Bah HAHA!

[Krux]

After a week of fighting with this dang P3 system and hanging when it goes to boot into windows I finally got it fixed!! after 2 hdd 2 IDE cables updating bios which was not easy task I tell you what.... since the only sites I could find the file on where in something I couldn't read. I finally pulled the HSF off of it and whoever put the machine together when it was first built didn't bother to use thermal paste they just used to thermal tape that was on the HSF well that stuff was tuff like wax took me 15 minutes (really) to clean it off of the HSF and the core of the cpu I put some thermal greese on and fire it up and it works perfect now. anyway saved myself buying a new mobo to find out the thermal tape was hard and causeing the cpu to overheat.

 

[GoNz0]

nice 1, that generic crap that use is designed to turn semi liquid under heat, then return to its wax like state. as you found out it dont last forever. a thinner white paste is being applied more and more now days, this lasts longer as its always a paste. like higher end (AS3) type thermal paste.

even alcohol dont shift the pads once there baked hard

 

[XP Abuser]

yeh grease it up baby

 

[Krux]

yah I personally never use the tape just so happens its my GF's pc and it kept hanging and I was like wtf is the problem?! stupid tape....

 

[Zedric]

Pad is always recommended above paste in "production systems" because it lasts longer than paste. Unless you remove the HS that is.

Don't know about AS3 though but I haven't seen any change in recommendations yet.