Boots up sometimes... (mobo prob?)

[alnen]

The PC that i have built has been acting strange lately

Here is my setup:

Chieftec Case
Asus a7n8x-dlx mobo
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton CPU
Antec 400-watt PSU
1 gig Corsair XMS 3200 RAM
20 Gig WD HD
80 Gig WD HD
Radeon 9500 Vid Card

Anyway, lately when I restart my computer, or if its a "cold start", it will make it into Windows, or at least get about halfway into loading it. At that point, it freezes, and I can hear my HD almost cut off, then I hear it start spinning again, and this process repeats itself until I restart the computer again. One time, It finished that "loading Windows" screen and while my desktop was loading it did this same thing, so I had to restart it again. After a few times of this happening, it will work like it should.

This most recent time, when I restarted it, the audio voice that usually says "computer now booting from operating system" instead said "SYSTEM FAILED MEMORY TEST". I have replaced the RAM in this thing once before because of another intermittent problem, but it had been working fine for months. I ran memtest for 2 days, and there were no problems.

At first I thought my HD was going out on me, but when it said the system failed the memory test, I changed my mind. The PSU is also something that I have replaced to solve my earlier problem.

Is there any kind of diagnosis apps I could use to see if my HD is bad? Or do you have any other ideas?

Thanks a ton!

 

[gigaxtreme1]

I had a wierd problem with a DVD drive that kept blowing out the keyboard/ mouse ports. Must have been some wierd voltage spikes or something from the drive because it made my machine unstable and eventually killed 3 mobos by blowing the keyboard/mouse first. The last board i removed the DVD drive and there have been no problems except i have to use USB for interface devices. I seems your machine get progressively unstable as it warms up, so I would check CPU and chipset cooling. I would add active chipset cooling if you dont have it.