Computer Problem

D

Denki

Gawd
Joined
Oct 24, 2004
Messages
729
Having a bit of an issue i thought maybe some ppl here could help me with. Before i go into the problem ill outline the specs... I have:

AMD Athlon XP 2500+
Asus a7n8x-x mobo
2x512 Kingston value ram pc 3200
Radeon 9800 pro (w/ ramsinks added)
Nutech 8x +- DVD burner
1x 80gb Maxtor HDD PATA
1x 180gb Hitachi Deskstar HDD PATA
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy
Linksys Wireless card
Lian Li V1000b (stock fans)
Enermax 535W PSU ATX standard 2.01 etc.
CoolerMaster Aero4 Lite HSF (i think?)
Dell 2005FPW LCD
Acer 77c 17" CRT
WinXP SP2 (fresh reformat and reinstall a day old)

That's the system pretty much. Kay the problem is this, my computer will pretty much crash and give me a hard boot every so often. Its not a specific interval or anything it will just happen. Doesn't matter what I'm doing, it just does it. I could be playing WoW, surfing on Firefox, or watching a movie. The computer will just crash and restart with no warning. The CPU temps hover around 115 - 120 degrees F if that helps. Someone please help, this issue is causing me a lot of frustration and makes it difficult to do much.
 
The temps you have are pretty good.

There are a couple of things I would start with.

Make sure your PSU is not faulty/failing. Irregular voltage can make your system do some weird things.

Run memtest86 to make sure that your RAM is error free.

Try flasing your BIOS to a newer revision. You could be getting false temperature readings.
Speaking of BIOS.. you said your board is a Asus a78x-x... Is that the A7N8X-X or A7V8X-X?
 
l337zax said:
The temps you have are pretty good.

There are a couple of things I would start with.

Make sure your PSU is not faulty/failing. Irregular voltage can make your system do some weird things.

Run memtest86 to make sure that your RAM is error free.

Try flasing your BIOS to a newer revision. You could be getting false temperature readings.
Speaking of BIOS.. you said your board is a Asus a78x-x... Is that the A7N8X-X or A7V8X-X?
Click to expand...

ill try the memtest thing when i get home... and thx for the correction on the mobo :)

im using MBM to see temps and voltages, voltages are rock solid, no matter what im doing. usually sit around 3.298 for +3.3v, 4.97 on +5v, and 11.87 on +12v rails. they are all lower than spec, but don't move, and are w/in tolerance so it doesn't really concern me. PSU is also brand new, so I doubt its faulty or failing.

And to answer aaron, i reset timings to stock 2.5-3-3-8 timings so i know they are not tight.

how would i go about flashing BIOS? i've read a bit about it, but not really sure exactly how i would do it...
 
Denki said:
how would i go about flashing BIOS? i've read a bit about it, but not really sure exactly how i would do it...
Click to expand...

It's actually not to hard to do. I was going to post a link to ASUS that shows how to properly flash your BIOS... but ASUS's support site is down at the moment. So at this second, you can not download the instructions, the flash utility, or the newer BIOS revision. But here's the basics... you will need to download their flash utility and put it to floppy, after that, you need to download the newer BIOS revision and unzip it to the floppy as well. From there, you'll have to reboot the PC from floppy and run the utility. Preferably back up the old BIOS before flashing to the newer one to make sure that in case something goes wrong, you have a revision that you know works to rely on. Then from there, flash your BIOS to the newer revision and after it is done flashing.. reboot your PC. Under NO circumstances should you reboot your PC in the middle of a flash process though... If so, you might not be able to get your board back up and running.

But I don't reccommend doing this until ASUS's support site is back up and running. They'll have step by step instructions on the site telling you exactly what utility you will need as well as how to flash the BIOS.
 
that's all well and good, but i have a slight problem with that method... i don't have a floppy :D
 
I don't recommend this.... BUT... I know it works as I have tried it before.

ASUS has a program that you can download and install in Windows. It allows you to update your BIOS through the program WHILE you're in Windows. Works pretty slick, but I don't trust it very much. Could be worth a shot for you...
 
sounds interesting... ill give that a try after memtest when i get home, thx for all the help man.

so either its a memory problem or a BIOS issue? could the memory be overheating and causing issues?
 
First, try go to the event viewer see if you can find anything abnormal. Try to see the logs that right before it crashed. If there is no major error showing under all sections then it's mostly a hardware fault.

You can also try to turn off the auto reboot under recovery, so when an error occurs, you might get the BSOD. Copy down the error code/info and do a search on it.

Have you OCed your CPU? RAM? If so, try to set them back to the default setting or you can even load the bios' default values.

Your system's temp, voltage all seems to be ok.

Your problem sounds very similar to when the FSB is OCed too much and timing is too tight on the ram.
 
silvscorp said:
First, try go to the event viewer see if you can find anything abnormal. Try to see the logs that right before it crashed. If there is no major error showing under all sections then it's mostly a hardware fault.

You can also try to turn off the auto reboot under recovery, so when an error occurs, you might get the BSOD. Copy down the error code/info and do a search on it.

Have you OCed your CPU? RAM? If so, try to set them back to the default setting or you can even load the bios' default values.

Your system's temp, voltage all seems to be ok.

Your problem sounds very similar to when the FSB is OCed too much and timing is too tight on the ram.
Click to expand...

well im pretty sure its just a hard crash and not an auto reboot. But i will check the even manage when i get home as well :). Posting at works sucks heh...

CPU and RAM are at stock timings, i also tried reseting bios options to default. FSB is 166 which is regular for a 2500+ barton. timings are as above 2.5-3-3-8

thx for all the suggestions as well so far :)
 
what do you mean by crash and give you a hard boot? Like it reboots itself? Try swap out the rams one by one, it could also be one of the stick just went bad. Also try use mem test as suggested before.
 
silvscorp said:
what do you mean by crash and give you a hard boot? Like it reboots itself? Try swap out the rams one by one, it could also be one of the stick just went bad. Also try use mem test as suggested before.
Click to expand...

like i be surfing and it'll crash and hang at the intial screen where you can you go to bios, and it checks memory and drives. I'll then have to turn it off, and then turn it back on usually... sometimes it won't hang and it'll go through.
 
it really sounded like you have a faulty hardware. Like I said, it's very similar to a high FSB, or faulty memory module.

The windows will auto reboot because under advanced recovery the auto restart is set on by default. When ever windows detects an error it will restart. However, you said it will hang at the bios screen and that just leads me to think this is not windows related since at that point, the windows component are not being loaded.

For my past OC experience, if the FSB is set too high or memory's timing is too tight, then I usually get hung up at right after POST (after ram checking), or at the window loading logo. Your FSB looks fine, but I am not sure about your ram timing. Is that the default timing or just something you set? You can use CPU-Z to check the manuf recommanded timing. Overall, I'd suspect your might have a faulty ram module.
 
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