sometimes even just leaving it alone for a while, his internet will stop working. He has tried both the onboard ethernet card, and a usb wireless, and both have the same symptoms. The only way to fix the onboard one seems to be rebooting. The usb card seems to shut itself off (if you look in network adapters, it says disabled, but won't let you reenable) and the only way to fix it is to take it out and in. Both of these issues are possible to work around, but very strange and annoying. We checked for new drivers for all part involved, and windows is up to date (its windows 7 64 bit sp 1 btw).
The other problem is that it seems to randomly overheat. I opened it up to see, and it is very clean. The case has 2 fans, one by the hard drives, and one in the back near the processor. I tried putting in a new fan that I had (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811999344) which is very powerful, and even with that he is getting random spikes over 60C without even having anything running, and if he stress tests it it will go over 70 quite easily. The processor is an intel core i5 750 2.67 ghz running at stock speeds. He never had issues with overheating before, but since he moved in to our apartment last week it has been overheating.
If anyone has any ideas/helpful hints I'd greatly appreciate it.

[Fuzzykins]

70c with a stock cooler under full load is normal. O.o May want to reconsider reapplying and reseating the heatsink.

[Arganis]

Buy a Mac? ... Just joking, although people always say "you could build your own PC for half teh price, herp derp." and what you're describing is totally my experience of the people who do.

And yes I know, unhelpful polarizing post is unhelpful and polarizing but I simply couldn't resist. :-P

[Eriksonoftheundercity]

Check all the capacitors on the MB. Popped caps, or worse leaking caps, can wreek all sorts of havoc. if you have the old 10cent caps they should be flat on the top maybe with a couple of groves in them. if they are bent even just slightly they are popped and not working properly. you can try to replace them but its ultimately easier to just replace the MB if its a fairly new system. I've seen popped caps do everything from preventing proper shutdowns to killing onboard NIC to graphics issues and more.

[Arslay]

Buy a Mac? ... Just joking, although people always say "you could build your own PC for half teh price, herp derp." and what you're describing is totally my experience of the people who do.

And yes I know, unhelpful polarizing post is unhelpful and polarizing but I simply couldn't resist. :-P

1 in 10 builds end like this. Most people are perfectly fine saving their money and rocking all ultra 60 frames. I know, I know, low graphics look all cool and retro but some of us like to see our $15 a month.


OP: He most likely needs to reseat and reapply thermal paste to his CPU and cooler. Else he can spend $30 and get a sick cooler and lower his temps a ton. Also, are all the power connectors to the MOBO fully fully plugged in and non-dusty or bent?

[Nume]

Check all the capacitors on the MB. Popped caps, or worse leaking caps, can wreek all sorts of havoc. if you have the old 10cent caps they should be flat on the top maybe with a couple of groves in them. if they are bent even just slightly they are popped and not working properly. you can try to replace them but its ultimately easier to just replace the MB if its a fairly new system. I've seen popped caps do everything from preventing proper shutdowns to killing onboard NIC to graphics issues and more.

They look like they are all right to me. I am uploading a few pics I took with my cellphone if anyone wants to see if there is anything else noticeable. We are going to try to reseat and reapply paste tomorrow probably (dont really have anything to take off the old paste without damaging it in apartment atm). The network part is really confusing though because we are both in the same place using the same network, so I know its nothing outside causing it, and the same issues applied to his onboard network card and the usb one. Anyways here are the pics:




Edit: Just to add, what confuses me most about the temperatures is that it seems random. He can be playing wow with ~20-30 percent load and have it at 40C, and have nothing open with 2 percent load and it spike over 70. He is using realtemp to test it btw. Is it possible it's just something with the sensors even? It just seems like it goes up and down so randomly, though admittedly it always goes over 60-70 when he runs prime95, so that'd indicate they are at least working somewhat. He just had it spike to 76 with only 12 percent load, so yeah... its weird.

[Eriksonoftheundercity]

well, without having your PC in front of me it will be difficult to troubleshoot everything. The caps you are showing in the pics do look ok but that doesn't rule the MB out yet. another possibility with the NIC being disbled is a virus/rootkit. As I do virus removal for a living (boring boring boring but pays the bills.) I see that alot too. I recommend using Microsoft Security Essentials if you suspect a virus. Its a very good program and most of the time can be installed even on infected machines and still clean the infected machine. you can find it by googling MSE. look for microsoft.com/security_essentials If you are infected with a severe rootkit you will need to take it to a shop and have it cleaned. Trying to remove a rootkit a lot of the time is like trying to fix a chair leg while standing on the chair. you can't always remove rootkits because they replace legit windows files that won't be touched by antivirus software while windows is running. so the HDD needs to be placed in a clean machine andcleaned by an experienced tech.


As far as WoW running hot.. WoW is a resource hog. Even after numerous attempts by Bliz the program uses lots of CPU power and is still a memory hog. its going to run hot. When you do reapply the thermal paste be absolutly certain to clean the old stuff off properly. Its a two step process. there is a cleaner and a refined cleaner for it. The names of the two escape me atm. you shouldn't need more than 2 drops for each. spreading it evenly on both the bottom of the heatsink and the processor then wiping with a folded paper towel. repeat for both cleaners. When youare done the parts where the heatsink and processor touch should be shiny like new. When you put the thermal paste on you should only need about a pea size amount on the processor. it should not leak out the sides when you set the heatsink.

