At wits end - Hard locking computer without known cause

[Creig]

Trust me when I say that I have exhausted every possible idea I could come up with before posting here. My wife has an Andara barebones system that is hard locking at random. What ISN'T apparent is the reason. It is a BCM GT133KT, a 1GHz Duron, Alpha PAL6035 w/Sunon fan, single 256mb stick of Crucial PC133, 32mb GeForce 256SE video card, 3Com Etherlink XL 10/100, Maxtor DiamondMax D540X-4D 40 gig HD, Acer 40x CD-Rom, Memorex 4x2x5 CDRW, Envision 17" monitor, Handspring Visor Platinum, Lexmark Z11.

So far I have replaced the stock HSF with the Alpha and Arctic Silver III, removed the chipset heatsink from the motherboard and replaced it with a 486 heatsink using thermal tape, replaced the original GeForce2 GTS-V with the GeForce 256SE, swapped the stick of memory in from a different machine, tried different memory slots, tried a different power supply... Basically, anything I could think of.

At first I thought it might be Windows that's crashing, but on a hunch I brought up the BIOS screen and left it there. After a while, it locked up. Current CPU temp was 43 and system temp was 38. 3.3v=3.33v, 5v=5.02 v, 12v=11.94 volts when it locked up, so that shouldn't be a problem. I've also tried various BIOS settings to no avail. I've loaded defaults and also changed various settings but it still hard locks.

Does ANYBODY have any idea what's wrong?

 

[KennyH]

Ok, what wattage were the PSU's you were using?

 

[Creig]

Original power supply was a 250. Replaced with a 300w Fortron Source, with no difference. And the Duron is a Morgan core, so its draw is minimal.

Every now and then when it would hard lock I would reboot it and it would tell me that it had loaded the BIOS default settings. Not sure why it would do this. Could I possibly have a partially corrupted BIOS and need to re-flash it?

 

[Creig]

?

 

[busmaster11]

It's your VIA chipset - and I'm not even kidding...

Having an SB LIVE! would be twice as bad too... We can't tell exactly whats causing it but I bet you an SIS or nForce would clear that right up. I've had nothing but trouble with VIA board, all four of them - from the SlotA KX133 onto the KT266A - each time I was dumb enough to think they've fixed their problems.

 

[ubersam]

I brought up the BIOS screen and left it there. After a while, it locked up

Every now and then when it would hard lock I would reboot it and it would tell me that it had loaded the BIOS default settings.

Maybe your CMOS battery is going dead.

 

[OpalFrost98GT]

I agree on the Motherboard...get yerself an el-cheapo ECS from newegg!

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Well, like you said, it's crashing at the BIOS so that rules out the Operating system and the drivers.

-The RAM tests good or has been swapped.
- The PSU has been replaced.
- The chip is running cool.
- The video card has been replaced.


That rules out pretty much everything. You didn't say if you ran the system at BIOS with the bare minimum. I've had PCI peripherals do weird things to systems. If that isn't it then I would suspect the motherboard or the CPU itself. I tend to think it's the motherboard though because processors rarely fail like that. I would rebuild the system using another board. The ECS K7S5A has proven itself very cheap ($54) and reliable (not a crash yet in 5 months @ 24/7).

 

[Creig]

Thanks for all the suggestions. As it turns out the motherboard info said it supported Durons up to 1Ghz, but apparently that doesn't cover the new Morgan core 1Ghz. I replaced the Duron with a T-Bird 700 I had lying around and now it works perfectly again. Not mentioning that the Morgan cores won't work is a rather important little oversight on their part I'd say.

 

[Pabster]

Another vote to grab a K7S5A. Get rid of that PoS and the VIA core logic it employs.

 

[Budman]

Originally posted by: Pabster
Another vote to grab a K7S5A. Get rid of that PoS and the VIA core logic it employs.

 

[Creig]

Well, I found out that I had almost enough parts to build another computer with what I had lying around. I was just one Morgan-core capable motherboard away so I took everybodys advice and picked up a K7S5A so that the 1Ghz Duron wouldn't be without a home. Just awaiting a warranty return hard drive to arrive now. Although exactly WHAT I'm going to do with another computer is beyond me.