Computer crashing on start up

[WOUboy]

Hey guys-

I just recently got my system bulit, here are the specs:

AMD 1ghz Athon T-bird
Shuttle Via266A chipset mobo
Xtasy 64 mb GeForce 2 MX 400
256 PC2100 DDR Ram
Lite on DVD 16x
HP 10x 4x 32x burner
Generic Sound Card
Windows XP pro.
Coolmaster Fan/Heatsink

Here is my problem the computer would sometimes do funny things when it starts up. For example it would give me garbage and scrambled words on start when it's doing the memory test, or sometimes it would have green spots on the screen starting up, or it would lock up or (this is the weird one) it would freeze, crash, scramble right after it does a scandisk from an improper shut cause it would start up correctly. I don't know where to start. Is it my OS or certain parts in my computer or wait? If anyone out there can help it would be awesome. Thanks.

PS. I did overclock @ 1133 and 1200 but I stopped cause I thought these were the cause of the problem. Now i'm running default and it still gives me problem. Unfortunatly the cooling in my system is really bad the temp runs up to 48 to 50 c on avg using the default settings in the bios.

 

[Mitzi]

First off welcome to the forums

Right down to business, you've said that the cooling in your system is not very good so perhaps your graphics card is overheating and thats whats causing the problems? Perhaps the system on the whole is overheating?

Also you should never overclock a newly built system until its working perfectly at its default speeds and even then you should only overclock in very small increments.

Do you have any fans in your case? For any Athlon chip you should really have at least 2 case fans - one intake fan at the front of your case blowing cool air in and one exhaust fan at the back of the case blowing hot air out.

What sort of case do you have - is it a well known brand or a generic piece of cr@p? The better (read: more expensive) cases usually have a better cooling setup.

Also how strong is your power supply? For an Athlon 1Ghz you ideally should have at least a 300 watt PSU.

When you built the machine did you use any themal pads or thermal grease between the CPU and heatsink and fan.

Anyway, just some things to think about - good luck with getting it sorted. Let us know if you need any additional advice.