Lock ups

[Cody]

Hello, I am new to this forum. And I havent kept up with technology advances in the past few years, so I have some questions

I am having some problems with my system locking up while running a couple diferent games, and even some programs. Worked perfect for almost 3 years and all of a sudden this is happening. I hear a 'chirping like' sound coming from what may be the hard drive, but was told it may be my video card. When the sound starts, I know its going to usualy lock up where I have to reboot system.

Question #2

If this is the card causing this problem, would it be best to replace it with another 6800GT, or go with a 7800GT? My mobo is an Asus K8V Deluxe, and I am not sure if this is an AGP or PSI board? I opened up Everest software, and under Motherboard Field Value Expansion Slots" it says 5 PCI, 1 AGP, 1 WiFi. Could this motherboard take a PCIe video card?

Thankyou.

My system:
AMD 64 3400+
Enermax 425 PSU
Asus K8V Deluxe K8T800
GeForce 6800 GT 256MB (AGP, I believe?)
Seagate Barracuda 160 GB
Corsair 1GB
Win xp Pro
Thermaltake Tsunami case

 

[digital_exhaust]

First thing I would suspect is heat.

As far as your card is concerned, it is an AGP card and no, your motherboard will not support a PCIe card.

You may want to go to Seagate's web site and download their drive diagnostic utility and run that, see if it comes back with any errors. If not, I would suspect you video card may be on it's way out. As far as a replacement is concerned, you may want to look at the 7600 series, they are great bang for the buck cards. The 7800 is a good card as well.

 

[Cody]

Thankyou Digital, for the advice. I will check out seagates site, hopefully it will find something. Might be cheaper than a new card. Thanks again

 

[jonathonball]

do you have another hard drive you can do a test install on?

 

[digital_exhaust]

Here is a link to the DOS version of SeaTools.. give it a try.

 

[Cody]

do you have another hard drive you can do a test install on?

No unfortunatly I do not. I am downloading the seagate tool now, and tryed openign it and it says I require .NET framework 2.0 or greater. It wont let me run the sea tool

 

[digital_exhaust]

You need to use the DOS version... it doesn't care if you have .NET or not, as it runs off of a disk... like a live cd sort of. It's a better test anyhow, as it will look at your entrie drive. Use the link I posted above

 

[Cody]

Ok thankyou digital. I am at the site now. Only do I use the Floppy Diskette Creator or should I download the ISO CD-ROM Image?

 

[jonathonball]

if you are not having problems burning a CD, I would go the ISO route.

 

[digital_exhaust]

I personally prefer cs ISO images myself.... well, mainly because I don't have a fdd, soooo

If you use the ISO, here is a tool to copy the image to a cd...Once you have that done, just boot from the cd and let it do it's thing.

 

[Cody]

I already made the floppy, now this is a noob question to beat all of them lol. I dont know what to do next or how to boot from a floppy

 

[digital_exhaust]

Did you get the floppy to boot?

You've got pm...

 

[Cody]

I couldnt get the floppy to work, so I used the ISO for cd, and worked fine. However it didnt detect drive. I Instant messaged you also Digital, thanks.