Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Technical Support => Topic started by: Lazerr on April 29, 2021, 04:21:37 PM
-
Title says it all, I can log in to the desktop, and get the task manager open. But the computer is non responsive.
The system idle process is at 99, and the computer is making a slight clicking sound, similar to when you open the game, but much shorter. I've been having issues with this periodically for the last few months, but now it's constant.
Is the processor bad?
I attempted to show the task manager so you can see what I see.
-
Let me add this is an 10 yr old dell xps with and upgraded power supply, gpu. I don't even think it's responsive enough to run a dxdiag on.
-
Are all the fans running? A CPU can heat up really fast and shut down, clicking might be the blades hitting something.
-
Are all the fans running? A CPU can heat up really fast and shut down, clicking might be the blades hitting something.
The clicking I described is when the computer is "thinking", it doesn't sound mechanical and has done it since it was new.
-
One time after a move, one or two of my CPU's heatsink/fan plastic anchors pulled out of the motherboard, and my CPU was overheating and shutting down. Might want to check the heatsink attachment.
Might deserve a disassembly and inspection and some new thermal paste.
Can you get to system temps from the BIOS before Windows loads?
-
Hard drive gone bad? Be my guess. Clicks of death. The CPU doesn't make any noise at all. Try feeling the hard drive and see if you can tell if the click is actually coming from there.
As for the rest I'd start with a thorough cleaning out of the case. Dust bunnies will get ya. I take mine outside and hit it with a leaf blower now and then. Just tie up the fans so they don't turn. They can become little generators and throwing voltage into the fan headers the wrong way can cause problems too. Blow out the PSU too.
Now that you have it open maybe reseat the CPU cooler? Clean off and replace the thermal paste too. It goes bad and if you hadn't for ten years it's way overdue.
If you do that and it's still making random clicking its time for a new hard drive. Back up what you can first and see about an SSD. They're cheaper these days and no moving parts.
Oh and stop watching so much porn! And the Brewers suck! Give up a run in the 9th. I needed that shutout for my 13 run pool!
Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk
-
I would start by seeing if your local computer service business can clone your hard drive to an SSD. It sounds like hard drive failure to me.
-
Since the CPU is idle 99% of the time it's not something CPU intensive running in the background. The memory usage is also very low so it's not that either.
Try booting into Safe Mode by hitting F8 (assuming that really is Windows 7) at boot to see if it's more responsive there. If it's better there, copy all your data to an external media. Cloning the entire disk to another isn't a bad idea either.
If the HDD is original, after ten years it has served well!
There's plenty of tricks to try AFTER you've got your data safe in case the HDD bricks in the testing/repairing attempts.
-
I vote HDD, I've had many die through the years.
-
Thanks for the replies guys, I'll dig in this weekend and report back!
-
I just replaced the hdd in one of my computers because it was dying. One of the symptoms was the clicking sound. I was lucky enough that there was enough life left in the hdd that I was able to successfully clone it. It was easy to do with the software that came with the new Crucial ssd.
:salute
Sik
-
Old hhd click when they go bad as they spin to retrieve data
SSD drives do not make any noise as they are just memory
My guess is hard drive or its controller on the motherboard
Eagler
-
The good news is you noticed this was happening. It's basically your hard drive saying, "Hey bud? I'm about to die over here." So if you act quickly and get another drive, preferably an SSD and clone the dying one to that you'll be good to go. It's easy enough to do. Just a few mouse clicks and I know you know how to run one of them! Don't let it go. It'll be that one time you'll go to start and it won't even click and that's gonna be the end of that. Make sure the new drive is at least as big or better yet, bigger than the old one. Smaller is right out, just don't.
If you can get it onto the SSD you'll notice faster boots and programs loading. Otherwise, everything will be in the same place it was before. And they're perfectly quiet.
Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk
-
The good news is you noticed this was happening. It's basically your hard drive saying, "Hey bud? I'm about to die over here." So if you act quickly and get another drive, preferably an SSD and clone the dying one to that you'll be good to go. It's easy enough to do. Just a few mouse clicks and I know you know how to run one of them! Don't let it go. It'll be that one time you'll go to start and it won't even click and that's gonna be the end of that. Make sure the new drive is at least as big or better yet, bigger than the old one. Smaller is right out, just don't.
If you can get it onto the SSD you'll notice faster boots and programs loading. Otherwise, everything will be in the same place it was before. And they're perfectly quiet.
Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk
You got any recommendations for how to videos or SSD? I don't use it much, just aces.
Ps. The dodgers suck :lol
-
They kinda do just now!
Anyway, check this one out. Jay does a good job of explaining the process here.
https://youtu.be/jZBDluCITmE
Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk
-
Clicking could be a dust bunny shorting something as well (I have seen it). As drano said give it a good clean.
-
Pretty strange, went 2 days in this computer coma we will call it, went to start messing around with it last night and it worked fine.
-
Still, random clicking sounds that shouldn't be happening might tend to be a bad sign on a ten year old machine. Especially if you haven't really messed around inside the case in all that time. Like Vulcan said It could have been a dust bunny and maybe it just moved. It could have been a stuck head on the HDD that just unstuck itself. Still not a good sign. Act now before the mushroom cloud happens! SSDs are fairly cheap. Everything else suggested is free and if you watched the video on cloning the drive, not hard to do.
Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk
-
Still, random clicking sounds that shouldn't be happening might tend to be a bad sign on a ten year old machine. Especially if you haven't really messed around inside the case in all that time. Like Vulcan said It could have been a dust bunny and maybe it just moved. It could have been a stuck head on the HDD that just unstuck itself. Still not a good sign. Act now before the mushroom cloud happens! SSDs are fairly cheap. Everything else suggested is free and if you watched the video on cloning the drive, not hard to do.
Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk
Yeah still going to get a ssd. I still can't open things like Google Chrome and other programs as it will start thinking too hard, and go back into the coma, but It will run aces high just fine. Got a few sorties in last night while I should have been fixing the problem. :D
-
Yeah that "thinking" sound you're hearing is the heads seeking on the platters. While you should hear some clicking on a mechanical hard drive, if it's getting really loud--that's bad. I have just NVME drives on this machine but put SSDs on my hoopty retro (98&XP) pc too. Quiet.
If it's just clicking away while you're basically doing nothing might want to see if there's something running in the background that's causing it too. Could be that porn site giving you a gift that keeps on giving! Start the task manager and look in the processes tab. Click on the cpu column so it sorts by the highest load programs. See anything there that you don't recognize or don't need running? Something that's got a really high percent number? Google it if you're not sure and find out what it is. If you don't want it running, right click on it and select end task. See if the crazy clicking stops. BTW, that cpu load at idle should be something like a few percent. And killing a program here might not kill it for long. It may pop right back up depending on what it is. If you haven't killed the service or stopped it at startup it'll come back at next boot.
Go to the startup tab and disable anything you don't want starting with windows.
Services are another thing. Lots of stuff there you don't need running all the time. Just taking away clock cycles from your CPU and making your hard drive and internet work for nothing. Google "black viper" . That page had guides for each version of windows which shows services you can just disable. It's like free performance. SOP for me.
Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk