SUCCCESS! Got my MPEG2 rendering back!

Grazie wrote on 10/18/2005, 12:29 AM

This is a BIG thank you to Johnny Roy, PaunzT (Tom), Kelly, Edward, BoomHower, Mahesh .. and especially the very patient Sony Support person ( I'll ask if I can name and re-edit) !

Well, good news - I can now MPEG2 . . . and so far it has NOTHING to do with the install of Vegas6c.

It was an ugly "carpet" of dust and larger particles, lying on top of the CPU fins. This "rubbish", having been sucked into the body of the PC, had been gradually building up on the surface of the CPU cooling fins for 2 years.

Now the serious point is that I was not getting anything that would have directly indicated this heat issue. How would I have known? In the future I should inspect to "see" the cooling fins, the cooling fins of the CPU, below and between the fan blades? What I saw, I thought, was some kind of "filtering pad", it was just like a carpet . .. honest! Yeah yeah yeah . . very funny - NOT!!

OK, the only time I was made aware of an issue other than a system/software one, was last Friday when I got a Blue Screen crash - never EVER had this before. On the blue screen was an IRQ error with its codings. Up till then I was only getting the Vegas quitting errors, and MS log files. So that this HAS to be a purely system/software issue. Till then Windows was still working and I could use other software - right? BUT, until and when I got a Blue Screen I could NOT do or think anything else. I was none the wiser either - neither were others - yes? But last Friday I rendered an AVI and for the first time THAT crashed the PC BIG time and I got this blue screen.

I would also add that I was asked by good guys hereabouts to check to see if the fan/s were working. My replies had been yes. I could SEE and hear the fan/s working. At the same time I was fortunate to be able to "hook-up" with and speak with our Johnny Roy about this and when I showed him this error . . . .

Now he knows I have the same MoBo as he, AND he read the blue screen it was something he too had got, I also sent him the "pictures" of the fan/s.
As I have said, the fans were working and spinning around and I could hear them. -At which point he said - "Hmmm.. you got your MoBo at the same time as I"

"Yes " I said.

" Hmmm.... That error IS a heat issue!"

"But my fans are working!?"

"OK" he says, "can you explain to me what YOU are seeing!" - It was then that I sent him a "picture" of the fans . .

Last Saturday I got busy with a stand up vacuum cleaner and a Grazie-adapted sucker extension that I could get gingerly and gently into the delicate areas around the CPU to pick up the falling crud being dislodged by my brushing with a 4mm soft artist's, sharp cut brush. It worked. I also got to grips with the other intakes, flowing over the hard drive cases, and power pack cooling ducts. It now looks like new.

Guess we should never over look maintenance. However, I didn't know WHAT to look for to "overlook" it in the first place! . Huh .. now I do!

I have been told that when a CPU climbs to its max temp it "throttles-back". It is during this throttling-back that the application will stall and then stop, allowing for the messages I did get, but not enough to crash and then get the blue screen dump heat codings. If I had got these then I would then have been able to report this earlier. Why did this happen later rather than earlier? Well my guess is that as the poor fan/s went into hyper drive they were attempting to draw in MORE cool air. This in itself exacerbated the issues as even more dust and crud was being impacted on top of the layer.

So, I have tested an big 1.5 hour AVI to MPEG2 render . . PC didn't even SWEAT! My PF is now working at 50% from before and the CPU is cruising from 75% to 100%, not even flinching.

Again, thanks people! And the Sony person too! You know who you are . . .

Best regards,

Graham "Grazie" Bernard

Comments

farss wrote on 10/18/2005, 1:06 AM

Glad it's finally solved. As a matter of course I regularly clean all the PCs innards. I use cans of compressed gas with a long nozzle to blast the stuff out in conjunction with a vacuum cleaner.
Worst enemy I think is carpet, the fibres slowly breakdown and guess where they end up.
It's not just CPU cooling you need to worry about either, optical drives don't work too well with dust on the lasers. Add to that dust buildup on HDDs causing them to loose cooling and it's quite an issue. One day I'll get off my butt and build or invest in some air filters for the work areas which might mitigate then need for so much cleaning.
Bob.

Grazie wrote on 10/18/2005, 1:12 AM

OMG! Sorry Bob . and thank you Bob too!

Yes, this stuff just creeps up on one. Bit like arthritis, rheumatism and balding heads!

Bob, I was a bit concerned about blowing canned air onto the surfaces of sound cards and MoBos? All that dust flying about?

G

PeterWright wrote on 10/18/2005, 1:37 AM

Grazie,

So glad you sorted it, and in hindsight this is similar to how I resolved my MPEG2 encoding probs about the time V6 came out - I changed several H/W and S/W things at the time and wasn't sure which one cured the problem, but it included what I "thought" was a good clean out.

