Built new computer and having problems... please help!

[WAZ]

I just built a computer consisting of:

Abit KT7A mobo
1 GHz Athlon
32MB GeForce2 MX video card

... among other things, obviously. I made sure to use high quality components, such as a Taisol HS/fan, Arctic Silver compound, Enermax power supply, etc. The only "old" things I have are a stick of PC100 RAM (my only RAM -- not mixed with any new stuff or anything), a SoundBlaster 16 PCI, and an old ISA 56K modem (my only road to the net for now 🙁). To my knowledge, everything is installed perfectly fine.

Upon starting it up, I was able to install the newest VIA 4-in-1 drivers, nVidia drivers (23.11), etc. Everything seemed to be fine. However, after a day or two, problems started cropping up. I'm getting a fatal exception error every once in a while. The main problem seems to be some sort of video problem-- on the internet things will disappear. For example, I may be able to click on a link, but I won't be able to see it. Or I will scroll down and I will just leave tracers of what was on the bottom of the screen. And Madden 2001 won't work--it has some funky graphics that come up when I try and play.

Would different (older) nVidia drivers fix it? Or upgrading my BIOS? Or rearranging my modem and soundcard in different PCI/ISA slots? (I read something about that causing IRQ issues on the ABIT KT7 board).

Anyway, any help would be great. I'd love some advice before I go messing around with stuff I'm unsure of.

Thanks in advance,

WAZ

 

[eplebnista]

You might try this KT7 FAQ page taken from here.

hth,
eplebnista

 

[SocrPlyr]

the first thing i think you should look at is what speed is your ram running at... is the 1GHz t-bird you have run at 200MHz FSB or 266MHz FSB, if it runs at 266 it might be trying to run your pc100 @133 which might be too much for it (i may be wrong but i don't think you have clock it down less than the FSB - which might cause the problem anyways)
basically all i am asking is what speed is the ram really running at?

Josh

 

[bhof]

I also had problems with the 23.11 drivers, I had to use the 21.81 or something like that.

 

[Bovinicus]

Go to www.passmark.com and download Burn In Test. Set all of the tests to operate at 100% load. If the program closes due to an error, it will tell you which piece of hardware is the culprit.