Help Diagnosing Crashes

Hi everyone, hope you can help me with a horribly frustrating hardware problem I've been having lately. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

My computer will randomly freeze every so often. It doesn't bluescreen or restart, nothing is "Not Responding" or throwing an error message. This error does not appear to result in minidump files being created. The image just gets stuck in place as-is.lues

At the same time, I hear the fan spin faster than in normal operation and at a constant rate. None of the buttons (Num Lk, Scr Lk, Fn, etc) function. The only thing that can be done is to turn it off by holding the power button.

Th freezing mainly occurs when I am playing graphically intensive video games, so I believe it may be graphics card related? Freezing also occurs if I start the computer up shortly after (within 1-2 minutes) the freezing has just occurred. These additional crashes can happen as early on as the Windows 7 "Starting Up" animation, so this can't be a software-only issue. It has to be either a hardware problem, or a device error causing a hardware problem, right?

Other problems I'm having that I don't think are related but might be:
(1) Sometimes the lights on my fancy gaming mouse (Corsair M90) shut off and it stops working. Shortly thereafter I get a bluescreen / crash.
(2) A month ago my old harddrive died, and I replaced it with a new one. I did a clean install of Windows, using Windows installation disks rather than one containing all the prepackaged junk software from Sony.

Does anybody have any ideas as to how I can fix this, or at least figure out how to diagnose it?

 

Hi and welcome to CHF.
In order to help you, we need to know as much as possible about your computer so if you can tell us the make and model, or if a custom built then the make of motherboard, graphics card, power supply, CPU, RAM, and anything else you know. It will be a great help.

However at a guess without that knowledge, your problems sound like an overheating problem, if the computer is a desktop, have you looked inside the case recently and cleaned out any dust or fluff build up?

To help us, I would like you to download and install Speccy by Piriform, it will show all the temperatures and some of the voltages.
Download it from this link, it is free :-

http://www.piriform.com/speccy

Once downloaded and installed, the main summary page will open and show you the main details of the computer, if you can copy and paste that in your next reply it will be somewhere to start from.

All the best with that,

Nev.

 

Ah yes, of course. I really should have thought to post all that initially, but I was flustered and overtired at the time.
Here is the full readout from Speccy, it seems to include everything you asked for:
http://speccy.piriform.com/results/BG4LdUavqsPk4uf5tJATPFy

This isn't a custom built PC or anything, just bought it right off the shelf a couple years ago. It was the best laptop they had in the store back then, so it's still not ancient by any means (decently fast i7 processor and all). I haven't been inside the machine VERY recently, but I opened it up less than a year ago to fix a different hardware problem (monitor cable worked itself loose) and air dusted things off then.

 

This is what speccy looks like while I'm gaming:

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/mwODyDZZpiyTaVZWy1ftfPH

Temperatures are just above 80 degrees. Is that normal?

 

Hi, thanks for that, Speccy has gone well over the top in comparison to what it shows on my computer, but at least it gives us the important stuff.
So, it is not good is a processor running that hot, even for a laptop, a great shame that the graphics chips seem not to have a sensor, I would bet they are even hotter.

If you have no problem in opening up the laptop as you have done once before, I suggest a good look at the cooling fins of the heat sink mounted on the processor and the fan, also any other cooling heat sinks as there should be something on the graphics as well, Also the main vents into the case, they may look OK on the outside, but there is usually a second grid on the inside that can get clogged up which will prevent cool air getting in, as I think heat is probably the main reason for the crashes.

Let us know how you get on and if any improvement after clearing dust out.

Nev.

 

I've ordered some thermal paste and will be cleaning the heatsink / replacing the paste when it comes in this weekend.
I'll let you guys know how it goes.

 

OK, thanks for the update, best of everything with it.

Nev.

 

Hey guys, just popping in briefly to let you know how I've fared.

-Got some new thermal paste
-opened up computer
-figured out how to remove the heatsink/fan (huge, arduous process because Sony VAIO hardware architecture is an mess).
-Cleaned fan with a household vacume, being careful not to spin it too much or too fast
-gently scraped away old, dried thermal compound with a used gift card
-cleaned surfaces and all parts of heatsink with 91% isopropyl alcohol
-cleaned connectors for cpu and motherboard
-made sure not to touch heatsink after cleaning, as oils reduce its conductive effectiveness.

I think the issue wasn't just heat, because I was within normal operating temp. The issue was inconsistent cooling due to a bad connection with the heatsink. (Very old, very cheap thermal compound from manufacturer.) I think this was causing occasional temperature spikes above normal operating range, which is what was resulting in the crashes.

Now it's been fine for three days with no crashes. Prior to this it was crashing 2-5 times a day, not even counting additional crashes where I tried to start it up again too soon.

 

Hi and thanks for the update, lets hope all is OK from now on.
Just one minor thing, and as a warning to anyone else reading this thread, we always recommend blowing dust and fluff out using one of the compressed air cans made for the purpose, as domestic vacuum cleaners can cause a static electricity charge to build up between the nozzle and the computer, if that then flashes across it can cause serious damage.

Nev.