Athlon 2400 XP suddenly unstable

[Poda]

Hi, after many years of using my Athlon XP 2400, it seems to be causing problems. Basically, I woke up the other day and Windows wouldn't start. Either the boot up hung or it gave initialization or protection errors. This is Windows 98. Anyway, to fix it, I had to set the FSB in my bios from 133/133 to 100/100. Then, everything boots up. If I set it back to 133/133, won't boot again. Of course, this doesn't make sense since my processor is meant to run at 133 and has been for at least 2 or 3 years. Anyway, the CPU temp is only in the 40's or so in the bios, so I know it's not a temperature issue. Any other ideas?

Edit: Fixed it. Had heatsink on the opposite way , hahaha.

 

[BUTCH1]

Your power supply might be ready to crap out on you, when you lower the FSB
to 100 it reduces the demand on the PS, hence the sucessfull boot. Try to swap
with another known good PS and see if it helps...

 

[deadken]

Testing is definately needed. I would say that your motherboard or even the memory could be where the problem is. I would start by running memtest from a Floppy or CD. If you pass Memtest with no errors at 133 then start looking at the Motherboard/CPU. I wouldn't think that the Power Supply would be the culprit, but if you want to rule out BUTCH1s suggestion, just unplug any 'extra' devices (HD's, fans, etc...) and unplug your CD-Rom also. Then reboot and see if you are stable. If not, then forget the PS being the culprit. I really doubt that the 'extra' amperage required by going from 100FSB to 133FSB would push the PS into being unstable, it is miniscule.

 

[BUTCH1]

Might be a good idea to pop open the case and check for a large amount of dust bunnies
esp. around the CPU heatsink/fan Good suggestion by Deadken as to unplugging any
unused drives ect. That would rule out the PS. Also could be a hard drive getting ready
to croak, my Quantum died a slow painfull death 3 months ago, sometime it would
load the OS, sometime's not. Or it would take 10 minutes to do so. Run some tests
(ie: maxblast) and check. Good luck...

 

[yuchai]

Agreed with others. In addition for an easy check look for bad caps on mobo

 

[maluckey]

Hardware issues of some sort. blow out the dust, inspect the mobo, reseat the heatsink with new compound, restart if all looks good. If not, start a systematic process of elimination to include hardware and software.

The symptoms that you mention can also be attributed to driver failure/corruption. At 100 mHz, it's still doable, but not stable enough for 133 mHz.