Asus p4b266 crashing and rebooting

[Marc]

I built a machine around and Asus P4B266 am I'm having problems with it. It reboots for not apparent reason, sometimes after a couple hours of use and sometimes in minutes. If it does totally reboot the it crash.

It not overclocked or anything. I took into the merchant I purchased the parts from and they keep it for a day or two. They said it reboot itself, and their solution was to swap out the MD with another P4B266 and installed XP again.

I brought it home it displayed the same behavior.

Any idea on what might be causing this? RAM, Video Card?

All the BIOS parameters are basically right out of the box.

Also, I did have problems sometimes during my several installs of XP, it would blue screen. I would say that of the 4 times I installed XP if failed twice during the install.

This makes me think it must be hardware. Any help would be appreciated.

Hardware:
Asus P4B266
512 MB DDR
IBM IDE HDD
Abit Siluro GF2 MX400 (with latest drivers)

OS:
Windows XP Pro we latest fixes
Office XP
Etc

 

[Dre]

How about the power supply?

 

[Barrei]

Its either your motherboard or your DDR ram memory , but blue screen and having trouble with windows when trying to install, I'll bet money its your mobo. Good Luck

 

[Marc]

300 Watts (12V) Power Supply, noting fancy it came with the case, an In Win Model IW-S508-IW

 

[Marc]

Barrei,

The mobo has already been replace once, why don't you think the memory could cause an install problem.

What memory would you recommend for this board?

 

[owensdj]

Marc, memory problems can cause any type of instability, including install problems. I'd suggest you run a memory test on your DIMMs. You can download a free memory test utility at Memtest86

I always get memory from Crucial Technology. If you put in your motherboard on their site, it gives you a list of compatible memory modules so you know you're getting the correct memory for your board.

If your memory is working correctly, I'd suggest you download and run IBM's hard drive diagnostics on your drive.

 

[Barrei]

Hi Marc ,You did mention that you had already changed mobo once, did it do the same thing with both mobo's? If so then try changing your memory , memory is the most common source for screwups, I prefer ORIGINAL samsung it beat out every other major brand including crucial in recent pc2700 tests. I know you need pc2100 , that is the brand I would recommend , I have used about 15 sticks in the computers I have built and never had one bad stick of Samsung. If that still doesn't solve your problem and your power supply is good the only other 2 things it could be are your HDD or your vid card.If you have another vid card try putting that in next or borrow one from a friend to try , just make sure you get rid of all the drivers { of the current card} if the vid card is a different model before you install the different one. :]

 

[Marc]

OK, here's were I stand now.

> I ran the MemTest 2.9 utility and it past all tests.
> I just ordered 512MB of Samsung DDR (should have then by the end of the week)
> I just went to the IBM site for the Drive tools (man they have some cool tools)
> I'll also try to swap out the video card.

Thanks for all your help, I'll let you know when I find out more.

 

[Marc]

OK,

It was the RAM, I had some Generic PC2100 (funny it was Samsung chips) and I replaced it with Samsung PC2700 and now all is perfect. I ran the machine all day without a single crash.

Then I put the old PC2100 memory back for a test and it crashed within 30 min!

Thanks for everyones help.