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New rig freezing, some help?

Z

Zippyy

n00b
Joined
Nov 26, 2004
Messages
12
Here are the specs for my comp, mostly built from the NewEgg article's suggestions:

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (not 90nm)
Sapphire X800 Pro (refurbished)*
ABIT AV8 motherboard
Corsair XMS PC-3200 Dual Channel 512MBx2
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Value
Seagate Barracuda 80g SATA hdd

*Despite being refurbished, it arrived in perfect condition (not one whit of dust) and has seemed to function just fine in HL2, Far Cry, and Doom 3.

The Seagate HDD is from my last computer and does not appear to have any problems.

I put this computer together (disabled RAID because it was causing the mobo to not see my single hdd), reformatted the hdd, and installed xp pro. Once I booted, I installed the ABIT drivers, Athlon 64 drivers, Audigy 2 drivers, and ATI Catalysts 4.12. I reboot, and everything works fine... for about 3 minutes. Then everything stops. Mouse and keyboard do not respond, nor does tapping the power button for a safe shutdown. I hit reset. Same thing happens. I check forums on my laptop and find out that AMD's athlon 64 drivers cause this freezing (yeah, I know, what in the hell!?) so I uninstall them. This seems to clear it up.

However, I still encounter freezing every once in a while. It comes in several varieties which I will list here.

1) Locks up on the ABIT Engineered boot screen. Does not progress and keyboard unresponsive.

2) I press Del to go into BIOS, but keyboard stops responding 1-2 minutes later. Resetting CMOS fixes this, but it comes back every so often, and I am not sure why. Not a major problem at all.

3) Boots to XP, but freezes very soon thereafter. Happens during general use as well as gaming (seems more frequent and predictable during gaming, but I could be wrong).

4) Boots to XP, but freezes after a time (10-30 minutes) accompanied by a constant very loud beep from the motherboard. Happens during general use as well as gaming.

5) From powered off, I press power and the motherboard "sings" by alternating between high pitched beep and slightly lower pitched beep. Hurts my ears. Pressing reset causes it to boot up normally, but can still be followed by any of the above freezes.

6) From powered off, I press power and the pc turns on and beeps, but no picture appears. Very rare, has happened perhaps once or twice.

I have tried reseating everything, resetting CMOS, removing optical drives and case lights (in case PSU is overwhelmed, though it shouldn't be at 420W).

I am stumped and steamed. Any ideas? Thanks for your help guys.
 
exactly what 420w is it in the system?

ive got a '400 watt' psu here ill sell you if you want it too, the thing has less power then the quality 250 watt I have in my main rig. its sitting in an empty case atm.
(by the way I was joking)
 
It's a Vantec Stealth Aluminum 420W power supply.

Could it be the problem?
 
Did you try removing additional cards to see if it continues?

reseating the hsf?
 
I've tried removing-replacing everything but the CPU/motherboard and I'm pretty sure it's the RAM. I stuck in my old stick of 512MB PC2700 and everything worked just fine (looped through 3dmark05 three times without a freeze).
 
Zippyy said:
I've tried removing-replacing everything but the CPU/motherboard and I'm pretty sure it's the RAM. I stuck in my old stick of 512MB PC2700 and everything worked just fine (looped through 3dmark05 three times without a freeze).
Click to expand...
But no longer. It is freezing no matter what RAM I put in now.

I am dying inside.

:(
 
Tried, but it kept freezing. I have run the ram through memtest on a friend's pc and it has worked just fine (had to do the modules individually though, because he only has 2 dimm slots and one is bad).

This narrows it down to the motherboard or cpu. Is there any way to figure out which it is, or to determine if it is a product defect or simply a bad bios setting?
 
Hello there zippy - I have X800pro vivo modded to xt pe, a8v rev2, ocz 3700eb 2X512, and winnie 3200+ - having same problems as u have - that loud sound u said u were getting and freezes on Bios screen .....

I think it's a bios thing - something with winchesters ...

lemme know what u found ....
 
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