So I've been having some trouble with my computer for a while now. It has always just been an inconvenience but now, it appears that my computer may be completely toast. I've built my fair share of computers in the past so I do know my way around parts and troubles etc. Anyways, this one has me stumped and I thought I might be able to find some ideas or help. First, here are my specs:
Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo Platinum
CPU: AMD Athlon64 3400+ with 1MB L2 Cache
RAM: OCZ PC3200 (2X512MB)
PSU: Antec TruePower500
HDD: Seagate 250GB SATA (x2)
Video: X800 XL (AGP)
Sound: SoundBlaster Audigy2 ZS
OS: Windows XP Pro SP2
Now for some history. My computer first started having issues when I put in the new HDD's. Booting up would post, the chip would show, the ram would show and then it would stall for about five minutes before finding the IDE devices (Optical and storage drives). I swapped my old hard drives back in and found that the problem still existed. I decided to ignore it and put my new 250GB HDD's in and at some point during my computer's lifespan, the problem just went away and began to boot normally again.
The second mishap occurred when I installed some new RAM. Since I was being hasty and it'd been a while since I looked at my motherboard's specifications, I installed DDR2 PC5300 RAM into the machine when clearly the maximum it supports is DDR. The computer would not boot up at all, no post. Just a beep and black screen. At this point, I think I may have permanently damaged my motherboard. Anyways, I swapped back in my old ram and the machine began booting again. But the long post problem came up again. However, this time it would sometimes (more often than not) detect the chip, then hang while looking for the RAM. This would take anywhere between 2-8 minutes before instantly detecting the harddrives and moving on to load Windows. However, when the Windows XP load bar disappeared, it would hang on a black screen for another 2-8 minutes before finally loading up. At this point, the computer would work normally with no problems. An annoyingly long bootup, but at least it worked.
Fast forward another four or five months and I'm sitting in my room playing World of Warcraft. My computer has never really locked up on me, I'm very nitpicky about who uses my computer and have no spyware or viruses as I scan for them everyday. I've never had a "WoW Error" (game suddenly exits citing a fatal error with a debug message) and I was happy. One night last week, my computer locked up. Frustrated I rebooted, waited the 15 minutes for it to boot up and went back to my happy gaming. No more than five minutes in, it locks up again. At this point I'm worried. The lock up would freeze my screen, make a continuous high-pitched screeching noise. I figured maybe it was an issue with my sound card.
So I open up my case, blow out some dust and remount the sound card. Lock the machine back up, wait 15 minutes for the boot up and back to happy gaming! Surprise surprise, the machine locks up again. I go through my computer more thoroughly getting rid of dust. However, as my hand grazed my video card it actually hurt it was so hot. I take out the video card, and vigorously use the air duster to get all the dust out. Looks like there was so much dust that it clogged up the airways in the heatsink. Put that back in and hopefully back to happy gaming... Not so! Computer locks up yet again, with the same eerie screech. I run MemTest86 for 12 hours with no error, used PC-Check to check the mobo/chip for errors and ran HDAT2 to scan the harddrives. Nothing came up. I tried booting up with an alternate hard drive to see if I could bypass the long reboots since I've been forced to restart so much. No cigar, still takes a long time to detect the RAM.
Oh, I should mention, my computer crashed many many times while playing games and only once or twice while word processing or web browsing. Anyways, I put all my original components back in and figure I'll try something else, I have a paper to write. I put everything back in, wait for the long ass post... But this time, 20 minutes elapses and it hasn't moved on. Now I'm really worried. I leave the computer on the post screen and then it goes to a black screen and my monitor turns off (which it would never do before with the prolonged boot ups). I reset it again and the same thing happens. I decided to leave it over night but nothing happened. Monitor stayed blacked out and the rig would not boot.
Anyway, sorry for that wall of text. I guess I wanted to make sure that every bit of information I could get out there was written. At this point, I'm beginning to think I did something to screw up the motherboard. Since doing all this, I've bought new parts and will have a new computer ready to go but I was really hoping to use this old (but still good) machine as a computer I could use at work. Any help would really be appreciated. Thanks for your time.
Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo Platinum
CPU: AMD Athlon64 3400+ with 1MB L2 Cache
RAM: OCZ PC3200 (2X512MB)
PSU: Antec TruePower500
HDD: Seagate 250GB SATA (x2)
Video: X800 XL (AGP)
Sound: SoundBlaster Audigy2 ZS
OS: Windows XP Pro SP2
Now for some history. My computer first started having issues when I put in the new HDD's. Booting up would post, the chip would show, the ram would show and then it would stall for about five minutes before finding the IDE devices (Optical and storage drives). I swapped my old hard drives back in and found that the problem still existed. I decided to ignore it and put my new 250GB HDD's in and at some point during my computer's lifespan, the problem just went away and began to boot normally again.
The second mishap occurred when I installed some new RAM. Since I was being hasty and it'd been a while since I looked at my motherboard's specifications, I installed DDR2 PC5300 RAM into the machine when clearly the maximum it supports is DDR. The computer would not boot up at all, no post. Just a beep and black screen. At this point, I think I may have permanently damaged my motherboard. Anyways, I swapped back in my old ram and the machine began booting again. But the long post problem came up again. However, this time it would sometimes (more often than not) detect the chip, then hang while looking for the RAM. This would take anywhere between 2-8 minutes before instantly detecting the harddrives and moving on to load Windows. However, when the Windows XP load bar disappeared, it would hang on a black screen for another 2-8 minutes before finally loading up. At this point, the computer would work normally with no problems. An annoyingly long bootup, but at least it worked.
Fast forward another four or five months and I'm sitting in my room playing World of Warcraft. My computer has never really locked up on me, I'm very nitpicky about who uses my computer and have no spyware or viruses as I scan for them everyday. I've never had a "WoW Error" (game suddenly exits citing a fatal error with a debug message) and I was happy. One night last week, my computer locked up. Frustrated I rebooted, waited the 15 minutes for it to boot up and went back to my happy gaming. No more than five minutes in, it locks up again. At this point I'm worried. The lock up would freeze my screen, make a continuous high-pitched screeching noise. I figured maybe it was an issue with my sound card.
So I open up my case, blow out some dust and remount the sound card. Lock the machine back up, wait 15 minutes for the boot up and back to happy gaming! Surprise surprise, the machine locks up again. I go through my computer more thoroughly getting rid of dust. However, as my hand grazed my video card it actually hurt it was so hot. I take out the video card, and vigorously use the air duster to get all the dust out. Looks like there was so much dust that it clogged up the airways in the heatsink. Put that back in and hopefully back to happy gaming... Not so! Computer locks up yet again, with the same eerie screech. I run MemTest86 for 12 hours with no error, used PC-Check to check the mobo/chip for errors and ran HDAT2 to scan the harddrives. Nothing came up. I tried booting up with an alternate hard drive to see if I could bypass the long reboots since I've been forced to restart so much. No cigar, still takes a long time to detect the RAM.
Oh, I should mention, my computer crashed many many times while playing games and only once or twice while word processing or web browsing. Anyways, I put all my original components back in and figure I'll try something else, I have a paper to write. I put everything back in, wait for the long ass post... But this time, 20 minutes elapses and it hasn't moved on. Now I'm really worried. I leave the computer on the post screen and then it goes to a black screen and my monitor turns off (which it would never do before with the prolonged boot ups). I reset it again and the same thing happens. I decided to leave it over night but nothing happened. Monitor stayed blacked out and the rig would not boot.
Anyway, sorry for that wall of text. I guess I wanted to make sure that every bit of information I could get out there was written. At this point, I'm beginning to think I did something to screw up the motherboard. Since doing all this, I've bought new parts and will have a new computer ready to go but I was really hoping to use this old (but still good) machine as a computer I could use at work. Any help would really be appreciated. Thanks for your time.
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