athlon xp 2800+ freezing in bios

[superfazer]

I'm not an expert by any means, but I've built a few pc's and I have a perplexing problem.I should probably start with my specs-
AMD Athlon XP 2800+
Shuttle AN35 Ultra Mainboard
Radeon 7000
1 western digital 13gb Hd running WinXP Pro
1 seagate 60gb HD for storage
I've been running this setup for about a year. I've been running some pretty graphics-heavy games lately. A few days ago it crashed while surfing the net(it had been running progressively slower lately) and upon reboot stops responding while loading Windows and even in bios. I've disconnected everything but the memory, cpu, and video card and it still freezes up.
I suspect a fried CPU but I've never fried a cpu before so i can't tell if that's the problem. I looked at it (looks a little dark around the center, not burned necessarily,but it may have been that way before), replaced the thermal compound and put it back together. It did have dust in the heatsink.
The fans are all runing properly,the power supply seems to be running fine although there seems to be some dips in the fan speeds before it freezes up. But not every time.
I am running dual ddr memory and tried different slots and running only one. stick at a time to no avail.
Since it's freezing up in bios, could it be the motherboard? It freezes after a few minutes, regardless of what I'm doing in bios. It can almost boot off of a windows disk, but freezes up after a few minutes of that too.
I need help!

 

[mechBgon]

Welcome to the Forums What brand and model is the power supply? Because it certainly sounds like a power-supply issue at the root of it. If you replace the power supply, make sure to buy a quality brand, don't judge 'em by wattage ratings. Enermax, Antec and Fortron are three safe bets, if you need suggestions.

 

[superfazer]

It's probably some generic thing... it came with the case. I've been using it for a few years in a different setup (pentium III 533) with no problems but of course things can break. It puts out 300 watts . Does my configuration require more power than usual? What about power spikes? When everything freezes up it all stays running, fans going, screen on, just stuck.

 

[mechBgon]

A 300W power supply of good quality could handle what you have. But an ageing generic 300W... I would encourage you to upgrade to a high-quality new PSU with 350W+.

 

[mechBgon]

By the way, I hope your power supply does have an ATX12V cable and that it is plugged into the motherboard?

 

[superfazer]

No, and I was going to ask about that... If that's a major issue, strange that it worked for a year already.

 

[mechBgon]

The regular 20-pin ATX cable only has one 12-volt wire in it. The ATX12V cable adds two more, and supplies the power circuitry with 12-volt power. So you've had one wire doing the work of three wires. Turn the system off, unplug the 20-pin ATX cable, and see if it has a browned/charred area.

 

[superfazer]

It looks fine, it's a trooper! I should probably get a new PSU, though. I still need to figure out what exactly is going on....

 

[superfazer]

I'm trusting your advice, but how can I tell if it's cpu vs. memory vs. motherboard failure?

 

[mechBgon]

I don't think you should assume any sort of failure until you have a proper, high-quality power supply. Most boards will point-blank refuse to run without their ATX12V cable, and I know the Shuttle is more forgiving than most in that way (I have an AN35N Ultra myself) but you should not push your luck like that.

 

[superfazer]

I guess I know what I'm doing tonight... thanks alot for your help!

 

[superfazer]

Thanks alot for your advice, it turns out that it was the power supply, I bought an Antec 400 watt psu and it works fine. Lights up blue, too. Of course in my previous panic I tried to reinstall winxp and screwed something up. There was trouble loading the driver cab file (among other files) when I was reinstalling winxp and now I keep getting the "bad checksum" error blue screen (000021 {bad image checksum} lz32.dll is corrupt) while booting. It seems strange that it had no trouble installing those files when I've reformatted in the past....