DescentBB

(Jeez, it's been a horrifically long time since I've posted here...)

Okay, to preface this post, I am a complete and total newbie when it comes to computer hardware. The most complicated thing I've ever done was to add some RAM sticks to a Dell machine years ago, and even that was accompanied by a whole ton of sweating on my part that I would completely destroy the system. As such, now that I've entered into a situation where it seems as though I need to start looking into new hardware, I have no idea what to do, and knowing that a lot of you guys are just about the best around, I figure I'd start asking questions here.

My current machine is a Dell Optiplex GX280 that I purchased almost four years ago when I started college. Here are the system specs right now, as far as I know them; I can go hunting for any additional info that's needed:

Pentium 4 3.0 GHz w/HT
160 GB Maxtor 6Y160M0 HD
512 MB RAM
ATI Radeon X300 64MB
Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit
Windows XP Professional SP2
Assorted DVD+RW drive, network card, etc.

I don't know what sort of RAM is in there or how exactly it's laid out (although I could easily visually check the latter), and I have no idea what kind of motherboard this is (nor what sort of ports it may or may not have available) or what power supply is in there, so those are elements I'd need help in ascertaining.

Anyways, I'm currently experiencing what I suspect is a rather severe problem. Over the past few months or so, my machine will intermittently go into a hard lockup for several seconds. It usually starts by the hard drive light staying steadily lit for a few seconds as the screen either partially or completely freezes. I'll sometimes hear what sounds like a very brief beep after that, and then my machine will start making a rather horrific series of rhythmic clicking-esque noises. These will sometimes continue for a good twenty to thirty seconds, at which point I usually turn the machine off manually. Other times, they'll stop and be followed by a short period of frantic hard drive activity, at which point everything that was frozen on-screen will rapidly un-lag itself. This phenomenon usually occurs completely at random and even if the hard drive isn't currently doing any discernible activities. It'll often repeat itself several times in a row, at which point I'll usually move to turn the thing off and on. Sometimes, this entire affair culminates in a lovely BSOD with the cryptic message \"KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR\" at the top; Googling this didn't net me too much outside of Linux answers. (And once in a while, the BSOD won't even display any text, just a solid blue screen.) There are also a few times when the system will lock up for a second or two, make a single clicking noise, have a burst of HD activity, and then return to normal; these events are usually more spaced out than the previous ones and can go on for some time without resulting in a BSOD.

Now, the first time I noticed this occurring, I suspected it was a sign of hard drive failure, since I remembered people in this forum talking about the \"click of death\" in the past. On a few occasions, I've opened up the case (a real pain in and of itself, since it's a horrific clamshell design) and stuck my head in when the sound was occurring, and as far as I can tell it sounds like it is indeed the HD. (However, I had a friend tell me he had a similar noise that turned out to be a power supply problem, so take that as you will.) This would also fit with the fact that the machine seems to be taking longer nowadays to read and write data to/from the HD, even after it's been freshly defragged. (There was also this one occasion when, in a fit of not-so-intelligent rage, I kicked the case quite hard, and the thing immediately started making a sound that could only be described as sanding metal. I have no idea how it started up after that and managed to preserve all my data to boot.) In lieu of that suspicion, I've backed up the majority of my important data to DVDs; I really need to sit down and do the rest of it one of these days.

Now that I've described all of that, here's my central question. I've been toying with the idea of building my own almost-top-of-the-line system for a while now, and these problems I've been experiencing with this machine have made it look even more appealing. However, I won't have an actual job until I graduate from school this May at the very earliest, so gathering up the funds to build a brand-new machine could be an issue. Plus, I'm sure my family would gladly take this system after I'm done with it, if its current problem could be resolved in a simple-enough fashion. So, first-off, do you think that this problem is being caused by a failing hard drive, and if not, do you have any suggestions as to how to find out what its actual cause may be? Secondly, in either case, do you think it would be worth my while to pour a bit of money into 512MB of additional RAM, a much better yet still rather cheap video card, and whatever needs fixing? I'd be fine with a system of that level for the time being; the most graphically-intensive thing I play on here at the moment is FS2_Open, and that'd really benefit from even a moderate upgrade. It would still be useful to whomever I passed it on to, and I'd be able to build my own monster machine when money permits. Also, if I did go that route, would it be feasible to buy a new case and transfer the innards over, since the aforementioned Dell case is all kinds of awful and gets next-to-no airflow?

