is my dinosaur Athlon XP system extinct?

J

JPGR87

Gawd
Joined
Aug 24, 2002
Messages
640
First off: stats.
Mobo: DFI NF2 Ultra Inifinity
CPU: Athlon XP 2500+ Barton OC'ed to 10x200 (stock doesn't work either)
RAM: 1 GB Corsair DDR-400 (2x512mb)
VGA: Ati Radeon X1600PRO AGP
OS Drive: Seagate 7200.10 320gb SATA on onboard SiI3114 controller

So last night i was on my laptop in the living room, i walked into my bedroom to check something and the computer said "Windows is now shutting down" all on its own. I thought that was a little strange, but figured it got an update and was restarting. I came in later and it was still off, so i hit the power button and walked out (i was trying to print something from the living room so i needed my desktop on). I came back and it booted all the way into the Fedora 7 LiveCD i had accidently left in it, so i removed it and restarted it.

The computer got to the BIOS Splash screen and hung right before it detected the IDE devices. i hit the reset button and it did the same thing. I turned it off and on and it got through that part but wouldn't boot anything, the IDE indicator light was solid on. I reset the BIOS and went back to all stock settings, and it got me to the "Windows didn't start properly" screen. I tried Start Normally, Last known good configuration, and safe mode to no avail. Safe mode hung at Mup.sys, the other two never showed the windows splash screen.

So today the computer has been working intermittantly at best, once booting all the way into windows, but mostly not even showing the BIOS screen. If anyone has any ideas about this i'd appreciate it, i am a poor college student and would like to hold off on investing in a C2D/A64 upgrade. BUT if there are no alternatives, i must do it. I could possibly swing around 400 for cpu/ram/vid/mb, and i'd probably take this opportunity to get a new case as well.

Also, for a while the sound (mp3's/wma's through WMP based playback) would cut out or distort, but i think that was either a driver issue, a WMP decoder issue, or a southbridge heat issue. It wouldn't do it if video was involved though. I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

Thanks for the help!!
 
I'm not going to tell you what to do, or what to buy... there are others here better suited to offer advice in those areas...

My first guess as to the problem with your rig is your video card. The X1600pro, in my opinion, was the biggest piece of shit ATI has ever offered.. I had one and I experienced the exact problems you have described... Try a different card if you can... and if it's a rig you really want to keep, just pick up a 7600 series AGP card and run that until you build a new rig... Good luck...
 
yeah, 400 bucks can get you a pretty decent PC

I bought a Athlon X2 4400+ with a Biostar TF7050 for around 150 bucks. If you keep the case and the HDD that you already have, you can get that along with 2 gb's of DDR2-800 memory and a video card (wouldn't be much, 8600GT at best, but it'll still be an upgrade over the x1600pro which has given me a crap load of problems in the past :( )




However, as a college student myself, I know the situation that you're in. Lets see if we can get your PC fixed first. When I was fixing my friends pc with the x1600pro, I had somewhat of the same problem, except the PC wasn't even getting past the BIOS splash screen. I took it out, popped in a 9600XT and we were good to go. Hopefully something similar will solve your problem...
 
my sig tells all.i can still run the popular games of the day ,but it is getting long in the tooth.want to wait a while longer until next gen video cards come out.i believe i can still play crisis,quake wars,and hellgate london.
your current card is really making life miserable for you
 
holy crappy video card batman!

so i pulled out my TV tuner, cleared the BIOS, and turned on the PC again, and at the desktop i'm getting 640x480 16 color mode, and catalyst control center just had a cow about the video card, which is still identified as an x1600pro in the bios.

I have it down to a system where if i clear the BIOS it'll boot, but now it keeps going to 16 color vga mode. Looks like its time to sink some cash into this masheen.

I don't play too many games, so something midrange would be more than acceptable, i'm more focused on media playback and encoding. And i think my monitor (samsung 205bw) is hdcp capible, so vista media center is starting to look real nice

Are nvidia chipsets the way to go for the X2 motherboards? and i guess for C2D its the p35 chipset? I'm going to see how much a decent upgrade would actually cost me and see if its worth just buying an ancient agp card...
 
If you do upgrade then go for something like

e4300
Gigabyte DS3
2gb Of Brand RAM
Whatever DX9 card you have the money for.
 
JPGR87 said:
First off: stats.
Mobo: DFI NF2 Ultra Inifinity
CPU: Athlon XP 2500+ Barton OC'ed to 10x200 (stock doesn't work either)
RAM: 1 GB Corsair DDR-400 (2x512mb)
VGA: Ati Radeon X1600PRO AGP
OS Drive: Seagate 7200.10 320gb SATA on onboard SiI3114 controller

So last night i was on my laptop in the living room, i walked into my bedroom to check something and the computer said "Windows is now shutting down" all on its own. I thought that was a little strange, but figured it got an update and was restarting. I came in later and it was still off, so i hit the power button and walked out (i was trying to print something from the living room so i needed my desktop on). I came back and it booted all the way into the Fedora 7 LiveCD i had accidently left in it, so i removed it and restarted it.

