Running fast and crashing

[rainydaysnmondays]

Hope you can help with suggestions - this is a problem I had earlier in the year - in September the processor went into the shop for the exact problem. Now its occuring again...

 

I've put the system details below - if you need anything else as well as asking can you tell me where to find the info please - competant in using the PC but the technical side of things baffles me:

 

The problem started when I was using the game Farmville - you can hear the PC pick up speed, the fan comes on and the whole thing slows down. There is a 'whispering' sound from the processor then the power suddenly shuts off. Over time it got worse so when I was only doing college work in Word it would shut down without warning. The repair shop cleaned it and did a system restore because Windows was out of date and corrupt data as it kept shutting down during the updates. No viruses or anything were found.

I asked about more memory but was assured that as the game is online and flash based it isn't greedy and it just needed a clean. That was September. Its just started doing it again so does it need a £35 clean again? Its only doing it on Farmville at the moment but I hear the 'whisper' at other times- even when I logged on here.

 

What I'm using is below:

 

Fujitsu Siemens SCALEO T (around 4yrs old - I've had it a year)

Intel ® Pentium ® 4 CPU 3.40GHz 1.00GB of RAM

Local Disk C Total size 232GB Free Space 212GB

 

I'm using XP Home Edition 2002 service pack 3, browsing with Firefox

I have SKY broadband though a phone line and use Avast Anti Virus, I update everything as and when required

 

All the PC has on it is internet, browser, email, a few photos and documents and Microsoft Office - its mainly used on the Net

 

Can anyone suggest anything that may be causing it and any solutions - I could just give up Farmville but I fear I'd need counselling first :)

Thank you!

[Synapse]

Flash games are a little heavy on processing, and so your CPU will need the fan speeding up a little, but...you should not be able to hear it too much.

 

That P4 is a hot CPU, and the fan bearing will have become noisy with use.

 

It needs a new cooler, something like an Arctic for a P4 socket 775.

 

Also, try using Google Chrome as a browser, its s little lighter on resources.

 

1GB RAM is just fine for XP.

 

BTW, I had a 3.4GHz one of those Scaleo's and did the same to that.

[rainydaysnmondays]

Thanks very much - I did a bit of a Google search before I took it in to the shop in September and had discovered the Scaleo runs hot and others had experienced similar problems.

 

The guys in the repair shop didn't seem interested thought - someone had suggested an additional fan which they didn't want to do either - I'll get some recommendations of where to take it for repair along with your comments

 

Thanks again

[Dalo Harkin]

1GB of RAM is fine for XP with pre SP3, anything using SP3 requires 1.5GB of RAM

the additional RAM will stop the CPU throttling which will stop your CPU overheating

[Plastic Nev]

Also I might add, please don't spend money on something you can do yourself.

Fitting Extra RAM is as easy as undoing the screws that hold the cover on, also if in need of another clean out, is also easy to do.

If you are inclined to give it a go we can advise how to do it, that way the only expense will be the cost of the extra RAM, not lining someone's pockets for them to do a job they may not even be interested in doing.

Believe me, it is incredibly easy to do if you follow our advice if we are asked to give it.

Nev.