Computer Freezes Intermittently

N

NickN

Gawd
Joined
Jan 12, 2005
Messages
757
Ok, I suppose I should start off with the very beginning of my problem...

On Friday, I went to turn on my computer..nothing happened. After replacing the powersupply with one that I know works, the computer still wouldn't boot. I concluded that the problem was with the motherboard; Saturday, I went to Fry's Electronics and picked up a new motherboard. Yep, that was the problem - I popped in the new mobo and it booted up fine.

Now, however, it's crashing at seemingly random intervals whenever I play a game. It's a completely fresh install of Windows XP with SP1; I reinstalled XP after I put in the new mobo. Again, swapping out the power supply was of no help.

Once, however, when it was booting up, I noticed that it said DDR 333 in the POST screen. CRAP. My RAM was DDR 266. There was no option for RAM speed in the BIOS, so I could do absolutely nothing; after all, this was a pretty cheap motherboard.

I opened up the computer again and found that rather than putting in my 512MB and 256MB DDR266 modules when I put in the mobo, I had put in the 512MB of 266 and a 128MB module of 333 that I had. Apparently, it detected the DDR333 and decided to run both sticks at that speed. I replaced the 333 module with the proper 266 one, and then it ran the RAM at 266MHz as it should have.

That did not, however, fix the problem. Any game I play still crashes intermittently (yes, I've tried reapplying thermal paste to the CPU, and making sure the heatsink is seated correctly) I am completely at a loss as to what to try next. :eek:

My specs are as follows...

Antec 350W power supply
Athlon XP 2000+ w/ Cooler Master X-Dream II heatsink and Arctic Silver Ceramique
MSI KT6V-LSR
768MB of Crucial DDR266
Gigabyte Radeon 9200
Western Digital 80GB 2MB buffer

Anyone have any suggestions? Your help would be greatly appreciated..
 
The CPU's seated properly, and my idle temp is around 40 degrees C. I seriously doubt that running a game would cause the temp to rise high enough to make it freeze, but I'll check. I'm going to run a memtest and report back.
 
I ran memtest for 35 minutes and no errors found. So, apparently the problem's not the RAM. I'm completely at a loss for ideas here; my video card could be faulty but it doesn't seem to be so..in Windows it works fine and I get good performance in my games (up until they freeze.. :eek: )
 
My old fx5200 used to randomly freeze up while in 3d apps (games, etc.), but would work fine doing anything 2d. I swapped it out, and everything worked fine. My advice is, swap your vid. card and see if it helps, and also run Memtest longer than 35 mins. to make sure it's not your RAM that's bad.
 
Ok, before I go to school tomorrow I'll turn on my computer and just run memtest until I get home. That's a good 7 hours...that's long enough to find an error, right?

I certainly hope it's not my video card that's faulty. It was hard enough convincing my parents to give me the money to buy a new motherboard...they're not gonna be too happy if I say "Hey, can you give me $100 to replace my video card?" just three days after I asked them for $70 for a motherboard... :eek:
 
id hate to suggest this, but is it possible youre replacement mobo is faulty too? hehe. You did say it was a pretty cheap one, and my experience with cheap mobos involves lots of freezing and general headaches?

Also, is your comp just freezing? or is it actually restarting on its own?

Generally when comps ive had freeze, its a result of some kind of OCing, like not enough voltage or something to that effect. Also if youve oc'ed the VC, or IT (not the system) has some dodgy ram although apparently Gigabyte VC's are fairly good quality from what i hear....although ive had 1 GB mobo and 1 gb VC and i can tell you right off the bat that i hate them with a passion, but thats a story for another time. hehe.

Also, if your RAM was running at odd clocks, is it possible your PCI clock has changed too? cos that could cause freezing.

I know this sounds dumb, but maybe try resetting BIOS to Default settings, and see how it goes.
 
I can't believe this...

My computer froze while I WASN'T gaming (and I was doing a school assignment too... sigh..) It was completely unresponsive, so I had to just hold in the power button until it switched off. Now it won't boot into Windows. It POSTs, and the Windows XP boot screen appears, but the little green bar doesn't even go from left to right once before the computer reboots itself.

I'm beginning to think that you're right, The Chosen One, and that my motherboard is faulty. Is there any way I can confirm this for sure?
 
Get a new, proven mobo? Make sure that everything on the board is seated properly (fan wires, RAM, etc). Make sure the power supply is actually giving the power it's supposed to give. I agree with Choosen, it sounds like you've got a faulty mobo. I suppose you could look at the board itself, and see if anything is wrong, like leaking or bulging caps.

Advice: Don't skimp on important parts. :)
 
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