Doug Nelson
04-19-2005, 01:19 PM
Starting a few days ago I started having random system freezes. No BSOD or anything, just everything would suddenly stop, no mouse, no keyboard, my computer screen became a still photo. So, I started investigating.
In spite of the fact that all my internet research said it was a hardware problem, I started with software. I replaced all my drivers, uninstalled recent software, ran every utility I own, all to no avail.
So I started on the hardware side. I opened up my computer, everything looked OK, but I took out all my cards and memory and then put them back in (per multiple internet tips). At first I thought this fixed things, but it just made the freezes further apart (every couple of hours instead of every 10 minutes).
This got me thinking...what was different? Well, my case was still open, and that got me thinking about cooling. I pointed a room fan so it was blowing inside my case, and that actually got me an 8 hour period with no freezes.
I was baffled. So I downloaded a utility from Intel.com that reads out the CPU and motherboard temperatures. I let it run until a freeze happened, and sure enough there was a CPU temp spike right at the moment of freeze. But my CPU was reporting fine, even though I ran several diagnostics.
Finally I grabbed a Q-tip and poked it between the fan blades attached to my CPU. A-HA! It came out with a hairball the size of a mouse! After 5 minutes of digging I was still coming up with dust bunnies, so I went out and bought some canned air and blew it out (all the above is with the computer off, of course). In spite of the few pounds of dust I'd already dug out I stirred up a veritable dust storm. My CPU had been for all intents and purposes "insulated" with the dust (it's a 5 year old computer and this is the first time I'd dusted inside, and yes I am a bachelor).
Well now my diagnostics tell me my CPU is running 10 degrees cooler, and not a freeze since. I suspect it's actually even running a bit faster, since CPU's have a throttling mechanism that slows them down when they start getting hot.
In spite of the fact that all my internet research said it was a hardware problem, I started with software. I replaced all my drivers, uninstalled recent software, ran every utility I own, all to no avail.
So I started on the hardware side. I opened up my computer, everything looked OK, but I took out all my cards and memory and then put them back in (per multiple internet tips). At first I thought this fixed things, but it just made the freezes further apart (every couple of hours instead of every 10 minutes).
This got me thinking...what was different? Well, my case was still open, and that got me thinking about cooling. I pointed a room fan so it was blowing inside my case, and that actually got me an 8 hour period with no freezes.
I was baffled. So I downloaded a utility from Intel.com that reads out the CPU and motherboard temperatures. I let it run until a freeze happened, and sure enough there was a CPU temp spike right at the moment of freeze. But my CPU was reporting fine, even though I ran several diagnostics.
Finally I grabbed a Q-tip and poked it between the fan blades attached to my CPU. A-HA! It came out with a hairball the size of a mouse! After 5 minutes of digging I was still coming up with dust bunnies, so I went out and bought some canned air and blew it out (all the above is with the computer off, of course). In spite of the few pounds of dust I'd already dug out I stirred up a veritable dust storm. My CPU had been for all intents and purposes "insulated" with the dust (it's a 5 year old computer and this is the first time I'd dusted inside, and yes I am a bachelor).
Well now my diagnostics tell me my CPU is running 10 degrees cooler, and not a freeze since. I suspect it's actually even running a bit faster, since CPU's have a throttling mechanism that slows them down when they start getting hot.