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Poorly PC

Edvvc

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I'm taking an unintentional and unwanted break from simracing because my PC is not working properly. No signal appears on any monitor. There are four sets of fans (front case, rear case, cpu and gfx car) and only the cpu and gfx card fans come on, the front and rear case fans stay still. Also the PC is much quieter when it powers on but I can't identify what is missing. Perhaps the CPU cooling pump has stopped working? I'm lacking time and energy to investigate further and mindful of how my previous PC died with a small explosion and I don't want that to happen in my face. Where do you begin troubleshooting this kind of thing given I have no spare parts to swap and experiment with?
 

deecee52

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Start simple first , reseat the memory and graphics card , take em out put them back in , sometimes they creep out due to the heat cycles .
You should have a light on the tower that flickers when the machine boots , if it flickers the machine is booting if its steady machine is doing nothing .
Does your mobo have built in graphics ?
let us know
 

DJCruicky

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Sorry about your pc problems Ed.
Did you build your PC your self or is it a shop made one?
I've built all my pc's but I'm not the expert myself.
Did it stop working while you were using it, or one day you turned it on and it was like this?

You said your monitors do not come on but do you know if Windows is loading?

Some easy things you can test first to rule out parts one by one:-

Graphics cards
Good advise from Dave, if your motherboard has a Monitor out you could try plug your monitor into that. If it works with that, then you could point finger at the Graphics card as the fault.

PSU
You could test if your PSU is still good. PSU have different rails voltages like 12v, 5v, 3.3v etc. If you have a Multimeter you can test the voltages. Google is the best place to test a PC with Multimeter . This is just to rule out your PSU as the problem. You did say some of your case fans have stopped turning.

Memory
I don't think this is your problem, but just to rule out your RAM, if you have more than one stick. Test it with just one stick, removing the other. Google is your friend on how to do this. Do unplug the pc before doing this.

Some motherboards can let you know what is wrong with a sequence of beeps. Please read this page https://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm.
Or, some mother boards have a row of LED's on the motherboard to let you know what is wrong instead.

Wish you luck.
 

lamer of fortune

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What you now need is friends with nerves of steel and a few replacement parts you can swap in to find the faulty part
if some of the fans are not running my guess would be is either the power supply or the mobo. Is the CPU any good? if not replace mobo and CPU but only after checking the Graphics card.


Last week it happened to me that my monitor died just like that. It killed the power supply before but only lasted 2 weeks after the replacement was put in. These things happen but fortunately not that often.
 

Petrolhead

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Hi Ed, thought you had been missing.

How old id the PC?

What graphics card are you using?

Are you using an Intel processor and if so is there a HDMI on the back panel of the mobo, this way you could check to see if you get any graphics.

However seems strange thats some of the fans have suddenly stopped working and as Keeper said above it may be a faulty power supply
 

Myles (Mr Fox)

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The only things that have failed on me in the last 10 years or so have been PSUs too - although they generally fail somewhat gracefully (gfx card glitches increasingly).
 

Edvvc

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Thank you for the advice, guys. I tried reseating memory and gfx card with no effect. Also tried components in a friends PC and they seem fine which points to the motherboard. Just bought a secondhand mobo so should be back soonish, but unlikely before Nords.
 

DJCruicky

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Hope that fixes it for you. Fingers crossed.
 

deecee52

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Keep your eye on the forum ED , Xmas special coming up which may interest you , details to be announced
 

Edvvc

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Windows started today for the first time since the beginning of November. Rfactor crashed when I tried to watch a replay, but I think its my memory that's misconfigured. The corsair water cooler is what's been giving me most trouble as it wasn't doing any cooling. I shook out some of the air and its cooling a bit but probably needs replacing. Hope to be back in the driving seat soon.
 

Edvvc

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So I've replaced the motherboard and CPU cooler and the CPU temps are now stable, but rfactor crashes to desktop every time I take either a F1 legends or 911 rsr round Kyalami, usually within a few seconds of leaving the garage. A popup appears saying the Nvidia driver (I installed the latest) stopped responding and has recovered.
 
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deecee52

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When you replaced mobo did you do like for like , if not did you do fresh install of windows ?
 

Edvvc

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No and no. You're probably going to advise me to do that, right? I can't remember how I did it seven years ago. Frustratingly rfactor2 is the only game that's not running perfectly. I'm reinstalling the game right now.
 

deecee52

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If the new Mobo has a different chipset than the old then window may not reconfigure itself fully and this will effect relationship with graphics card , try a repair install this should retain files and progs but you get a fresh install of windows itself
 

Edvvc

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It turned out that updating the motherboard BIOS stopped the crashes. I updated it in preparation to install Windows 10 since I thought I had exhausted all other possibilities, but then couldn't get a crash to happen. So, in all, I've changed the motherboard (from Asus to MSI), changed CPU cooler (from Corsair to Be Quiet) and updated the motherboard BIOS. I reinstalled rfactor 2 too but I don't believe that was necessary.
Thank you all for the help and advice.
 

DJCruicky

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Good stuff. I see you already set the fastest time on the Wednesday night sever :D.
 

DJCruicky

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It was my turn to have a poorly PC this time :(.
Started about a week ago.
Blue screens of death or full lock ups where the computer is fully frozen and having to press the reset button. Sometimes computer just suddenly restarts as well.
It can happen any time, not just playing games but could happen even at the desktop with computer not doing anything.
Think the heat was getting to it, been hot here in England.
It's an old system. Last year I upgraded its memory adding 2 more 4 gig sticks I bought used off ebay taking it up to 16Gig. I do remember getting an increase of blue screens after this upgrade, but that seemed to fix it's self.

Some of the Blue screens said 'PAGE FAULT IN NONPAGED AREA'. Googling that, points to a memory problem. A website I found said "This could be System RAM, Graphics card RAM or even the small L1 or L2 cache memory on the CPU chip itself"

Things I tried....
- I did a few Windows memory tests, no errors found. But pc did lock up doing one of them.
- Cleaned out dust from machine with can of air, still crashes.
- Increased case fan speeds, still crashes.
- Remove one of the RAM sticks I bought last year, Still crashes.
- Removed 2nd stick I bought last year, just leaving my original 2 sticks in, Still crashes.
- Did hard drive scans, no errors reported.
- Did a SFC /scannow to check for damaged system files, no errors reported.
- Swopped Graphics card with old graphics card, Still crashes
- Removed one of the original RAM sticks, leaving just 4 gig stick in machine, still crashes, but crashes now more often.
- Removed that stick, and put back the other original stick, and machine stopped crashing even after a whole day of testing :D.
- Next day, took that good stick out, and tested out the 2 sticks I bought used last year and they were good too.
- I now have my better graphics card back in machine too, and still good.

So, just a bad memory stick that does not like the summer heat. I've now ordered a pair of used replacements to bring my system back to 16 gigs. Cheap as nuts. Fingers crossed they will be fine when I get them. Happy it was not the CPU or motherboard (Touch wood).

DJC
 

DJCruicky

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That is Connection Lost with getting kicked, wasn't by PC crashing, but you never know.
 
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