computer freezes when booting into OS or installing OS?

[jdaniel 125]

hello

I have an old 2007 compaq presario sr5250nx that I'm trying to convert into a media center PC.

it was sitting unplugged for 2 years, I took it out and installed Ubuntu, but I noticed that during the installation, the computer kept freezing up and I had to restart, I eventually got it installed.

then I booted into Ubuntu, and started installing some applications, when I was on Firefox, the CPU fan all of a sudden rapidly sped up very loudly and the computer locked up, I felt the CPU heat sink and it was warm, not hot at all. which was weird.

I took off the heatsink and the CPU was warm, i removed the CPU and I noticed there was one slightly bent socket pin, it was very slightly out of shape. I decided to fix it later, so I put the CPU back in, re applied thermal paste and booted up.

every time I try to boot into Ubuntu, I either get stuck at a black screen, or it lets me log in, then 10 seconds later the computer locks up.

this only happens when I try to install or boot into an OS, the computer will boot from a USB or DVD, but as soon as I press the install button, the computer freezes and restarts. memtest86 runs fine and the computer can stay in the bios without freezing.

I switched the RAM modules with 2 working ones, changed the PSU, tried another hard drive with a fresh Ubuntu installation, tried another clean hard drive that has no errors, and it still won't boot. it just locks up, could that one bent CPU pin be causing all these problems?

EDIT: I just left memtest86 running for 11 minutes, when I came back and checked on the computer, it was at a black screen with nothing else, WHY?!

and also, sometimes when the computer freezes, a ton of random pixels appear on the screen and the chipset where the integrated GPU is located is VERY HOT.

is this a GPU or CPU problem?

 

[zarawatsonn]

For this problem i have a solution, just check your hard drive cable it will be loose. Fix it, to resolve this issue!!!

 

[jdaniel 125]

i already swapped hard drives and it didn't work, I think it might be the GPU, I have an extra gigabyte GPU that has faulty ports, so I plugged it into the PC and plugged in a VGA cable and held it at an angle since the cards ports are faulty, eventually, the Ubuntu boot screen showed up which has never happened with the onboard graphics, and I got so surprised that I let go of the cable, then the screen went black and the compaq started beeping
loudly. saying that no GPU was detected, I'll do more testing tomorrow

 

[techgeek]

If it locked up during Memtest, it's not likely anything to do with storage. My two guesses are:

1. Something is overheating, either CPU or GPU.

2. The PSU is failing.

 

[smorizio]

check for swelled on leaking caps. make sure the cmos battery is fresh. some mb can lock up or act strange with a dead cmos battery.

 

[jdaniel 125]

ok, I've ruled out everything and I think it's the integrated GPU overheating

here is everything I've checked

1. PSU, still freezes with new one
2. Hard drive, freezes with new one
3. Motherboard, only one slightly swelled capacitor
4. CMOS battery, installed fresh one, still freezing
5. CPU, not hot when the computer freezes
6. integrated GPU, heatsink/chipset is VERY HOT when computer freezes

and when the computer locks up, the screen goes black or lines appear on the screen.

since the only hot thing in the computer is the chipset where the GPU is located, that must be it.

 

[techgeek]

Any swollen cap is bad. In most cases the electrolytic caps using on motherboards are used to filter power at the power input of various IC's (known as decoupling), they are not supposed to use any power (ideally). Once they swell, they start to act more like a resistor and their filtering ability (capacitance) begins to diminish.

However that doesn't mean that a swollen cap is the root of your actual problem you're experiencing now.

As I said earlier, I think it's your integrated graphics and you've said that it's very hot. How is the air flow in this system? It's difficult to understand why the integrated graphics would get so hot. Normally integrated graphics are pretty tame and don't use much power. It might be worthwhile to remove the heatsink from the Northbridge (where the integrated graphics is) and clean the old thermal paste and apply new paste and re-install the heatsink. This might fix it.

 

[jdaniel 125]

Any swollen cap is bad. In most cases the electrolytic caps using on motherboards are used to filter power at the power input of various IC's (known as decoupling), they are not supposed to use any power (ideally). Once they swell, they start to act more like a resistor and their filtering ability (capacitance) begins to diminish.

However that doesn't mean that a swollen cap is the root of your actual problem you're experiencing now.

As I said earlier, I think it's your integrated graphics and you've said that it's very hot. How is the air flow in this system? It's difficult to understand why the integrated graphics would get so hot. Normally integrated graphics are pretty tame and don't use much power. It might be worthwhile to remove the heatsink from the Northbridge (where the integrated graphics is) and clean the old thermal paste and apply new paste and re-install the heatsink. This might fix it.

the airflow is pretty bad, the compaq has a BTX case and mobo, so the rear case fan is located right next to the CPU fan and the cpu fan sucks in air while the rear fan acts as an exhaust fan

and you were right about the northbridge, I took off the heatsink, AND THERE WAS NO THERMAL PASTE AT ALL! there was just little bits of it but it was all dried up, no wonder it was overheating

 

[techgeek]

Do you have paste on hand? If so, I would clean up the old stuff (on the heatsink and the northbridge), apply new stuff and re-attach the heatsink. Hopefully this will bring down your temps.

I know health monitoring is pretty sketchy on OEM systems, but it couldn't hurt to try HWMonitor, Speccy or HWInfo and see if there is a motherboard temp monitor. HWMonitor and Speccy are pretty simple whereas HWInfo is more sophisticated and requires a lot more knowledge to interpret.

 

[jdaniel 125]

i reapplied thermal paste and the computer is working fine now, but it still won't boot up or install Ubuntu for some reason, but the computer was able to run memtest all night without freezing. so I think it's an install disc problem. im gonna keep trying

 

[jdaniel 125]

ah, i found another problem

i went into ubuntu's crash logs and i found out that the reason why the system keeps restarting when i log in is because of my mobo's chipset, an intel 945g chipset.

the stock video drivers keep crashing the system, so instead im just gonna download sparky linux, ubuntu isnt right for that computer.

 

[jdaniel 125]

well, even with sparky Linux the computer still freezes, before the freeze I can hear a small low tone beep from the PC speaker, then it crashes. i guess I need a cheap GPU for it

 

[jdaniel 125]

last update, i was running memtest, and i got so many RAM errors in less than 5 minutes, then it froze. I ordered a GT 510 GPU on amazon, 4 GB of DDR2, more thermal paste, and a core 2 duo e4400 since that's the max CPU it supports. and it only costed me 26 dollars. hopefully this works, I really wanna use this for a media center PC

 

[techgeek]

I've had issues installing Ubuntu on various hardware configs. It usually amounted to not working with the graphics adapter. I was usually able to bypass this issue by using an alternative boot mode.