PC Stress Test

Hi

How do you actually do this, i have a PC that keeps locking up at random times

I am yet to pinpoint if its hardware or software related as its difficult to make it freeze up

PC is

Core 2 Quad 2.40

Nvidia 680i SLI

4 Gig of RAM

500Gig Sata

Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX

I could be there a long time swapping out each individual component as i would have to wait for it to freeze up and then change the next item as a process of elimination

Any ideas would be great

Lee H

Find more posts tagged with

SAVE $250 on Your Boot Camp — Use Code "EXAM26"

Exclusively for TechExams members for Infosec Boot Camps starting before April 30, 2026

View Boot Camps

Comments

astorrs

My personal fave from years ago: http://www.burnintest.com/

Lee H

Thanks, downloading it now, not sure if it will run fully as you have to purchase it

astorrs

Yeah I'm not sure about how the eval works these days. I still have a copy of 3.0 that I use (it's still able to beat up hardware like the best of them).

Let us know what you find out about the eval limitations would you?

nel

have you had a look on the ultimate boot cd as i know it has some benchmark tests although ive never used it for this. Take a look at its tools...

http://www.ubcd4win.com/contents.htm

Thats a good cd to have about.

There's a app called phoronix test suite for linux which does benchmarks but im pretty sure you have to install it on a linux build and cant run it from a cd. Suppose you could do it on a live cd if you wanted to go to the trouble of doing it.

Also, you could share your issue and we can put some idea's across?

Lee H

I have ran the stress test from Burnintest.com about 6 times continous and as yet it has not fallen over, we have 4 PC's of this spec all from same place all with identical hardware, and yes youve guessed it, all with same problem

I just cant get it to freeze up on me, been on it all day

Lee H

nel

When you say it freezes does the OS completely crash and need a switch on/off? or is it when you are doing anything in particular? have you changed/removed ram, pci devices? def sounds like a hardware issue, maybe a conflict between devices if its a complete freeze.

Are they dell pc's? We've had a few highend dell workstation which used to crash for some bizzare reason and it was down to the mobo firmware and the hardware/software setup we were using as the were custom pc's, so we upgraded the firmware. it was weird as we had a dozen or so and some ran fine on one firmware version and the rest did not, even though they all had the same image and same hardware etc. We've also had problems with soundblasters causing havoc with the firewire and everything - all very bizzare behaviour

Mishra

Lee H wrote:

I have ran the stress test from Burnintest.com about 6 times continous and as yet it has not fallen over, we have 4 PC's of this spec all from same place all with identical hardware, and yes youve guessed it, all with same problem

I just cant get it to freeze up on me, been on it all day

Lee H

I've haven't seen very many times where I was able to force hardware errors. Most of the time I have to take educated guesses. How long does it take to lock up normally?

Lee H

Yes it completely freezes up needing a reboot, no particular program is being used when it happens, ive also heard that this particular chipset is problematic

undomiel

In that case I would make sure that the chipset drivers are up to date. Also if you're using embedded video then get those up to date as well. Dusting the machine would be a good idea as well.

Ahriakin

Have you done a fresh OS install, if they came preinstalled most OEMs have a ton of conflicting junk on their installs. Still 9 times out of 10 intermittent freezing like that is due to overheating. Also it might be the heat on the components indirectly in that as components heat up their resistance increases (by relatively small amounts), if your PSU is already running near the edge and the heat increases enough you could run into issues with power. Summing up if it was me I'd make sure it was my own install of the OS, remove the case cover temporarily and make sure the system is well ventilated, add a beefier PSU for testing at least.

Lee H

The PC is still passing the Burnintest.com, I also have running on same screen Speedfan reporting to me the temp and level of CPU usage, its not even going 100%

This is a strange one and in my opinion the most difficult to troubleshoot, I am still not convinced if this is software / hardware related

Will let you know if I get to the bottom of it

Thanks for all your input

Lee H

astorrs

Just as an FYI the burnintest stuff is really designed for use on new computers (for about 72hrs) prior to deployment to make sure they aren't lemons. Any less than that and you aren't going to see those kinds of problems.

As others said since you're having the same problem on 3 other systems your problem is most likely software (inc drivers) related. Start with a clean OS install and WHQL drivers only, then work your way up from there.

benbuiltpc

Check out Hiren's Boot CD

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

You can download the image using your preferred BitTorrent client.

dynamik

I'm going to mention this just because astorrs doesn't approve. Spinrite runs a pretty rigorous routine on your disks. Unfortunately, it's $90.

burnintest.com looks pretty cool. I'll have to check that out.

