My DAW just took a nosedive...

[Wilty]

..I was merrily plunking away with some stuff, litereally just had a kick drum and one VST Instrument track open in Cubase and nothing else when Cubase hung. Ok, I thought, gotta love Cubase, I'll restart. But I was unable to bring up task manager. The whole PC hung. So I did a hard reset and nothing comes on again-the fan and the blue LED's behind the fan go but the actual computer doesn't-no hard drive noise, no beeps, nothing.
Any ideas? My step-dad said some machines shut themselves down if the CPU overheats but I had basically nothing running through it and it was only on half hour. The other think he said is something to do with a memory failure. I've switched it off, unplugged it and am letting it think about what its done but does anyone have ideas as to what this might be as I'm stumped?

[EdRyan]

If you've had a memory(ram) failure then you would get this sort of behaviour.

It's rare for both ram modules to go at once. Pop your pc open and remove one of them. if everything comes back on again, then you've hit the jackpot. If not, then swap the modules and test the other one...

[Wilty]

Crap, just got the one 2gb module in there, will have to get some more and hope thats it. I was gonna whack some more in anyway so its not entirely a loss, assuming it is memory failure.

[JAYDMF]

RAM, GFX or maybe even processor can cause this sort of stuff to happen. If you have a standalone gfx card id suggest pulling this and the ram out. try firing up the machine. with both of those missing your board should start spewing out fault beep codes. usually (but it does depend on your bios) 3 short beeps = ram, 1 long and 2 short or the other way round indicates gfx (not gonna beep if you have onboard gf too tho). if you have a ram problem now it should be beeping anyways really but it may well be full of holes.

If you get no joy from this your gonna have to reseat the processor. just take the sink off, pull the processor out and then put it back in, just causes a discharge or static that may have built up on the processor. whilst the procesors out just pop the battery off the board which will clear any overclocks or potentially unwnted bios settings.

If theres no joy after that you have one of two problems 1) dead board or 2) dead psu. first port of call would be to try another psu if you have acess to one.

Whilst your doing all this fettling i suggest disconnecting your HDD both power and data so you dont give windows a heart attack from all the restarting etc.

[tehlord]

Sounds like it could also be a PSU failure. Can you see what wattage it's rated at and more importantly what brand it is?

PSUs have failed on me more than all the other PC component put together. Until I started using Antec ones that is.

[Wilty]

I did spend a bit extra on the PSU when I got it, I know its an Antec box. Will have a look at this tomorrow when I'm not 2 thirds of the way through a bottle of wine.
I am the least computer savvy person on the planet when it comes to the internals, I think I'll have to rope someone more in the know into checking it out hehe.

[tehlord]

Originally Posted by Wilty

I did spend a bit extra on the PSU when I got it, I know its an Antec box. Will have a look at this tomorrow when I'm not 2 thirds of the way through a bottle of wine.
I am the least computer savvy person on the planet when it comes to the internals, I think I'll have to rope someone more in the know into checking it out hehe.

In my experiene Antec make about the best PSUs out there so hopefully it'll be one of those. I've built literally dozens of PCs so you can rope me in to help out if you want

I am certainly not an expert however!

[JAYDMF]

Originally Posted by tehlord

In my experiene Antec make about the best PSUs out there so hopefully it'll be one of those. I've built literally dozens of PCs so you can rope me in to help out if you want

I am certainly not an expert however!

Antec do make good psus but best out there at the mo are Enermax, Zalmann, Tagan and Corsair IMO. what they put on their ratings is usually constant output (on the higher end stuff anyways) rather than peak that you'll find on most psus upto about the £50/60 mark. Personally in the past 2 years ive stuck with the Zalmann HPC range as theyre quiet, feature a heatpipe and have plenty of juice too boot, that and theyre very efficient.

[tehlord]

Originally Posted by JAYDMF

Antec do make good psus but best out there at the mo are Enermax, Zalmann, Tagan and Corsair IMO. what they put on their ratings is usually constant output (on the higher end stuff anyways) rather than peak that you'll find on most psus upto about the £50/60 mark. Personally in the past 2 years ive stuck with the Zalmann HPC range as theyre quiet, feature a heatpipe and have plenty of juice too boot, that and theyre very efficient.

Yep, same deal with Antec, constant output ratings. Not had one pop since I went with them and my current 450W unit is 200W under the recommended rating for my setup. Nice

[Wilty]

I went RAM shopping today, wrote everything down except the amount of pins I needed. Lesson learned-take old memory with me so I know what I need for next time. Annoying though.

[JAYDMF]

Originally Posted by Wilty

I went RAM shopping today, wrote everything down except the amount of pins I needed. Lesson learned-take old memory with me so I know what I need for next time. Annoying though.

Wouldnt worry about pin count as long as you buy DIMM and DDR or DDR2 at the right clock frequency you should be fine.

[EdRyan]

Originally Posted by Wilty

I went RAM shopping today, wrote everything down except the amount of pins I needed. Lesson learned-take old memory with me so I know what I need for next time. Annoying though.

That is bad service from the shop. They should ask which CPU you have and how old your machine is, from that they should be able to guess with a fair degree of confidence what type of module you need.

On the other hand, look back and smile. There are much better deals to be had online. Maplins wanted double the money for the memory upgrade then online sellers.

[Wilty]

Yeah I know I'd get a better deal online, I just wanted it sorted asap. I wronte down what was written on my ram thinking I'd find the same brand (Corsair) but no, both PC World and Maplin only had the same one brand. Odd.
The guy I spoke to was about 12 though, and I don't think Maplin can really afford the best somehow. But he was at least polite, which in this town is a rarity. This may sound silly, but which number is clock speed? I knew the DDR2 and DIMM bit but clock speed is new to me.

[EdRyan]

Originally Posted by Wilty

Yeah I know I'd get a better deal online, I just wanted it sorted asap. I wronte down what was written on my ram thinking I'd find the same brand (Corsair) but no, both PC World and Maplin only had the same one brand. Odd.
The guy I spoke to was about 12 though, and I don't think Maplin can really afford the best somehow. But he was at least polite, which in this town is a rarity. This may sound silly, but which number is clock speed? I knew the DDR2 and DIMM bit but clock speed is new to me.

The part that follows DDR2 is the clock speed, although it is misleading. Some good info on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR2_SDRAM

You can buy memory that is too fast, and it should clock down with no issue. But if you buy memory that is too slow, you are in for a world of trouble.

[Wilty]

Thanks man, I'll check it out.