See at this point, the CPU paste costs more than the cost of this PC. Besides with time, other things may also fail in this older PC. With some vital sites not loading one after another, I really must try Live CDs of a more recent few OSes to see if it helps. If not, I have to prepare to salvage what I can from this PC and recycle the rest. Nothing is forever.

Member response
 

Hi,
Sorry but that is not the proper compound to use for a CPU. Thermal Paste will last for years. Where using something that will cause damage because no proper heat transfer between the CPU and sink. I have been working with Electronics and computers for over 40 years. Never in all those years have I ever heard something so stupid as to use a vegetable base to provide transfer of heat. No way this will work over time. Silicon Thermal compound is not expensive and you are putting hardware at risk by using methods that are absurd. Really, you should shut down that machine ASAP clean both the CPU and sink then use a good thermal compound.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip:

Member response
 

Hi,
You can purchase a small tube of paste for less than $5 at any Computer/Electronics supply.

I am through wasting my time making suggestions to someone who will not listen to reason.

Your logic is a failure! No common sense let alone any good experience using Electronic equipment.
Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip:

Thank you for your suggestions, please don't take my tomato paste use on CPU as personal. So far it is still working fine and Xwindows has not crashed on my PC, also the CPU performance has improved.

Edited to add:
CPU paste is not 5 bucks or less here, usually around 12 bucks with tax locally. They sell old P4 on local Kjiji for 30 bucks sometimes, also on freecycle folks give them for free.

Member response
 

Hi,

You can also get single application plastic packs that are used for a single installation. 3 oz tube can be used for a lot of installations. I've got a 6 oz tube that I keep to make client repairs and that has lasted for years when kept in a controlled environment. Most will last if you keep the product sealed and in a controlled environment with no large temperature swings.

I do not take this personal other than you do not take our advice to heart thus wasting our time. Try getting a thermal pad for this install. Cheap and efficient but this will dry out faster over time. Becomes brittal from large temperature changes over time.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip:

I will keep an eye out for CPU paste and thermal pad for single installs etc.,

Thanks I do consider all suggestions. Even this idea to use tomato paste I got it via a user here who said that some have even tried cheese as an alternative to CPU paste, I searched for that youtube video and then saw a video where they tried several other substances as alternatives, some didn't fare as well.

Presently, on idle the CPU usage is dropping to even 3.3% after the addition of tomato paste over my CPU. Before 7.7% was the lowest it went on idle.

It might work for a while. But think about what happens to food as it ages. Eventually thats going to be one stinky machine.

Plus tomato paste is acidic, it will probably etch away the parts over time.

The amount was very insignificant for it to be corrosive or stink. The main concern is how long will it be effective ? Is this a short term solution or will it last a while ? Time will tell.

^ somebody who tinkers with hardware should have a tube of thermal paste around.
full stop.

Funnily enough, I came on some posts yesterday about using food dyes to refill printer ink cartridges. Apparently they work quite well.

32-bit support prematurely obsoleted
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?is...171009#opinion

This is a very nice article. Not all need 64 Bit yet and the hardware is also not ready. We still need our old PCs. :))

this is an interesting article, esp. the 2 tables.
the 2nd table has something i have been missing ever since i started reading & posting on linux forums: a comparison of ram usage under load, browser with youtube, which is 90% of newbie complaining use cases.

I am in a bit of state of shock today, a contact of mine who even has a dedicated dos PC for doing assembly level programming has just moved from P4 to C2D as the P4 got to be too slow for the web. Now this contact really knows and loves old PCs, hence, it is a very significant mile stone.

Can You Live / Game On An Intel Pentium 4 In 2017?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLSH6Fky8pQ

The WEB does have other uses gaming you know!!!

I don't feel anything special about Pentium 4. Pentium III and Pentium M were great, but during the Pentium 4 era AMD had better and cheaper offerings. The success of AMD at the time forced Intel to make CPUs which were compatible with AMD! Regardless of that humiliation, the Core 2 processors outdid AMD at their own game and they're still quite good.

Why cling on to Pentium 4? It doesn't have the same retro feel as a Slot-1 CPU, and a Core 2 Duo is vastly better while also being pretty darn cheap. I just picked up a Core 2 Quad desktop for about $35 shipped. It's over ten times faster than my fastest P4 ever was (and 7 times faster than the AMD Sempron 3100+ systems which I still use, from the P4 era).

It is nostalgia as it was during the peak of my life as well as in terms of my IT use. Hence, the attraction to P4 still.

