Computer freezes

[TheFoy]

I just built a computer for a friend, but it keeps freezing whenever he tries to run more than one program at a time. I thought that it might be heat, but the chip stays below 40C, which I had always thought to be acceptable. Could it possibly be the power supply? Everything else works well.

Athalon 800 TB
Asus A7V
256 PC133 Ram
Herc. GFMX II
IBM GXP whatever 30 gig
SBLive Value
Pioneer 10x DVD

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Wolfie]

Is it only when he open's certin programs? (And if so.. what are they) or any two programs?

Wolf

 

[HdwGuy]

I have heard that the amd boards require more juice from the power supplys. If the p/s is below 300 watts you might try swaping out.

 

[blurredvision]

Yes, HdwGuy is right. Check the power supply. It's a long shot, but could be the problem.

Also, Wolfie makes a good point. Does it do it on certain programs, or anything in general?? And when you say it locks up when trying to run more than one program, does it lock up when trying to open this second program, or any certain time after opening the second program??

Check your resources for us as well. You can do this by right-clicking the "My Computer" icon on your desktop and bringing up the system properties window, then clicking on the Performance tab, in which the second listing will give you the resources free. Do this after a fresh reboot. You can also get to the system properties windows from the System icon in the Control Panel, and also using the keyboard shortcut of Win+Pause/Break. The Win key, as I call it, is the key located between the ctrl and alt keys with the Windows flag on it. If the resources are low, I can instruct you how to get these freed up

Let us know something, and I'll try to keep an eye on this thread. Good luck.

 

[TheFoy]

Its not at my house now, so I can't check much now...it seems to happen somewhat sporadically, once just while checking out stuff in control panel, often when trying to use winamp with the geiss visualization, whenever the system gets to stressed...I'm annoyed at myself for not thinking to check the performance thing, I should have known that...Is that chip temp normal for an Athalon? And would a bad power supply make it act like that? All help is appreciated, I'm going to try to find out more soon, check that.

 

[HdwGuy]

Go to the sight below to find out about power supply configurations for Amd Processors.
http://www.amd.com/support/faqs/athlonfaqs.html#5a Amd recommends a 300 watt p/s. The p/s not providing enough current can cause a lot of weird intermintent problems. It is difinatally worth looking in to.