Relax, get a drink, this will take a while.
Alienware ALX, Windows XP up to date, ASUS A8N32 SLI Deluxe Motherboard, 2 gigs ram, 1.25 TB of hard drives, 650 watt PSU, nVidia 7800 GTX 512 MB video card, Water cooling.
I started with an AMD FX-57 single core processor. At random times the processor would run at 50% according to the Task Manager. The Task Manager shows no Applications running and no Processes running. I shut off anti virus and adware programs. I used Task Manager to shut off everything I could, but the processor keeps going at 50%.
It started off running away only once a week and after a month was doing it 5 times a day. Sometimes it would start after boot or reboot and sometimes at a random times while running. I would notice when the computer slowed down.
While all this is going on the system becomes more and more unstable until any access to the C drive (large file transfer, anti virus scan) causes the computer to restart.
I keep anti virus and adware programs up to date and running automatic scans.
I upgrade to the AMD FX-60 dual core processor, same problem.
I try brand new RAM, same problem.
I try new motherboard of the same type, same problem.
Yep, out of warranty.
Yep, haunted.
Just to make things more interesting, I have never been able to run the Microsoft Memory Test on this computer. I put the disk in, (tried floppy and CD) restart, interface screen shows up on the monitor and nothing happens. I tried the same disks in 2 other computers (Dell) and it works fine. Memtest 86 runs but none of the keyboard controls work and when it gets to test #6 I get over 700 errors and Memtest just stops. I tried new RAM as mentioned above, one stick at a time in each of the 4 slots, same results.
Even more interesting, while it was still under warranty I sent it back to Alienware and they said they could run Memtest 86 with no errors using my disk I sent with it.
The only thing I havn't changed is the Power Source. Thats next.
If I could afford it, I would take it to a rifle range and plug it full of holes. Or maybe I should have it exorcised?
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Run away processor! Haunted computer!
Discussion is locked
Yes, I am running the latest from the Alienware web site. There are later ones available from ASUS but they say not to update unless you know what your updating for so I didn't.
Its just my opinion, but it seems to be a hard drive problem more than the power source, or ram.
For instance, your difficulty accessing the c drive, sudden reboots or slow downs. It all could be cause by a faulty drive sending currepted data to the processor, or no data at all. This might force the processor to go in overtime, trying to access data it needs.
Remember, even at idle, the processor still needs to acces files to operate (read execute the OS), so the problem might occur even if you aren't using the computer.
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