It is not just nostalgia. it is as much to do with not buying a new machine and throw the old away when it still does what you want to do perfectly well.
If you're not into gaming, there is very little need for a super fast expensive new machine.
I do have a faster, more modern, more portable machine, but the screen and sound quality are no where near that of my 15in Dell P4 based luggable.

P0rn!

Well, since 90% of the games I play are DOS or Win3 games, I would find a P4 to be overkill for many of them when running in native modes. I often run on higher processors and game in DOSBOX or a virtual machine, but with a 486 or early Pentium processor I would most likely run native using FREEDOS.

Coem to that, FREEDOS comes with a ton of games and I have not explored all of them. Perhaps I should!

Perhaps the earlier versions of FREESDos came with games, the more recent version didn't have games last time I checked.

Presently using a browser/OS from 2012 on this older PC. If few more sites worked for me with this P4 then I will be ok with it. Perhaps I need a more recent OS with update browser, dragging my feet on this.

Yes, update, I can still use my old Latitude C400 with the most recent Slackware and palemoon or chromium. No need to be on an old OS.

Very good point, I can't use an older PC with older OS and then complain, it is nostalgia with bad results, this I admit. However, the outcome is also expected.

Since I added tomato paste over CPU, yesterday I had my first crash, had PC on for over 24 hours and did a lot of things too fast, then XWindows crashed. CPU usage without youtube varies at a peak of about 24% when typing lots, touches a low of 3% but is usually around 7%. Will observe for this more and see.

Well if you will use cooking ingredients rather than the proper stuff, what do you expect??

Thank you for your comment. It is after 10 days since I used the tomato paste, that too for intense PC after running it nonstop for over a day. So it is not too bad, but will monitor more and see.

i found a fully functional 64bit athlon minitower with 160GB hard drive on the skip.
it had only 1GB RAM, but i still have 8GB from my last motherboard (incompatible with my current mobo), plus an oldish nvidia card and all peripherals... the final outcome is pretty decent :D

Enjoy :)

Xwindows crashed again just now, was not using it heavily, CPU use was not too high but watched a few youtube videos just few moments before and CPU use was at 100% then.

CPU is probably overheating due to lack of proper heatsink grease :P

Is it just that or can something else also be causing it ? Or perhaps there is more than one reason for this issue. Time will tell.

When stating something like the above, if there are other factors I need to be sincere and can't hide it.

Here are those factors:
1. Pet parrots feathers and feather dust. I have small pet parrots that shed feather dust and feather bits sometimes. Now on their own this is not bad for me
as I can clean outsides, however, these also go inside PC and accumulate over time.
2. Roach droppings
I have some roaches and last time I opened the front panel of this PC, there were
quite some roach droppings on top of the DVD drive, floppy drive etc.,

These can also contribute to heating of other parts inside. This pc has no sensors inside to measure the internal temp. of different parts etc., unfortunately. So, eventho the CPU use can be low, an overheated CPU or others parts will not give rise to greater CPU use but may just crash xwindows etc.,

Since it is just xwindows crashing, wonder if a better internal graphics card may solve this issue. Ram use is normal at around 350 Megs max. out of the 1 Gig that I have.

I would do some serious memory checking on that system!!

# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 1033756 kB
MemFree: 496740 kB
Buffers: 46916 kB
Cached: 313788 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 190944 kB
Inactive: 321144 kB
Active(anon): 151528 kB
Inactive(anon): 3276 kB
Active(file): 39416 kB
Inactive(file): 317868 kB
Unevictable: 0 kB
Mlocked: 0 kB
HighTotal: 139016 kB
HighFree: 276 kB
LowTotal: 894740 kB
LowFree: 496464 kB
SwapTotal: 511996 kB
SwapFree: 511996 kB
Dirty: 4 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 151400 kB
Mapped: 44568 kB
Shmem: 3420 kB
Slab: 18176 kB
SReclaimable: 11652 kB
SUnreclaim: 6524 kB
KernelStack: 888 kB
PageTables: 1060 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
WritebackTmp: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 1028872 kB
Committed_AS: 526864 kB
VmallocTotal: 122880 kB
VmallocUsed: 1460 kB
VmallocChunk: 119500 kB
DirectMap4k: 20472 kB
DirectMap4M: 888832 kB
#


Edited to add:
Why is only so much free: MemTotal: 1033756 kB
MemFree: 496740 kB

Can one of the memory modules be corrupt and non functional ?
Even if this is the case, there is still 500 Mb of swap. This is
not being used.

