Dell!!

[Cheesy Peas]

right.. my mum has a dell and it keeps gettin stability problems when its been left on for a while and im just curiuos what the temps are the thing is i dont know if there is a temp diode on the board and if there is how do you read from it....?

Its a dell Optiplex GX150 with a PIII 800
i dunno anything about the board apart from its the 815chipset and the PLL is a ICS 9250-08

any help?

 

[james.miller]

try downloading speedfan or motherbard monitor 5

 

[skou]

Try pulling it apart and clean out the HSF, sounds like it might be over heating.

steve

 

[cursor]

Yeah. Cleaning out the case is a GREAT idea. Be sure the power supply fan is turning. When those die it'll do all that.

You may want to get her to back up her stuff, get out the restore CD and do a clean install, too. That sounds like a 2 year old Win 9X machine. 9X gets hosed up pretty easily.

 

[Huckleberry]

Double check the HSF to make sure it still is working. I had a computer that had a failed HSF and the computer still ran fine. I only knew about it because I smelled something funny. Apparently the heatsink without the fan working dissipated enough heat to avoid a meltdown.

(This might be an interesting poll: how many of your have ever acted like a bloodhound trying to identify the source of a smell you knew was an electronic part failing? Many times I have sniffed-sniffed my way through various offices looking for the offending computer or monitor.)

 

[james.miller]

come on guys what good is reinstalling the h/s gonna do if he doent know the temps? for all you guys know, it could just be a crappy heatsink, not a badly installed one.

kieronholden: do what i said earlier and i install one of those programs, take a few notes of the temps, and then get back to us

 

[Cheesy Peas]

Hiya guys,
thanx for the feedback:

The heatsinks quite big, but it is quite cool to the touch, which could be good or bad, ie not removing any heat from cpu.

the last time it had a fresh OS was about 3months ago, its runnin 2000 SP3.
Im gonna put XP back on it because it seemed more stable with that on it, shall i get rid of the thermal pad on the cpu and replace it with something a little more competent?

cheers, oh and the psu fan does work, kind of a werid design tho, it sucks hot air from the hd via a duct, and the pushes it put through the psu out the back, sounds like its only running 7v tho, anyway of upping it?

 

[james.miller]

get those temps that we asked for first. but i can tell you now that a thermal pad and a pIII-800 do not mix.

still first get the temps so we can see whats going on

 

[Cheesy Peas]

cant get temps, crappy dell bios... doent work with mbm5 or speedfan... any suggestions?