To anyone who made it through all of that text, thanks a lot for your time, and thanks in advance for any help you may be able to provide.

First: your hard drive is probably failing. When a protection circuit goes off in a PSU it can make a clicking sound but you have to stick your ear right up next to it to hear it. However you would know it was the PSU because the computer would abruptly shut off completely.

Drives that size are exceptionally cheap these days, just replace it with a new one. The metal on metal sound you heard was probably a fan inside the case with a worn out sleeve bearing (which can also lead to crashing if something overheats, but it would usually happen more often). Back up your important data and replace the drive as soon as possible.

As for transferring all the components out of that case and into another case, it depends on if dell used some freakish proprietary layout on their system or not. If it is still just a standard ATX system under all the dell garbage you could transfer it from the case, but that would probably be a huge pain in the ass and not worth the effort.

If you have a spare slot, upgrading the RAM to 1 GB total would be easy, even if you don't have a spare slot you should just buy a 1 GB kit, throw out what is in there currently and it should work fine. Also hardly an expense these days as memory prices have dropped a lot.

I think Krom is exactly right. My impression is that either the recording media on the hard drive's disk is developing some \"bad\" or \"weak\" areas, or the actuator (arm) and/or the read/write heads are developing problems. That accounts for the occasional delays and lock-ups because those are typical when the computer has to retry getting/writing data. The \"clicking\" or \"tapping\" is often associated with the drive re-setting the read/write head actuator (arm) in order to retry what it was attempting. Failure to retrieve data would also result in the errors you've described. Lastly, when you're *not* using your computer (and it's on) Windows (I assume Windows?) often does a little \"housekeeping\" in the back ground. The thing that's probably saved you thus far is the (quote) \"self-healing\" design Microsoft used in the Windows file structure (assuming NTFS) and your defragging the drive (gives the compy a chance to move files away from failing areas).

You *might* be able to restore normal behavior after re-formatting, but it would be temporary at best. The drive is probably failing and re-formatting won't prevent that.

Better save what you can as soon as you can, replace the hard drive and rebuild.

Sorry. No fun at all. But this might give more good reasons to build your desired system.

I remember my old computer having similar symptoms. The cause was a damaged hard drive. The drive went dead after a few days, taking all its data with it.

The cause of the lock-ups was that the drive had to repeatedly retry reading from or writing to the page file.

My recommendation: Get your data out of there, quickly.

Checking the SMART data of the drive(s) might be worthwhile.

Thanks for the explanations. I've been coming to terms with the fact that it was most likely a HD failure for some time now, so this should work out all right. I was looking for something to do this afternoon anyway; I guess making a full backup is as good as anything else.

In terms of hard drives, do you have any suggestions as to what brands I'd want to look for/avoid? And would there be any sort of compatibility issues I should worry about when adding RAM? And if I haven't tried your collective patience enough with these questions, are there video cards out there in the $100 or less range that would be worth my while in terms of replacing what I already have? Thanks again.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php <-- very nifty SMART tool in this program

Top Gun wrote:In terms of hard drives, do you have any suggestions as to what brands I'd want to look for/avoid? And would there be any sort of compatibility issues I should worry about when adding RAM? And if I haven't tried your collective patience enough with these questions, are there video cards out there in the $100 or less range that would be worth my while in terms of replacing what I already have? Thanks again.

I kinda like seagate lately because they give you a full 5 year warranty on all their drives, but in terms of reliability all of the brands have their faults sometimes. They are hard drives and hard drives sometimes fail, sometimes a particular model or family of drives is really bad (if anyone remembers the IBM Desktstar "deathstar" problems) but you can just avoid that one type and usually be fine.