A bit embarrassing actually - before putting the machine in for a service and some extra RAM, I opened up and saw a scary amount of fluff which I vacuumed away, or thought I had.

My PC builder later told me he had to give it a big clean out (after mine!) and put an extra fan in the case cover to improve cooling more.

So the message is clear - never underestimate the importance of keeping cool!

cheers

Peter

fldave wrote on 10/18/2005, 5:05 AM

Glad to hear you are back up and running.

It's kind of funny, though. I opened up my old workhorse PC Saturday to replace a hard drive and saw the same thing you did. So much dust that I don't see how any air was getting in there.

Dave

MarkWWWW wrote on 10/18/2005, 6:03 AM

Glad you finally got to the bottom of this.

You might like to install the PCProbe software that comes with your motherboard (Asus P4C800 according to your system details) which will allow you to keep track of things like the CPU and motherboard temperatures and also fan speeds and voltages.

Using this you will be able to see what is normal for your system and if/when a build up of dust/fluff starts to obstruct the cooling of the CPU you should be able to detect it and cure it again before it starts to cause instability in the system.

In particular it might be instructive to see how much hotter the CPU runs when doing an MPG encode than when doing, say, a DV AVI encode. Encoding to MPG is one of the most CPU-intensive (and hence CPU-heating) things a PC can be called upon to do and it is not uncommon to find that a system will run 10-15 degrees hotter when encoding to MPG than it does when doing almost anything else. That sort of difference is quite enough to push an otherwise perfectly happy system over the edge and into the region where crashes or at least instability start to occur.

Mark

filmy wrote on 10/18/2005, 6:40 AM

Thjis is funny..well not "ha ha" funny, but "isn't this ironic" funny...if you go back to a thread that I started a while back I had come asking for help because I had gotten a new system and it has a "safety" feature where it will auto shutdown and reboot if the CPU gets too hot. It only seemed to do this when I would run Vegas and try to render Mpeg. What it turned out to be was that any process that caused the CPU to work hard...very hard...and with HT turned on, would not only start to heat up things but it would draw more power...and what was really going on was the power supply was a bit too wimpy. Mpeg 2 rendring = CPU works hard = fans rev up to cool = more power drain = overheating/power drain and auto-reboot. Part of the irony here is that people said "is the fan working?" and "What is the temp?" and i got all this monitoring sofwatre to check things and notihg seemed strange. Temp rose only slightly, fan speed reved up but it was working. It wasn''t until I saw the power go from maybe 320 to above 500 I got what was happening. The power supply was only rated at 400 or so...I actaully have forgotten now because it has run smootly since that time.

And on another "like" note - and I remember saying this at some point around these parts but I don't rememebr what the context was - my mothers computer kept going through CPU fans for whatever reason. The first time, and mind you she never did any sort of graphics or NLE, she came to me and said somehting was going on because she kept getting lock ups and blue screens. So I went through everyhting I could think of and finally I opened up the case and saw the CPU fan was not working. I replaced it and that solved the problem. And about 8 months later it happened again...and it happened again after that. And I have a PC that is maybe 15 years old that has never had any fan issues...nor have any other PC that I have. So why this one system kept killing CPU fans is still beyond me but I will say this - her PC would always be massivly dusty inside the case. It seemd to act as one of those "Ionic breeze" deals where it filtered out all the dust. The location of the computer was not dusty at all, yet I got in the habbit of opening up her case every now and then because so much dust eneded up inside her case. I can only suspect that the dust had something to do with her fan failures.

Grazie wrote on 10/18/2005, 6:45 AM

Dave & Mark - thanks,

I have a CPU temp reader? Woah! Now THAT is something my PC builders didn't tell me about. I now feel, Mark, I should have a Temp dial, bit like the Oil Pressure/Temp dial we used to have on my Dad's old Rover! I can see my MONSTA! having a range of dials and whistles akin to the Flying Scotsman or the Mallard ! LOL!

But, yes Mark, thank you for taking the time out to view my specs. See, there is a reason to have your specs "naked" to the World!

Grazie

Chienworks wrote on 10/18/2005, 7:21 AM

I took these snapshots a few years back during my annual cleaning round of the PCs here at work. Ths computer was in a "clean room" office. Warning, they're rather shocking!

http://www.chienworks.com/kelly/archive/dust-0.jpg
http://www.chienworks.com/kelly/archive/dust-1.jpg
http://www.chienworks.com/kelly/archive/dust-2.jpg

filmy wrote on 10/18/2005, 7:24 AM

>>>I have a CPU temp reader? Woah! Now THAT is something my PC builders didn't tell me about. I now feel, Mark, I should have a Temp dial, bit like the Oil Pressure/Temp dial we used to have on my Dad's old Rover! I can see my MONSTA! having a range of dials and whistles akin to the Flying Scotsman or the Mallard ! LOL!<<<

hmmm...

Something basic like this?

