Computer Freezing

[Spikey217]

Hi, First time at the forums. A computer of mine that I built myself keeps on freezing not at startup but after about 20-30 mins of usage. I have gone over the list on the board and it does not fit any of those decscriptions.

I have the latest drivers for all of the components.

Mobo - Shuttle AK11 Via133 Chipset
CPU - AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.1Ghz
Video - ATI Radeon 32MB DDR AGP
Sound - On board AC97
Harddrives - 8GB Maxtor and 1GB Western Digital
RAM - Crucial 256MB PC133 (2 Sticks of 128MB)
Keyboard - MS Natural
Mouse - MS Intellimouse Optical using the PS2 not USB.
Optical Drives - 52X Aopen CDROM and HP 9100 Plus 10X CD Burner
Floppy - Standard Sony
Power Supply - 300W Enermax
Modem - US Robotics Voice
Ethernet - Linksys 10/100

OS - Win XP Pro


All of the AGP and PCI cards are in tight.

I have enough cooling to overclock, a CPU fan and 3 case fans but I do not overclock.
The two hard drives are in IDE slot 1 and the CD ROM takes IDE slot 2 master while the burner takes IDE slot 2 slave.

Did I leave any information out that will help? Any suggestions on what the problem can be?

 

[Pyromidion]

is there something that is being done to freeze it, like your doing the same thing every time it does? um...it could be bad memory, or maybe something with the system settings or drivers. if its with the OS, i cant help, because im living in the dark ages of OS, and have only used XP once or twice. you can see if its hardware by pulling everything out but the bare minimum for boot and use it a bit, and slowly add things back into it until it starts freezing again.

 

[QTPie]

It seems like your PC is overheating. You can check that out by installing a motherboard monitoring program. I found Motherboard Monitor program is great but it needs to be set up before you can use it. Since your MB is using Via Chipset, you should also use VIA Hardware Monitor program to check the CPU temp.

My friend PC was overheating although he had a big HSF unit on the CPU. Later he found out the the heatsink didn't make good contact with the CPU.

 

[Rakkis]

Have you installed the necessary Via chipset drivers?

 

[Spikey217]

Yeah, I have all the necessary drivers installed including the Via 4 in 1's. It cannot be overheating as I have checked the temp with the program that came with the mobo, winbond's Hardware Doctor.

Maybe it was a bad install of the OS but I doubt it. I will try that reformatting with minimal parts soon. Kinda hard to work with the PC if I have to restart it all the time.

Thanks a lot for the replys.

 

[toant103]

try raising the room temperature?


JK.

try using only one stick of ram at a time.

 

[Daxxax]

Just an idea, but I had the same problem with a Epox board I had put together. I tried everything but could not figure it out. I knew it was not the OS because I setup a dual boot with Win2k and it froze up too. Finally I decided to reflash my BIOS with the same level, so I reread the flash instructions and noticed that it said to BE SURE TO RESET YOUR CMOS SETTINGS TO DEFAULT AFTER YOU FLASH!! I failed to see that the first time turns out that was the problem. It's been running like a champ ever since. Hope this helps.

 

[Spikey217]

Thanks for all the replies.

Update:
-Installed a fresh Windows XP going one component at a time. Starting with the video card to the ethernet to the modem. 1 RAM module at a time.
-I flashed the BIOS to the lastest release.


So far there have been no random freezings. I'll see what happens with more usage.

Thanks again.

BTW, it was a Shuttle AK12A board, but that doesn't make much of a difference.