For the memory upgrade, you do have to pick a compatible type for your system. I would just go to www.crucial.com and use their memory advisor tool to find out what type of memory you need and the highest capacity the system supports then go buy it off newegg.com or some other site you prefer.

Top Gun wrote:In terms of hard drives, do you have any suggestions as to what brands I'd want to look for/avoid? And would there be any sort of compatibility issues I should worry about when adding RAM? And if I haven't tried your collective patience enough with these questions, are there video cards out there in the $100 or less range that would be worth my while in terms of replacing what I already have? Thanks again.

Avoid most drives from the less well-known manufactures and I usually avoid Fujitsu, Hitachi, Western Digital, and IBM. I have some Western Digital drives that have been very reliable, but I've seen quite a few that have failed much too early (also, the "Western Digital" brand has changed hands several times). I've not been pleased with a lot of the IBM drives, though some perform real well.

That leaves Seagate and Maxtor ... Seagate has had good drives and stinkers, but most Seagate drives I've used lately worked well. Most Maxtor drives I've used worked well and lasted long though I've seen a couple of them die early and some of the Maxtors just didn't perform as fast as I thought they should (but they usually kept on working).

Sometimes it's a bit of a crap shoot like Krom said. Regular backups are a good thing (and worth the investment).

Since you have the optiplex, the only parts you would be able to get out of the system and toss in a new system would be the RAM, CPU, Hard drive and maybe the CD drive. You won't be able to use the video card, unless you can find a full size bracket for it. Honestly your best choice right now is to buy a barebones kit and buy a brand new system. Gotta love dell's slim line cases, blech!

Like I said, though, I'm interested in keeping this system operational in some form, whether for myself or as a hand-me-down, so pouring a bit of money into it is worthwhile in the long run. If, like Krom suggested, moving the innards from one case to another isn't worth the effort, then I'll gladly stick with this one. Also, I suspect you may be thinking of one of the smaller Optiplex models, because this case is every bit as bulky as my family's 7-year-old Dimension system.

In any case, I'm currently embroiled in the always-frustrating process of a full file backup, but I'm hoping to find time to look for a good price on a 160GB Seagate or Maxtor model over the next day or so. I'd like to get this taken care of ASAP, before I find myself staring at a useless brick of a system.

Also look for a program like ghost, if your old drive still works you can mirror it over to your new drive and the system will be as if the drive was never changed.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... me=Seagate

Newegg has always been good to me... and usually the lowest priced.

Wow...those prices are a lot lower than I expected. Heh, now I have to figure out if I want to go up to 320GB.

Make sure your dell supports the format. (IDE, SATA etc...)

...any easy way for me to figure that out?

The computer is 4 years old, its most likely pata

PATA is a long ribbon cable with 40 pins, SATA is short and sort of looks like USB

ccb056 wrote:The computer is 4 years old, its most likely pata

PATA is a long ribbon cable with 40 pins, SATA is short and sort of looks like USB

My one meter long SATA cable would like a word with you.

From what I remember of the inside of my case, it's definitely connected to the motherboard via a ribbon cable. So, if that's the case, I should be looking for PATA, then?

Edit: Er, wait...according to what I'm reading, PATA is equivalent to IDE, right? I just don't want to buy something that'll end up being completely useless.

PATA / IDE are the same thing (or use the exact same 40 pin ribbon cable anyway), a SATA cable is unmistakable from a PATA ribbon cable since they do look a lot like a USB cable. If you say its a ribbon cable then it is definitely a PATA/IDE drive and thats what you want for a replacement.

Also note there are two things about PCs that you can pretty much count on.
1: you can never have \"too much\" memory.
2: you can never have \"too much\" hard drive space.

So when you replace this drive, if you are still planning on getting a new system later, just get a small inexpensive drive to fix up this machine and when you build your new system get a 500 GB or larger SATA drive depending on what the prices are. You will definitely want SATA in your next system anyway since a lot of boards these days come with 1 or even no PATA ports.