Or something more along the lines of liquid cooling?

filmy wrote on 10/18/2005, 7:28 AM

Ok Kelly - that is just plan creepy!!! Somehting to be said for the high pollen counts up there eh? Maybe you should see if Howe Caves will rent you some space - nice and cool, not too dusty. Just have deal with a wee bit of wetness. :)

fldave wrote on 10/18/2005, 7:30 AM

Hope you're not processing food in your "clean room" !!!

Chienworks wrote on 10/18/2005, 7:40 AM

I'm sure that room is actually cleaner because the PC is in there collecting all the dust. Better to have it all in that one spot than getting into the parts we're building. One thing we did do for that office was to place "sticky" doormats in the doorway. They grab all the dust from the soles of shoes when people walk in. That took care of a lot of the problem.

Food processing? Probably not, other than the occasional candy bar that gets snuck in there against the rules. ;)

Grazie wrote on 10/18/2005, 8:38 AM

Yes, Kelly, but where are the pictures of your CPU fan/s? - Hmmm? I can beat that rain forest ANY day! ! ! G

Chienworks wrote on 10/18/2005, 9:05 AM

That PC didn't have a CPU fan. To be honest, most of our newer PCs tend to not get much dust in the CPU fan or heatsink. Most of the dust is in the power supply or in holes in the case.

Grazie wrote on 10/18/2005, 9:42 AM

Get READY for the HORROR! The HORROR! that was Grazie's fan/s . ..

JohnnyRoy wrote on 10/18/2005, 10:00 AM

Don’t do it Grazie! Those pictures aren’t fit for man nor beast!!! ;-)

Actually, I had the same problem earlier this year and I went crazy trying to debug it, testing memory, re-installing software, etc., until I opened the case and the problem was obvious. Heat issues are the hardest to debug.

~jr

Chienworks wrote on 10/18/2005, 12:20 PM

Grazie's pics:

http://www.vegasusers.com/images/grazie-aut_0065.jpg
http://www.vegasusers.com/images/grazie-aut_0066.jpg
http://www.vegasusers.com/images/grazie-aut_0068.jpg
http://www.vegasusers.com/images/grazie-aut_0071.jpg
http://www.vegasusers.com/images/grazie-aut_0078.jpg
http://www.vegasusers.com/images/grazie-aut_0080.jpg

Grazie wrote on 10/18/2005, 12:30 PM

Thank you Kelly . . nasty huh!?

Serena wrote on 10/19/2005, 12:15 AM

This has been a mighty useful thread. However my system is only a few months old, so I knew it wouldn't need checking for fluff just yet. Maybe I ought to that in another 6 months. I've just got myself a new graphics card so I've opened up the system and what do I find? The heat sink on the CPU is about 70% blocked with fluff. Doesn't look nearly as bad as Grazie's, but I'm glad I had another reason for looking inside!

Yoyodyne wrote on 10/19/2005, 12:19 AM

The HORROR!!!!

Grazie wrote on 10/19/2005, 12:27 AM

Nice one Serena!

70% fluff is loads! - Think about it for a moment. The more work a CPU does, the hotter it gets, the hotter it gets the more the fans are on for longer AND at the higher speed; the more this happens the more fluff and and stuff gets deposited on the fins; the more stuff is getting deposited the more hotter the CPU gets; the hotter the CPU gets . .. etc etc etc .. it is a NON-virtuous circle, leading to PURGATORY and eternal DAMNATION! ! !

See? . . . . . . I have become the self appointed "Minister of Fluff 'n Stuff"!

.. if you really really want, I can send you a picture of my "Grazie-Vacuum-Adpator" . . again, not for the squeamish. Just let me say it requires/includes: a plastic funnel; several lengths of flexible plastic tubing and strips of Gaffer( Duck)Tape. I suppose it could then be used for "other" types of cleansing .. if you are that way inclined?!? LOL!

Grazie

Grazie wrote on 10/19/2005, 12:34 AM

"Dirty Fans" The Movie is almost ready . . oh yes .. be afraid . .. be very very afraid . . . . .

.. maybe Kelly would like to host it .. ?

G .. .

ok .. I'm between bookings .. ok???

Serena wrote on 10/19/2005, 12:52 AM

Grazie, you should add a picture of your "cleaner-upper" to this thread. I've just finished with a brush and plastic tube gaffer taped into vacuum cleaner, but yours sounds more complicated and so must be better! Let's see it.

I've just mentioned this thread to my computer guru and he said he knew all about dust in computers, but he wouldn't have thought to mention that in connection with processing problems.

Serena

Grazie wrote on 10/19/2005, 1:03 AM

" . .but he wouldn't have thought to mention that in connection with processing problems" . .why not?

I can also include the MS Blue Screen I shot on my XM2? It is a bunch of error codes . .. I had NO idea what they meant . . .