Computer Freezing

[Ehart]

Hello.
Im running an Acer Power1000 small form factor, well 9 of them. within a week 4 motherboards fried, just 1 month out of warranty. I happened to find a company which deals with acer parts and replaced the mboards for 150 ea. vs 500 which is what acer wanted...

I digress. 3 are running fine now. the fourth was running fine then all the sudden stopped. it took me a day to get the hdd to spin. then it would freeze during boot up. I have cleared the cmos, reconfigured the data in setup. Now i can finally get into windows. i can only complete maybe 3 tasks then it freezes again. Upon restart.. freezes. I have been able to run a memtest which came back fine, check disk, unplugged drives, swapped PSUs.. nothing has worked thus far.
And i am certain it is not virus related.

Any ideas what to try next? My final thoughts are that the mboard could be faulty or bad RAM bays? wouldnt that return errors on a memtest tho?

[disophisis]

I had a computer that kept getting BSODs which ended up being because of a bad memory slot. I had run a memtest earlier which hadn't picked up anything wrong with the memory. I ended up taking the memory out and switching it to a different slot and the computer hasn't had a BSOD since.

[dryvit]

Acers, Acers, Acers....

Powerful, Until they dont work.
Stylish, Until the easily scratchable outside gets scratched.
Top of the line, Until the next month...

I still have my old Acer Aspire 2870 from 1998 and it still works aside from the onboard video failing.

My other Acer: an Aspire E360 just died, never try to do bios updates cause they usually fail.

Hopefully when i get my new one, (read my system on my profile.) it will be better.

[Danniboy]

i agree with disophis, it does sound very much like the ram, or be it the ram slot, i cant help but think of the cpu aswell, but if it was the cpu overheating in someway it would simply restart or power down. i suggest u try switching the ram about, mabe with another system even? then let us know what happens, if anything changes etc.

Danniboy

[sittas87]

but if it was the cpu overheating in someway it would simply restart or power down.

A computer freeze can also result in cpu over heat.
swapping out RAM is still strategy,but do pay attention to overheating as well

[Ehart]

Thanks for the ideas,
I have checked the cpu, seems to be running at a reasonable temp, i was concerned about that because when i replaced the mboard i never put new thermal gel on the cpu, but that doenst seem to be causing the problem (the other 3 were put back together the same way and work fine)

How would a ram slot go bad all of the sudden? if i put a stick of ram in improperly, it wouldnt work right off the bat, right? this ran for a few weeks then crapped out.. I guess my next move is to take the ram out of this machine and put it in another and see what happens. If it works in the other machine i will have to then try taking out the supposed bad mboard and swap it and see if that works. then its time to get a new board.. any more thoughts are welcome.

And no, i am not an acer fan at all.

[sittas87]

Good startegy ill suggest you continue with it. but do make sure that theres enough cooling on your cpu.