ARGH! (Anybody care to guess what's causing my probs? CUSL2 / 700E)

[FuzzyBee]

So I wake up the other morning (Saturday) to find my main system (CUSL2, PIII-700E@700, GTS2, ATI Xpert98, 512MB of compuwiz's famous Infineon PC-133 RAM (2x256), SB Live!, Intel Pro/100S NIC, ATI TV-Wonder, WinME) locked up. I reboot. I work on it for a while, and then shut it down. When I try to start back up later that day, Windows suddenly can't find files!

I figure "what the heck, I was going to install Win2K on here anyway, why not now?" I proceed to install Win2K. Everything is fine - for a while. Last night, I went to bed, to find it locked up again this morning. Following my early class, I opened it up, took averything but the GTS2 and NIC out, and started to re-reinstall Win2K. That's when everything just sort of falls apart.

When I boot up now, sometimes it recognizes my 700E as a 700E, sometimes it says it is a 466EB (default for the BIOS). Sometimes, it makes it past the PNP initialization (before recognizing the drives), sometimes it doesn't. When it does make it past both stages, it won't boot Win2K. I get an exception handler right off the bat - I can't remember off the top of my head what it is, and I'm at school - I'll try to check it when I get home and post to here.

Any guesses as to what is causing this? I am guessing that it is the processor or the motherboard, or both. Thanks for the assistance.

- Phil

 

[Big Lar]

It could be quite a few different things, #1 thing I would check = Make sure the fan is spinning on the cpu cooler,#2= try moving the dimms to differnet slots, or every other slot. My first impression is Heat related.

 

[rkoenn]

This one may be hard to figure out, but think about the hard drive. I had a system a couple of years back where I installed Windows and it ran for a day or two fine. Reboot the next time and windows can't start. Files missing or some such thing. Reinstalled from scratch thinking it was an errant error. Couple of days later same thing. I tried almost complete set of different parts except the motherboard (I have a computer business so that is much easier to do than for most people). Finally got suspicious of the hard drive, even though brand new and passed a thorough scan disk. It was a Quantum. Anyway, I replaced it and everything on the system worked fine after that. Sent it back to Quantum with an explanation and they replaced it. The new one worked but I believe still a little quirkier than any other drive I have ever had. Kind of left a bad taste in my mouth for Quantum. This is just a thought but definitely one item to look at closely.