Run memtest and if there are more than one module swap them around and run it again. ( memtest can't test the memory it uses to run in so you need to swap memory around to make sure you test all of it)

Thanks for your response and support.

# memtest
bash: memtest: command not found


There is a memory test when system is turned on before boot, that checks entire memory, it reports all to be ok usually. Perhaps must try to exchange the memory sticks and try the same again.

As an aside, what kind of a video card will be good for this PC ?

http://www.memtest.org/

It is not a built in program. It does run under both Linux and Windows as well as a stand-alone executable.

Lots of roach droppings inside this PC already, roach eggs also. Had to turn it upside down and shake it all out. Makes this entire PC unreliable at this rate, no wonder it heats up. Hardly 10 days since I put tomato paste on the CPU, no wonder.

Removed the memory modules, put them back, it was very hard, hope I did it right in the swap, not sure if I swapped or replaced as such. Putting them back was super hard. Don't wish to try this again. Lastly, the memtest on startup went fine for the entire 1012 Mb.

Edited to add:
After I did this, the CPU use when watching video is about 80 to 40%. This is a big difference from the constant 100% before.

Member response
 

Hi,

BTW, some LiveCD/DVD Gnu/Linux do include memtest86+ for testing purposes. I know Slackware provides it on the install DVD for Slackware64 14.2 or Slackware 14.2. Plus LiveSlak can be downloaded; Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip:

In this circumstance, I'd seriously consider acquiring a replacement computer. Possibly a used fanless mini-PC or laptop. Just not with an early Atom CPU - those things are even slower than a fast Pentium 4!

Then, you won't have to worry about feathers/dust/etc build up, nor roaches in the computer.

With something modern enough to have a USB3 port, a cheap but fast USB3.0 thumbdrive can be a great alternative to an SSD.

$3 Dell Inspiron:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVn7GctHoVQ

Yes this P4 old server has lots of holes etc.,on the sides for allowing air circulation, however dust and debris also enter via these. It was not this big an issue before but is getting worse with time. Considering this factor, even getting a video card for this will not help, the video card can also be affected by the dust, debris very likely.

Its heat. I get used machines for my kids and its almost always the thermal paste between the cpu and heatsink, it get dry and hard after 5 or so years. You have to clean off the old and put new on. And actual new thermal paste, it has to be designed to be thermally conductive while electrically insulating. If you try to put something else in place of heatsink grease you won't get good thermal transfer.

See, I reflected a bit, why was the ram stick hard to remove and replace ? It was so hard, took me 10 mts or so almost to put it back, had to press really hard. Was almost in tears even a bit, thought I might break the ram stick or even damage the mobo. Why this super hard ? Simple on reflection, there is lots of dust in the ram slot also. This has also gotten stuck like glue over time, making things quite hard for movement in this area.

If I were to clean this mobo with soap and water, bet I will get lots more dust.
Not that I plan to do this. Given these conditions, I have to try to do my best and use this PC as long as it lasts. These conditions are far from ideal but this is reality. On the other hand given these conditions, there is no point in having a brand new PC and getting all this dust and debris inside it.

Atleast good to know what is causing issues inside this PC.

i have a minitower and know what you're talking about, dust collects, should be cleaned out about once a year, but even if i do it less often, it does not affect performance!

and how is it getting worse with time?
where are you storing this machine?
roaches?

no, i suspect this machine is dying from using parts from the dump (not because of their age, but because they got rained on or mixed with other trash), too much clumsy experimenting (tomato sauce), an equally borked operatingsystem (frankendebian) or, most likely, a combination of all these.

Yes, there is a roach infestation in the bldg. itself. System didn't get rained on. Tomato paste has actually helped, was a lot worse before I used the tomato paste.

Best Thrift Store find, $30 core i7 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O39ainQrlHc

Edited to add, another great deal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfmJwBg0SwU

Another possible strategy to deal with dust/feathers/roaches - instead of going for a sealed fanless system, mitigate the problem by:

1) Leave the side of the computer case open by removing the side panel.

2) Place fine filters over the PSU intakes, which you will occasionally wipe clean.

3) Tilt the entire system horizontal or nearly horizontal, with the open side DOWN. Thus, dust/feathers will tend to fall out rather than build up.

4) Elevate the system with books or something so there's a big gap between the open side and the floor.

5) Optionally place some sort of fan to assist cooling - especially to the hard drive which will no longer receive a flow of air being sucked into the case.

6) Optionally place some sort of lights or something underneath to further discourage roaches from hanging around in the computer.