Some odd problems

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On my windows 2K PC I have a number of things installed – Office, Visual Studio 6, Visual Studio .NET 2003, SQL Server, IBM Client Access amongst other things. My PC is a Compaq Deskpro EN with a 933Mhz CPU, half a gig of RAM.

I could do with a new PC to run things faster, especially .NET, but that’s another matter.

My issue is a series of problems that may or may not be related – I believe some of them are anyway. My sound stops working after my PC has been on for a while – works at first, then it doesn’t. Only rebooting temporarily fixes. Also, the same happens with video streaming. If I try to view a video on say http://www.youtube.com, it will play a couple of seconds (with no sound) and freezes. Again rebooting fixes temporarily.

An issue I think is separate is viewing PDF files in IE – they open and then immediately shut. I can download and open them OK in Adobe Reader 7.0

Can anyone point me in the right direction to fix these issues? Please don’t suggest rebuilding the PC!

Thanks

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Many “odd problems” are caused by everything getting too hot. Have you checked your fans and ventilation?

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My PC’s fan tends to go crazy if the PC has to do any hard work, e.g. running a Flash app, archiving email, compiling a VB app, etc., so maybe that might have something in it, allthough the hard disk was replaced only a few months ago so the box would have been opened and cleaned of fluff etc.

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>> My PC’s fan tends to go crazy if the PC …

If the fan is not cooling the PC down, this could be the cause. As a friend reminded me recently of Occam Razor principle (paraphrasing here) rule out the simple things first. Also check the Power supply and Memory.

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If your PC is suffering from heat exhaustion, file corruption and eventual “lock up” will occur at a minimum if left to it’s own time frame without you re-booting. My money is still on a heat problem as a root cause.

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