Yeah, I'll definitely go all-out on the system I build, but if I can get a 320 GB drive for this system for less than $100 (which this one seems to be), then I'd certainly spring for it.

Edit: Wow...good thing I did some poking around on Dell's website. According to this model's documentation, not only does this motherboard have SATA connections, it also has a PCI-E slot and three RAM slots available. (Apparently, the ribbon cable I remembered was for the DVD drive.) I'll double-check inside the case just to be safe, but this certainly seems promising. I might be able to do a lot more with this thing than I first realized...

Krom wrote:

ccb056 wrote:The computer is 4 years old, its most likely pata

PATA is a long ribbon cable with 40 pins, SATA is short and sort of looks like USB

My one meter long SATA cable would like a word with you.

hrm, maybe short wasn't the right choice of words, I meant to say the actual point of contact is less wide than pata

Okay...assuming I am working with SATA (I haven't cracked the case yet), how does this choice look to everyone? I'm nearly doubling my storage capacity for less than I expected to spend in the first place, which suits me just fine.

I have this one in my system: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148140

Picked it up a bit over a year ago when I rebuilt my system. I prefer this type because the newer recording technology allows it to have fewer platters, and fewer platters means longer life.

Sounds good. I put in an order tonight, so hopefully I'll have the thing by the start of next week. Thanks for all the help, everyone; after I get this installed, I'm sure I'll need to check back in about RAM and a new video card.

I just wanted to pop back in and say that the new drive is in and working just fine. Installation was a breeze (other than the several hours of Windows Update cycles afterwards...); I never realized it was only a matter of screwing a few screws and plugging in a cable or two. After I get everything settled with this, I'll have to look into that RAM upgrade.

Edit: Okay, I've done a bit of browsing on the RAM issue. Right now, I seem to have a single stick of 512MB DDR PC2-3200 in there. I have four slots in total, which can each hold a gig of DDR2 PC2-4200, DDR2 PC2-5300, or PC2-6400. The price that Crucial gives for the full 4GB is $92 or so, but it looks like I could get the same amount for $80 on Newegg, depending on the particular brand. I'm not entirely sure that I want to spend for the full amount, though I'm leaning toward it a bit, since I know I'd probably be best served by doing so. What's your take on this, and are there any brands I'd do best to avoid?

You probably won't be able to access the full 4 gigs anyway. I am a little fuzzy on this issue, though. A lot of discussion has passed both ways.

From memory.... WinXP 64bit will see all 4 gigs.
WinXP 32bit will not. Though I think you can tweak it to see all 4 gigs? Can't remember.

According to the references I've seen on Microsoft's website, XP Professional is capable of handling up to 4GB of physical memory. However, this page on that Crucial site contains somewhat of a caveat. After reading it, I'm still not entirely sure whether or not having the 4GB would be worthwhile; it sounds like the extra space would be used by something, even if it wasn't available to normal system operations, but I don't know if that translates into a performance benefit.

I have also read somewhere that having 4 gigs can mean a slight performance hit, if you can only use 2, due to the extra time it takes to refresh the extra memory.

Sorry for the bump-age, but I've finally gotten around to doing a bit of reading about this 4GB of RAM question, and it's a rather interesting issue. (This thread in particular had some good information, as did this page and this HP document.) Apparently, Windows XP 32-bit supports up to 4GB of physical memory, as well as 4GB of memory addressing. The problem with using 4GB of physical memory originates from the fact that that 4GB of addressing has to be shared between physical memory and other device requirements, the most prominent source being the RAM on your video card. As a result, you'd generally have only 3-3.5 GB of available addressable physical memory at any given time. Now, most of the newer generation of CPUs apparently have an extendable switch called PAE, which allows for 36-bit memory addressing and would increase address space up to 64GB. However, not all chipsets support this, and 32-bit Windows XP doesn't allow the extra memory to be used to begin with, so that's a moot point.