The computer got to the BIOS Splash screen and hung right before it detected the IDE devices. i hit the reset button and it did the same thing. I turned it off and on and it got through that part but wouldn't boot anything, the IDE indicator light was solid on. I reset the BIOS and went back to all stock settings, and it got me to the "Windows didn't start properly" screen. I tried Start Normally, Last known good configuration, and safe mode to no avail. Safe mode hung at Mup.sys, the other two never showed the windows splash screen.

So today the computer has been working intermittantly at best, once booting all the way into windows, but mostly not even showing the BIOS screen. If anyone has any ideas about this i'd appreciate it, i am a poor college student and would like to hold off on investing in a C2D/A64 upgrade. BUT if there are no alternatives, i must do it. I could possibly swing around 400 for cpu/ram/vid/mb, and i'd probably take this opportunity to get a new case as well.

Also, for a while the sound (mp3's/wma's through WMP based playback) would cut out or distort, but i think that was either a driver issue, a WMP decoder issue, or a southbridge heat issue. It wouldn't do it if video was involved though. I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

Thanks for the help!!
Click to expand...
I might be able to help ya, I am going to be selling my old build in a few days as soon as my new parts get here from newegg.

Abit KV8 Pro (Socket 754)
AMD Althon 64 3200+ - Never OC
Ati Radeon X800 XL- With ATi Silencer Running at 450/540, Stock 400/490 - Temps 38 C
2GB XMS DDR400
Antec 350 Watt True Power
Be willing to sell for cheapish
 
I have been looking around and i think i like the asus M2N-E with the nforce 570 chipset as a starting point, with a brisbane 65nm athlon64 to go with it. I'm kind of used to all of the nvidia applications like nvmixer and whatnot, so i figure going with a newer nforce system is going to help in my transition. I'm going to look into something like the 8500gt as a video card because it seems to support all of the advanced purevideo options and is competent enough to get games running. Is this a good starting point?

If i'm going to upgrade now i'm going to get as close to modern as i can within reason, so it'll last me another 3-5 years. And i'm kind of partial to AMD, even if intel is doing a little better right now. Either way its going to be a dramatic improvement over what i have
 
JPGR87 said:
Is this a good starting point?
Click to expand...

For gaming that card is kinda crap see if there is any possible way to stretch your budget to a 8800gts 320mb or a high end DX9 card or anything other than a mid range DX10.
 
RoBo said:
For gaming that card is kinda crap see if there is any possible way to stretch your budget to a 8800gts 320mb or a high end DX9 card.
Click to expand...

The OP already stated he doesn't game and is looking for a mid-range card....
 
RoBo said:
I can't read tho. :(
Click to expand...

ROFL.

JPGR87 said:
I have been looking around and i think i like the asus M2N-E with the nforce 570 chipset as a starting point, with a brisbane 65nm athlon64 to go with it.

I'm going to look into something like the 8500gt as a video card because it seems to support all of the advanced purevideo options and is competent enough to get games running. Is this a good starting point?
Click to expand...

The M2N-E was very problematic before, though they say those problems have subsided. However, I'd suggest the Biostar TForce 560 instead, since its cheaper and a great overclocker.

If you plan on using the CPU to do other things while watching an HD Video, then yes, a card that supports NVIDIAs PUREVideo or ATI's UVD would be good. Otherwise, just let the CPU do all the work. Check out anandtech's reviews, they have a nice roundup of cards for hd vid decoding: http://anandtech.com/video/

If you're not doing anything graphic intensive, a cheap $30 card will suffice.
 
the tf560 looks nice, but for the extra $20 i get the coax sound out (which i use with my XR55) and an extra pci-e port, which is also nice for the future i guess. The only PCI stuff i have is my leadtek tv card. I hope you're right about the problems subsiding, the reviews on newegg seemed pretty solid, but if i get a bad one then i don't have much of a problem RMAing it. I never have a problem dealing with newegg's support.

I placed an order for the M2N-E, an Asus 8500 with a passive heatsink, an athlon 64 5200+ windsor, and 2x1 gig of transcend ram (it was cheap, and i probably won't overclock). That all came out to almost exactly $400, which was exactly what i was aiming for. All of the newegg reviews looked good, and i think that this is gonna work really well for me. I'm probably going to run XP for now, but once i get enough cash for the vista home premium system bulder edition, i'll grab that and maybe a third hard drive to start a raid5 pool with the nvraid. Hopefully my Antec NeoHE 550 is up to it, i think it should be good.

Thank you so much all for your input, i would have never guessed it was the x1600 causing all those neato problems. I thought it was some kind of motherboard issue. I'm pretty excited i finally get an upgrade, even if its not the greatest, its certainly an improvement.
 
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