My VCP instructor said that once they started doing 72-hour burn-in tests before they deployed their servers, it dropped their failure rate by something like 80-90%. That's huge and definitely worth remembering!

Lee H

Hi Guys

Update on this issue, burnintest run over and over again with no issues, that is the case on all 4 of these PC's that keep freezing up

The issue i have with only 2 of them is when i run a program that downloads a lot of data to the PC, about 70 gig and it takes about 2-3 hours. 2 of the PC's just freeze up so i have to press the reset button. Although this is intermittant and may not even freeze up

The processor usage and memory usage is very low during this download of data to the PC

Any ideas?

This PC cannot go back because if they do the same burnintest type program it may come back all clear but that is not the case

Thanks for your time

Lee H

Lee H

Hi Guys, more info on this, sorry for the double post,

It has just frozen on me again, here are the temps from speedfan on point of freeze, can someone spot anything abnormal

System 5C
CPU 49C
AUX 50C
HD0 46C
Core0 63C
Core1 61C
Core2 59C
Core3 58C
Core 72C not sure what this is?

Any help would be great this one has me bald, lol

Lee H

undomiel

You didn't mention earlier that it was several computers experiencing the same problem. That's important info to know! Those temperatures don't seem excessive to me. It is sounding more like you have either a buggy program or some buggy drivers on the computers. Make sure all of the drivers are up to date. Does it just lock up or is there a blue screen associated? Is there anything being reported in the event log that looks suspicious?

Lee H

I do apologise udomiel for lack of info

We have about 8-10 of the same PC but only 4 have had the same issue as freezing up, these have now been passed to me to look into

The PC does not blue screen and nor is there any entries in event viewer

Out of the 4 that have been given to me i cannot get 2 of them to freeze attall so they are going back out to an end user for further testing, i am out of ideas to try and pinpoint what this issue is

I dont think it is going to be drivers as all 4 of these PC's have had the same XP image copied to them, this was important for me to do so as to identify a software issue that would happen on all 4, but its only happening on 2 of them

Any ideas please let me know

Thanks

Lee H

undomiel

No apologies necessary, it happens!

All of these computers are built the same, right? Are they all kept in about the same area? Is it just one particular program that freezes them? You mention it is transfering large amounts of data. If you transfer large amounts of data with a different program will it cause the same lock up?

Lee H

Udomiel you took the words right out my mouth, were on the same track with this

I am about to copy and paste 50gig from the server and see what happens

Will let you know the result

Lee H

Lee H

I have copied over 50gig of files down to the PC and both times it completed

Is there anything else i could try to verify if this is actually a software issue

Am out of ideas on this one

Thanks

Lee

undomiel

You could try copying the 50 gigs from one problem PC to the other problem PC and then back again that way both upstream and downstream have been pushed and see whether it will lock. Also this way you'll have tested several times.

Lee H

I have downloaded 50gig 3 times now and i am satisfied the issue of it freezing is not related to this task, this however this is all that is happening when i run the program that actually makes it freeze up. Very odd

It just goes to show that us teckys have limitations and sometimes PC issues require the skills of a completely different profession to resolve

Thanks for your help guys esp. undomiel

Lee H

dynamik

Check out IOMeter: http://www.iometer.org/

Lee H

Hi

I have an update

The folder i created on the root of C: called test which i copied the 50gig of files to from one of our servers, i came to delete this folder and the it froze up, i rebooted then it froze up again, on my 3rd try at deleting this folder it actually deleted

Does this point to hardware or software related issue

I am still not convinced which is at fault

Lee H

undomiel

For clarification, are you saying that it froze up when you tried to boot up, or it froze up after you had booted and were trying to delete the files. Did it freeze at the beginning of the delete or during the delete? Do you have any antivirus currently running on the machine?

Lee H

It froze as soon as i started to delete the 50 gig folder, but it only happened twice, after rebooting for the second time it finally deleted the folder

Because i cannot re-create this fault it virtually impossible to pin-point the cause, its randomly freezing up as and when it feels like

undomiel

Reinstall and run as minimal as you can. Just windows with your program running that is downloading all of the data. No antivirus or anything else. See if it freezes like that. Then slowly start introducing things into the system.