Is my processor giving up the ghost?

[malaise]

Hope you can help me. Occasionally my PC turns off mid-use or will not start up. Often the error message is something like "System hung for improper CPU speed" so I've changed the CPU speed (it's now down as low as 1000mhz!) , but it still happens on occassion. Once the PC is up and runnign everything is A OK. The processor is only about a year and a half old... What's happening?

[fo3nix]

What CPU is it?

[malaise]

AMD Athlon XP 1500

[fo3nix]

Hmm ok. I assume you're changing the CPU speed in the BIOS? Does it have good enough cooling etc? And hs it always done this?

[malaise]

I don't know if it has enough cooling (or how I would find this out). I'm changing it in the BIOs if / when it wont start up. It's only been happening for a few months, and I had it checked out by some computer type guy, who said there was nothing wrong with it since it had started up normally and was running normally for the whole day . It runs normally for me, except these sporadic shut-downs...

[fo3nix]

OK well it sounds fine then as far as the hardware is concerned. Either you have a slightly faulty processor with some sort of intermittent problem (this will need a new processor), or it sounds like some sort of software problem.

I presume you do all the spyware/virus checks, have a firewall etc.? What version of windows do you have?

[malaise]

Yeah, I run spyware checks quite frequently and have up to date antivirus... I use XP Home.

Thanks for all your help, you've been great :)

[fo3nix]

I'm really not sure what it is. If the CPU was overheating, I'd expect it to collapse after a few minutes, max. If you know what you're doing, try downloading and running Knoppix:

http://www.knoppix.org/

It's an operating system like Windows, that you download and burn to a CD. Then when you put the CD into your computer and restart from Windows, it loads Knoppix. Can be very useful sometimes. It won't be using any of the software or drivers that come with Windows, so if you can run Knoppix fine for much longer than you can run Windows before it crashes, then it sounds very much like some software problem in Windows.

You just have to make sure that in your BIOS, its set to first try and boot from the CDROM, then from your hard drive (perhaps IDE-0 in BIOS). That way it'll load Knoppix before it even tries to find Windows. Then you can restart Knoppix, take out the CD, and Windows will run as normal like it always has, without any knowledge of you running Knoppix!