PC Crashes?(goes black), but PSU continues to run

bamim2

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My Win7 Ultimate 64-bit will run fine for "a while" (sometimes a few days, sometimes a few weeks) & then it just goes dark. The PSU continues to run (the fans are spinning etc) & it's on a KVM & the little monitor icon shows that it's still connected, as opposed to when I shut off the PSU or disconnect the monitor Plug, that icon will blink. When it's in this state, it is no longer visible on the Network, i can't ping it or anything either. It's sort of like it goes into hibernation & I can't bring it back. It's not a laptop, so hibernation is out., Plus, I have all of the sleep mode, hibernation mode things turned off.

When, this happens, I have to power it off, unplug the power, open the case & remove the RAM & put it back in. I've tried replacing the RAM. Same problem no matter what RAM I use. I've tried different speeds & brands of RAM. Same problem.

I've had this problem with my Windows 7 system for so long it's embarrassing. It has lived through replacing / exchanging hardware & through the change from Win7 Pro 32-bit, to Win7 Ultimate 64-bit. The OS was not upgraded, I actually put in another HDD & installed the new OS. Same problem. I've changed the PSU, SATA cables, putting the motherboard in another chassis, replacing the power cable & maybe more stuff, I can't even remember.

I'm guessing I'm pretty much down to the CPU or Motherboard. Since the Motherboard only has 2 RAM slots, I thought I would see if I can find a better board for the CPU, but before I buy one more thing, I thought maybe it's time (or maybe LONG passed time) I asked for some help.
Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do to corner the problem? Has anyone ever had a similar problem & solved it & would you be able to share your solution with me? Does this sound like a Motherboard problem? Am I FINALLY on the right track? I can give more details, but it seems like this may already be more info than most people can stand.
Thank you in advance.
Assistance is GREATLY appreciated.
 

bamim2

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No. Not specifically. It has no discrete graphics card in it currently. It's using the GPU in motherboard, which is another reason I've been thinking the problem is the motherboard. I'm also not familiar with a program I can use or any way that I can test the GPU specifically, except to put a Graphics card in system. I'm open to suggestions though. Are there any free programs that are good for this sort of thing?
 

bamim2

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Sorry to be so slow, but please help me understand. Is your reply one sentence? Or two; a statement & a question? Is "Unique Benchmark" a software program? If so, do you mean "Unigine Heaven Benchmark"? Or some other? Or are you (rightly) commenting on me lamely (is that a word?) not including any specific info in this thread? The motherboard is an ECS, model "A740GM-M" & with an AMD Phenom X4 9750 CPU.

Or did I miss the whole point & totally misunderstand what you meant? I truly appreciate the help, I'm just slow at understanding, so if your would be kind enough to clarify, that would help me a great deal. Thank you!

 

Ilijas Ramic

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they are many posibilitys one ram he can easy die second gpu third mobo and last is cpu he dies last and its hard to die but i would say to check first the gpu do you hear any beeps when you turn on the pc if you hear for exmp 2 short beep beep and loong beep that means gpu dead or not inserted good in the slot
 

bamim2

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When the system booted it make one beep, just like it is supposed to. As I stated in the original post, I have swapped out RAM with other working systems & RAM was not the problem. I tried 2 other PSU before the one that's in there now. The PSU was not the problem.

After trying everything I could think of that made sense, I tried something that didn't really make sense. I put a 1GB Sapphire Video card in this system & this system ran for 1 month without crashing. Previously, it had not run for more than 2 weeks without crashing. Since it ran for 1 month with no problems, it looks like adding the video card did the trick. I have thought & thought about this problem & even talked it over with a few other people. The only thing I can think of that could have been causing this problem was that the VGA socket on my motherboard does not make a good connection, so when the VGA cable is plugged in it moves the socket to where the connection finally gives out & the system crashes.

My thinking is that it was probably moving the ground. That way it would work for a while because the ground is still there, it's moving enough every once in a while to the point where there's finally not enough ground for the circuit to work. The ground may move away from itself & create an open circuit on that part of the motherboard or maybe the TTL chips are looking for voltage between 3.5 to 5VDC for the logic of "HI" & after a while the ground drifted off so they were getting less than that. Even 3.4V to a chip that's looking for at least 3.5V is off enough be a problem. It may even work MOST of the time with 3.4V, but after a while that may just fall into the "HUH" range for it & it's not a Logical "HI" or "LOW".

I could be wrong about the "WHY" this fixed my problem, but I am pretty sure it's fixed. Even if I get 1 month of run time out of it without it crashing, that's good enough for me if all I have to do is just reboot it to keep it working. I've been fiddling with this WAY too long & the only fix before this was for me to unplug every cable (USB, AC, Network etc), open it up & pop the RAM out, put it back in then put everything back together.