Argh! MSI K7T Pro2-A crashes under heavy disk usage

[Leo V]

My system currently:

230Watt PSU (not AMD approved)
MSI K7T Pro2-A motherboard
Retail Tbird 1100 with cooler
Quality 64MB PC100 stick
IBM 75GXP 30GB running in ATA100 mode
AGP Nvidia Riva128ZX (very low power)
PCI sound card
PCI 3com nic

Nothing else is connected. Running Windoze 98SE fresh install, latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers.

This is crazy. My system passed all CPU torture tests with flying colors. However, just now I tried to upsample a file using CoolEdit. Crashed and burned My memory hasn't gotten here yet, so doing this with 64MB causes very intensive hard drive and CPU usage--which must be causing the problem. By the way, all settings (ie CPU speed and voltage) were at Default. No over/underclocking.

I'm guessing that my power supply is insufficient (300W replacement pending). However, even running at 800MHz with reduced voltage doesn't fix this! What gives? Do I need ATA100 drivers besides VIA's latest 4-in-1?

 

[Dulanic]

Signs point to power supply, it could very well be providing enough power but AMD boards are more sensative to noise from the PSU, and a older non approved PSU could be causing it easily.

 

[Leo V]

Dulanic, we agree in suspecting the PSU. It's not old however--it's a QuietPC.com PSU I've gotten around 6 months ago. But I certainly hope that a 300W approved supply will get everything in line!

 

[alocurto]

Power Supply looks like an answer. More memory is a must b/c of the swap. Try checking your hard disk for errors, it could have some damage on it... long shot for IBM but still possible.

-alocurto