Also make aboslutly certain the heatsink is lock in place properly. your pic looks like the heatsink might not be properly seated. That's important because the thermal paste applied can't transfer the heat away from the processor.

[Cantii]

I could very well just be something with the sensors, but in all, it'd be a good idea to clean the CPU and heatsink off and re-apply the TIM and re-seat the heatsink. The network issue is odd, it could be malware doing it, so I would suggest a full system scan for both viruses and adware/spyware/whatever in safe mode. I also suggest maybe grabbing yourself a Hyper 212 Plus (which is back down to $27 on Newegg, thank God) and taming those temps once and for all

[Sume]

Dang... when I read the title of this thread computer issues was not what I expected :P

[Kripparrian]

@Nume 3/4 of the heatsink pushpins are in the unlocked mode. The reason the temps are high is that the heatsink is making poor contact with the cpu.

Also, if he made a mistake like that building the system, theres likely other stuff thats contributing to his issues

[Nume]

Dang... when I read the title of this thread computer issues was not what I expected :P

Lol well it is in the computer forums... :P. As far as the pushpins... I'll have to look at that lol. Looking at it in the picture though I think you're right, though I did feel and it didn't feel loose (I didn't actually look at the pins that closely apparantly). I still can't figure out what he could do that would cause the network issues though. They have persisted through total hard drive wipes according to him, so malware doesn't seem to be the cause.

[Guntherr]

Try looking at his power saving options. Could be something is set to shut things down etc.

On the processor temps....if your using the thermal pad that came with it take it off and apply some proper thermal grease. That pad is functional at best.

Edit: straight razor takes the thermal pad right off. then wash it with some alcohol to get all the gunk off.

[stalkerzzzz]

Kripparrian is right about the CPU temperatures. Look how the pins should be in order for the heatsink to be locked in place properly. Just because it doesn't feel loose doesn't mean it isn't. I remember when I made a mistake installing the heatsink and one of the pins wasn't in all the way and because of it the temperature rose by about 20-30 C.

[Arteous]

hrm well i'm not sure about the i5 but i built my first i7 in december/jan. i was surprised to see the motherboard socket having the pins . an insane amount of tiny pins. i somehow bent a few but the system booted fine. Only problem i noticed was that memory wasn't being registered right. no crashes ect just wrong amount of memory shown. i got the board swapped out and problem went away. That might be the issue here. or maybe the bios got corrupted?? try reflashing the bios?

[Nume]

Try looking at his power saving options. Could be something is set to shut things down etc.

On the processor temps....if your using the thermal pad that came with it take it off and apply some proper thermal grease. That pad is functional at best.

Edit: straight razor takes the thermal pad right off. then wash it with some alcohol to get all the gunk off.

Where would I check for those options? It doesn't say anything under regular power saving stuff. Is there an advanced part somewhere or something? As far as the pad, he actually did put thermal paste on, but yeah we will clean it off as you said and we just need to go buy rubbing alcohol today to do it :P. I'll be putting some arctic silver on and making sure the pins are back right, so that should hopefully fix the temp problems, so I'm just left with all the weird network issues.

Edit: Just to add, today his network issues seem even worse. We were attempting to play wow together, and literally every ~10 minutes he'd have to unplug and replug his network card bc it went out.

---------- Post added 2011-08-27 at 12:23 PM ----------

Kripparrian is right about the CPU temperatures. Look how the pins should be in order for the heatsink to be locked in place properly. Just because it doesn't feel loose doesn't mean it isn't. I remember when I made a mistake installing the heatsink and one of the pins wasn't in all the way and because of it the temperature rose by about 20-30 C.

Lol, yeah he thought they were supposed to be toward the arrow to be locked (as did I, and I'm supposed to know about computers...). Thanks for the picture, as after I helped him "fix" it they were all 4 in the wrong spot and could be pulled out easily :P. Now they are in the right spot though, and we put new paste on (he had put WAY too much, which isn't good either. Like so much it was gushed off the edges and was really thick). It looked like there may be 2 pins bent on the motherboard cpu socket. Could that cause the weird network issues? Also is there any way to fix that other than getting a new MB?

[QuiteQuiet]

Hmm. That really is a strange problem. I had mine overheat before, but it was just dirty :P.

[Rixis]

if the worst comes to the worst he could surely buy a network expansion card, hell of a lot cheaper than a whole new motherboard

[Nume]

if the worst comes to the worst he could surely buy a network expansion card, hell of a lot cheaper than a whole new motherboard

Well the problem is happnening both with the on-board, and with the usb wireless one (its actually worse than the on board, but the only internet here is wireless). We tried switching them, so its not the wireless device itself (mine works perfectly in mine, and not in his).

[QuiteQuiet]

you should try flashing the bios and see if that helps.

[mcslave]

might also want to check to see if you have all the up to date drivers for his mobo and chipset