This leads me to my one real remaining question. Someone in the thread I linked to above was wondering how to proceed with a RAM upgrade given the 4GB issue. Apparently, DIMM memory works most efficiently when two memory chips of equal size are paired off with one another, so this person was wondering if the .75GB or so reduction in total physical memory available would be offset by the increased speed of pairing off RAM sticks up to 4GB would bring. The response he received was that it probably would be worth the trade-off to allow for dual-channel mode to be enabled. Now, I currently have the single stick of 512MB RAM in my system. If I purchased three 1GB sticks, I'd be holding at 3.5GB, but I also wouldn't have everything matched up. If I purchased two 1GB sticks and a single 512MB stick, I'd be at 3GB, but the two 512MB sticks wouldn't be the same brand (I don't know if that makes a difference). If I went ahead and purchased all four 1GB sticks, I'd max out the system, but I wouldn't know how much of that would be currently usable. I do plan to get a better video card than the 64MB one I have at the moment in the near future, but anything I purchase still won't be near a top-of-the-line model. Given all of that information, does anyone have an opinion as to what the best route to take would be?

use a 64-bit operating system and go with 4 GB.

or stick with XP and get 2GB.

even if XP32 could use all 4GB of RAM(and it can, using PAE) 2 GB would be reserved for the kernel. You can tweak that so only the kernel gets 1GB, but that has stability issues.

That would seem to fly in the face of the information in the article I linked to; specifically, \"...the way Windows XP allocates the 32-bit virtual address space that each process gets. By default, that address space is split evenly between the operating system and the program.\" If the address space is split in half between the program and the OS, wouldn't making each half as large as possible by going for more RAM be the most worthwhile approach? As for using PAE, at least one or two of the users in the thread I linked to expressed the belief that it wouldn't apply to the majority of chipsets out there. Besides that, this Microsoft KB article suggests that XP SP2 limits the usable address space to 4GB to maintain driver compatibility, even with the flag enabled.

I'm finding it a bit amusing that what seemed on the surface to be a rather simple question has so much conflicting information available and involves arcane elements from the inner workings of the OS. I guess that's computers for you. In any case, I don't have enough money on-hand at the moment to make any purchases, but if I did, I'd almost feel like saying \"screw it\" to the whole affair, buying the 4GB of RAM, and seeing how everything works out.

I'll tell you right off that thinking about getting 4 sticks of RAM is not optimal. If you want 4 GB of memory you would be best off getting 2 sticks at 2 GB each. Fewer memory sticks means less capacitance which in turn means less power draw, more efficient access, and generally better timing. So rather than: \"memory works best in pairs\" the correct wording is: \"memory works best in a pair\".

Second, Windows XP 32 bit can fully use 4 GB of system memory, the 32 bit limitation prevents individual processes from addressing more than 4(2+2) GB, but Windows itself can use PAE and access the whole amount. And on any Windows system because of virtual memory any process can allocate up to 2+2 GB of \"memory\" even if you don't have that much physical memory. The physical memory and virtual memory on a system can also add up to more than 4 GB and Windows can still use it all.

But setting all that aside, unless you are running something that hogs a lot of memory, there is really not much need to go past 2 GB in Windows XP 32 bit.

Is there a way to determine whether a prog is memory or CPU hogging?

Okay, I feel like I'm finally getting a handle on all of this. (Jeez, does it really all have to be this needlessly complex? ) I don't think that there's anything in particular that I would need 4GB for, but when I found out that my system was physically capable of holding that much, and that RAM was so cheap, I had ideas of just going all the way. 2GB is probably far more prudent. Once I manage to finagle up a bit of money, I'll check in before placing the order.

Oh, and if I do go with the 2GB, would you recommend removing the 512 stick I already have in there, or just leaving it? If it's compatible with my family's PC (which I sort of doubt), I could always install it in there, since that thing is woefully underpowered.

Remove the 512 MB stick, otherwise it will get in the way.