Computer locking up, looking for bootable hardware diagnostic tool.

Posted by Carl Menke on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Carl Menke
Published on 2010-10-23T01:00:11Z Indexed on 2010/12/31 18:55 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 375

Filed under:

cpu

|

motherboard

|

lockup

Well today I helped my friend build a computer. All went pretty well until we got to installing Win7. Thing is, we thought, it was crashing constantly. I adjusted pretty much every setting in the BIOS and removed as much hardware as possible to try and prevent a crash. No dice.

So far I've tried running an Ubuntu live cd without the harddrive installed. Nope, crashed on boot. And then I just tried Microsoft's ram utility disk and it eventually locked up on that (the ram passed though).

So it seems to me like it's either the CPU (AMD PhenomII x3) or the motherboard that could be bad, but I don't know how to test them individually for problems. I thought it could be a overheating issue, but the BIOS reports that the CPU temp is fine idling around 34C. Any advice or diagnostic disk that could help me out?

TL;DR: Computer locks up frequently during use (cannot even boot/install an operating system), memory is fine, probably CPU or Mobo, BIOS says CPU temps are fine. What should I try?

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about cpu

Speedstep and Intel x5570?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hi, My new server has 2 x X5570 CPUs. Now here is the output of grep -i hz /proc/cpuinfo model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5570 @ 2.93GHz cpu MHz : 1600.231 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5570 @ 2.93GHz cpu MHz : 1600.231 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU … >>> More
VMware ESXi - varying CPU time (CPU reservation)

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hello! I'm running FreeBSD 7.2 under VMware ESXi 3.5. Host has 2 physical CPUs and the BSD box is currently the only running VM. Only one virtual CPU is assigned to the VM. When measuring CPU time of a specific program, I get very different results from time to time. Processor usage is reported… >>> More
How to calculate CPU % based on raw CPU ticks in SNMP

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
According to http://net-snmp.sourceforge.net/docs/mibs/ucdavis.html#scalar_notcurrent ssCpuUser, ssCpuSystem, ssCpuIdle, etc are deprecated in favor of the raw variants (ssCpuRawUser, etc). The former values (which don't cover things like nice, wait, kernel, interrupt, etc) returned a percentage… >>> More
disparity between `top`'s given CPU % and process CPU usage total

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I've noticed that there are sometimes (large) differences between the reported total CPU usage and a summation of the per-process CPU utilization given by apps like top and wmtop. As an example: I recently ran a git filter-branch --index-filter on a fairly large repo, with the index-filter command… >>> More
How to read oom-killer syslog messages?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have a Ubuntu 12.04 server which sometimes dies completely - no SSH, no ping, nothing until it is physically rebooted. After the reboot, I see in syslog that the oom-killer killed, well, pretty much everything. There's a lot of detailed memory usage information in them. How do I read these logs… >>> More

Related posts about motherboard

Motherboard Wiring

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
HI All, I bought a new case to put a motherboard in. Everything fits, I have done this before, but not in a long time! The case has wires for - Power SW - Reset SW - Power LED - HDD LED On the motherboard (ASUS M2NPV-VM) it is clearly labeled where these go, but I cannot remember where the black… >>> More
xfx 680i motherboard failure?

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
At some point last night we must have had a blip in our power, as the stove clock was blinking like it would had their been... a blip in the power. When I came into my office this morning, my desktop computer was powered down and would not turn on. Cracking the case, I can see a small blue blinking… >>> More
Current Motherboard Tech Overview

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Welp, computer died. Time to get a new motherboard. I haven't been paying attention to the latest motherboard technology and associated models and chipsets. Can someone point me at an overview of what is currently available? I'm primarily interested in the Intel / nvidia side of things. >>> More
Processor with higher FSB than motherboard can support.

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Hi all, Please redirect me if there is a similar question, but I have an ECS P4VXASD2+ (V5.0) motherboard, which supports a 533 MHz FSB. I want to put in a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz processor (Socket 478) with an FSB of 800 MHz. Would this be possible? Would the FSB of the processor just be limited to 533… >>> More
How to get Processor and Motherboard Id ?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I use the code from http://www.rgagnon.com/javadetails/java-0580.html to get Motherboard Id, but the result is "null", <1 How can that be ? <2 Also I modified the code a bit to look like this to get processor Id : "Set objWMIService = GetObject(\"winmgmts:\\\\.\\root\\cimv2\")\n"+ … >>> More