Computer Stuttering - Voltage?

[TinCow]

My computer has been acting funny for a while. For the last year or so the mouse has been intermittently wonky... hanging and dragging at seemingly random intervals, with the cause disappearing as randomly as it appeared. About a month and a half ago, it starting getting a lot more frequent, and my entire system started experiencing slowdowns. It had been a LONG time since I had formatted and I was about to leave on vacation, so I just lived with it and went away. After getting back from vacation, the problem was still there. About last Friday/Saturday, things got much, much worse. It suddenly went from being an occasional problem to a constant problem that I couldn't get to go away no matter how many times I rebooted. The computer was also suddenly taking about 5+ minutes to boot when it normally takes 60 seconds.

So, I sucked it up and formatted over the weekend. I'm now running a fresh install of XP with all updates and not a whole lot else. The problem cleared up immediately, and my computer boots very quickly again. However, the mouse was still acting wonky... so just for the hell of it I tried another mouse (yes, yes... I know I should have tried that about a year ago). Well, turns out the problem isn't the mouse. The other mouse I tried experienced the same stuttering, but I use that one regularly with my laptop and it definitely is not faulty.

I then started surfing the internet for info on computer stuttering issues. A saw a lot of talk about temperatures and voltages, so I checked Speedfan, with the following results:



The temperatures all look fine to me. The GPU has a 'hot' icon next to it, but that's a GF 8800 and those things run hot. That temp looks normal to me for an 8800. However, there's something on there that concerns me greatly. The +12V field is showing less than 2 volts. I watched it for a while, and that's the stable result for that field.

I know absolutely nothing about computer voltage. I'm not even sure what that +12V is measuring. So, I could use some help here.

1) What does the +12V field measure, and what does my sub-2 volt reading mean?
2) If the reading is abnormal, could it be causing my stuttering issues?
3) If the reading is abnormal, what (presumably piece of hardware) is causing the problem?

[Tellos Athenaios]

(1) +12V, -12V, +5V, -5V, etc. refer to ‘rails’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_supply_rail
The names refer to input voltages, but the CPU should never, ever, run on 12V since it will stir-fry itself before you can boot. Just look: on ~2V it is already as hot as 57°C: you are proposing 6 times more is 342°C ‘worth of termal load’ (and that is presumably on the outside [most CPU's do not actually allow you to read core temperatures] where it is in fact much cooler). In many ways a CPU is exactly like the heating element of a electric boiler, a very efficient boiler at that...

The reason why there is a 12V input voltage is that it requires less amps to deliver the same amount of power as it would with 5V input voltage (roughly 12/5 times less amps) -- apart from the fact that with less amps running through a circuit you will also suffer less power loss as a side effect of the fact that the circuitry itself has a tiny bit of resistance and the power loss throughout a stretch of wire is a function (depends on) in that resistance and the amount of amps running on the wire.

(2) ~2V is the actual volts on the CPU. I don't really know much about what these readings are supposed to be for normal conditions; but I always thought that anything over 1.5V was kind of ‘much’.

(3) Software readings are terribly inaccurate. You may want to cross-check with other programs.

(4) Maybe your mouse port is damaged.

EDIT: A quick Google search yields this surprising post: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/....html#t1748496

I've noticed a number of posts that indicate a problem with speed fan on reporting voltages. It appears that it is looking at a incorrect address and when it gets an invalid Nr, it reports it's rail limits, ie 0 for min and a very high valule for the upper.

If the computer boots, and is normal - IGNORE them.
as Several have pointed out, use the bios, better yet if you have a voltmeter, use it (always better than software interrupted)

Most PSU's have a tollerance of Plus/minus 3%

My system, speedfan reports:
+12V is 1.28V
-12 V is -16.97
Remainer (Vcore 1 and 2, +3.3, Both +5 abd VBat appear corect.

[Whacker]

Never trust software voltage readings in any program, they were inaccurate even back in the days of MBM. Go into your BIOS and look at readings there. Voltage will drop on rails depending on how many devices you have attached.

I'm going to guess that you don't have spare parts laying around to swap in and out?

You might try and burn a cd with this image, boot and let it run for 72 hours. Yeah, it's a long time, but if it comes up with errors, that could indicate other weirdness.

[TinCow]

Voltage shows as normal in BIOS, so that's a relief. The mouse issue was intermittent after the format; rebooting often made it disappear. It was definitely not a port issue, because the two mouse I tried were plugged into different USB ports.

There's something new now though. Shut down my computer last night without any problems. I was happily playing games on it without any issues. I wake up this morning, turn the computer on, and windows fails to boot. First I see a screen saying "invalid boot.ini" followed by a screen saying that the \system32\hal.dll is missing or corrupt and needs to be reinstalled. The only things I installed yesterday were Speedfan and GIMP (graphics software), so I doubt that's the issue.

My current suspicion is that the HDD is going bad. Thoughts?

[edit] I'm currently using the XP install/boot disk, planning on using it to repair the missing dll. The boot HDD isn't even listed in the available partitions... it's like it's not even plugged in, but it is and BIOS sees it. If there are compelling reasons to think it's something other than the HDD, please let me know because based on what I'm seeing I'm going to pick up a new drive immediately after work this evening.

[edit2] Opened up the case and fiddled with the cables to see if they somehow came loose. The computer still refuses to boot with the same errors as before, but the HDD is showing up again with the windows install disk. However, it shows the drive as ~75gb, and all of it as freespace. The drive is a 100gb drive, so it's not seeing the ~25gb, which approximately corresponds to the space that's already got data on it.

[Tellos Athenaios]

hal means hardware abstraction layer and is a key component of your OS: without it your OS is unable to ‘talk’ to devices (including your harddisk).

Apart from that my guess would indeed be the HDD (second guess would be badly behaved software [deliberately] breaking your boot.ini/hal). Plus, the capacity of the disk (100GB) makes it sound like its an old one too.

[TinCow]

Plus, the capacity of the disk (100GB) makes it sound like its an old one too.

Yeah, it's an old one. I don't remember how old, but its the last remaining IDE device in my box. If I had to guess, I would say 5 years old.

I have to say, I'm very disappointed with the durability of HDDs. This is the FIFTH HDD I've had actively go bad on me in the last 8-9 years (across a total of three computers). Two of those drives were in a box I use as my house server and which runs 24/365, so that's a bit understandable... but two of the drives have gone belly up inside my personal box, and the other one did so inside my wife's box. Both of us turn our computers off while we're at work and asleep, so they don't clock up a lot of hours. Five HDDs is also too many for just bad luck... these things just burn out often and it annoys me greatly.

Still... I'm grateful it looks like it's just the HDD. Of all the devices it could have been, that's definitely the easiest one to replace (now that I've already formatted, that is).