10-year old desktop: intermittent shutdowns

[Maikl]

Hello,

I'm still using a 10-year old desktop computer;
it runs Mint 18.2, xfce 4 .
recently, it has started to suddenly shut down when I browse websites or watch YouTube.
Yesterday, it turned off right after booting up before I even logged in.
I need to restart to get it in working order.

Once shut down, it gives a regular beep...1-1-1-1, reminded me of a smoke alarm or
a fridge/freezer at first.
I searched for beep codes, but I cannot find this 1-1-1-1...thing.
This happens every other day or so. Now, its up and running fine for nearly 3 hours.
Also, when I watch Youtube on full screen I have to reduce the resolution from HD to 480,
otherwise the video will stall and stutter.

Is my old rig going kaputt?

system Computer
/0 bus Motherboard
/0/3 memory 2012MiB System memory
/0/a processor AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 380
/0/a/0 memory 128KiB L1 cache
/0/a/1 memory 512KiB L2 cache
/0/0 memory RAM memory
/0/1 bridge MCP61 LPC Bridge
/0/1.1 bus MCP61 SMBus
/0/1.2 memory RAM memory
/0/2 bus MCP61 USB 1.1 Controller
/0/2.1 bus MCP61 USB 2.0 Controller
/0/4 bridge MCP61 PCI bridge
/0/4/8 enp1s8 network RTL-8100/8101L/8139 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapte
/0/5 multimedia MCP61 High Definition Audio
/0/6 storage MCP61 IDE
/0/7 enp0s7 bridge MCP61 Ethernet
/0/8 storage MCP61 SATA Controller
/0/9 bridge MCP61 PCI Express bridge
/0/9/0 display GT218 [GeForce 210]
/0/9/0.1 multimedia High Definition Audio Controller
/0/b bridge MCP61 PCI Express bridge
/0/c bridge MCP61 PCI Express bridge
/0/100 bridge K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technol
/0/101 bridge K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
/0/102 bridge K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
/0/103 bridge K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
/0/d scsi0 storage
/0/d/0.0.0 /dev/cdrom disk SPD6002T
/1 scsi4 storage

[tinca]

Hi Maikl

if it is 10 year old I would look at re-seating the CPU. The original thermal paste is well past is best before date.

Best regards Keith

[Maikl]

Hi Keith;

Thank you for your reply.
thermal paste is for cooling i guess.
After the first shutdown I used some programme to check the temperatures
and they seemed ok at the time, now remember the figures, there was no colour red at least.

[Portreve]

Well, see if you can determine which model of motherboard you're running. Or, more specifically, who makes the BIOS in your system.

When you've determined that, take a look at BIOSCentral's beep codes page]. Maybe you'll get lucky.

[BenTrabetere]

Another culprit could be bad caps. It is possible the motherboard, graphics card and power supply on your system were manufactured using dubious capacitors from that era.

Read about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague and here https://www.badcaps.net/index.php.

Open the case and look at the capacitors on the motherboard and graphics card - you have a problem if you see any swollen capacitors or brownish, crusty gunk on or around the capacitors. You may have to remove the graphics card to fully inspect it.

Clean out the dust bunnies while you have the case removed.

[tinca]

Maikl,

I built a new computer a few years ago and it would not run for more than a few minutes. There were no errors in the logs as it never had time to write them. It would just stop and reboot straight away.

It turned out to be bad bios. Intel said they were surprised by this as the board manufacturer was one of their main partners. I was advised to go to the motherboard web site and see if there was a newer bios available. There was, so I installed it. The problem went away immediately, and the computer has never been turned off since, as it runs "Protein Folding" for "Stanford University". You could look for a newer bios and see if that would help you.

Best Regards Keith

[151tom]

.

[FreedomTruth]

Once shut down, it gives a regular beep...1-1-1-1, reminded me of a smoke alarm or
a fridge/freezer at first.
I searched for beep codes, but I cannot find this 1-1-1-1...thing.

As far as I know, beep codes generally signify a problem with either CPU, RAM, or Video card. I wouldn't necessarily rule out bad capacitors, though... After checking that the critical hardware physically looks okay, try running memtest.

[Maikl]

Thank you.
Will open the case tomorrow and have a look,
there's no dedicated GPU that will need removing to get a closer look.
Today, like yesterday, it's running fine.
I had searched for Ausu beep codes but couldn't find any description for this regular beep, however next time
I'll let it beep a bit longer instead of rushing to shut it down completely.

[Maikl]

Hello,

no bad caps to be seen.
Today, I had two shutdowns and it is indeed a longer beep
at regular intervals...after the second shutdown there was no beep at all!
Yesterday I was online for about 4 hours and suffered no shutdown,
but once, for a fraction of a second, the screen went black.
I need to buy a new computer sooner or later anyway.
Some bigger stores here have adopted that Black Friday thing, or turned it into
a black week...I'll check if there are any offers.