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pics or this didn't happen

It depends on how badly the heatsink was caked with dust. I've had AMD Athlon 64 and Athlon XP systems clogged with dust before and have not had any of them shut down while in operation. The temps were getting quite warm but nothing serious.

Once the dust is cleared check all power connections and fan connections. Then check the capacitors on the motherboard to see if any of them are bulging. That's a sign of motherboard failure. If not then the power supply is to blame.

PSU, RAM, CPU, or MB. Very, very difficult to tell which. If you can boot into Memtest that can help. Otherwise you're generally left swapping in components til it goes away.

jonnythan wrote:PSU, RAM, CPU, or MB. Very, very difficult to tell which. If you can boot into Memtest that can help. Otherwise you're generally left swapping in components til it goes away.

CPU problems usually don't boot up anyway so that should be an easy one to cross out.

JC Viper wrote:CPU problems usually don't boot up anyway so that should be an easy one to cross out.

Not usually, but they sometimes do. Especially when the CPU has insufficient cooling. I've seen a HSF get slightly separated from the CPU. It would overheat and shut off during bootup. It was the last thing I checked, because the HSF clips were still on and the fan was working fine. Turned out the clip had broken in the middle and there was a little bit of space between the HSF and the CPU.

JC Viper wrote:Then check the capacitors on the motherboard to see if any of them are bulging.

I had an older computer with an EPOX MoBo, after several years of use it started to cr@p out all the time. All the caps were bulging and leaking. I called EPOX and they ended up re-capping the MoBo for about $20 US, cheapest fix I've ever had for a PC. That computer still works...

dr_bar wrote:

JC Viper wrote:Then check the capacitors on the motherboard to see if any of them are bulging.

I had an older computer with an EPOX MoBo, after several years of use it started to cr@p out all the time. All the caps were bulging and leaking. I called EPOX and they ended up re-capping the MoBo for about $20 US, cheapest fix I've ever had for a PC. That computer still works...

In the years 2000 - 2003 many motherboards had bad capacitors that contained really low quality electrolyte formula. Something about Chinese/ Taiwanese manufacturers stealing the recipe and Japan got wise about it and left out a few components and the Chinese/ Taiwanese copied an incomplete formula.

Then there's the other explanation of heat causing the cap to bulge...

I still have an HP Pavilion from the 1999 era with an old Slot 1 Pentium III and it still runs with no manufacturing faults present. Ahh the days when HP made quality computers and still had tech support in Texas (I called tech support in 2000 and got a guy with an accent fitting of a Texas prison guard).

jonnythan wrote:

JC Viper wrote:CPU problems usually don't boot up anyway so that should be an easy one to cross out.

Not usually, but they sometimes do. Especially when the CPU has insufficient cooling. I've seen a HSF get slightly separated from the CPU. It would overheat and shut off during bootup. It was the last thing I checked, because the HSF clips were still on and the fan was working fine. Turned out the clip had broken in the middle and there was a little bit of space between the HSF and the CPU.

The good thing about processors from the Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 era and is that they can run for a bit without a heatsink and not damage the processor (or at least catastrophically) by changing their clock speed at a given temperature.

Tom's Hardware should do a follow up story on todays newest processors and see if they still have this capability with multi-cores (3 - 4, dual cores are fine).

JC Viper wrote:The good thing about processors from the Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 era and is that they can run for a bit without a heatsink and not damage the processor (or at least catastrophically) by changing their clock speed at a given temperature.

Tom's Hardware should do a follow up story on todays newest processors and see if they still have this capability with multi-cores (3 - 4, dual cores are fine).

Not all processors from that "era" have that circuitry.

The one in question was a relatively modern Sempron 2800+. I'm not sure about Celerons, but AFAIK Athlon 64, Phenom, and Core 2 processors all have the capability though.

OK...research time. My Norton subscription will soon be expiring. I could still use it but I would not be getting any updates.

So-o-o-o-o.....what are the opinions on what anti virus software I should use next?

Everyone says that Norton is a resource hog. I could use some space back in the RAM. What other anti virus is good but takes up less space than Norton?

http://free.grisoft.com

that would be avg anti virus free edition. Best one out for the price.