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HELP! p4p800 instability

addyngan

Junior Member
Hello,

My system has been unstable the past few days and i have done a lot trying to find out why. but now it seems to be getting worse and worse, and i am wondering maybe the MB itself is defective.

First of all, my system config: P4 2.4C, P4P800 Deluxe, Maxtor 160GB, 2x256MB Corsair PC3200C2, Geforce Ti4200, WinXP Pro. This system has been running for about a year without any problem, and i never overclock.

A week ago, when i was doing some work, it suddenly freezes. (mouse doesn't move, no bluescreen). After that windows cannot boot. (well it shows the logo for a while then freeze) Since then I've reinstalled windows, (which didn't help). Then two days ago, i swapped the Corsair memory with two sticks of kingston valueram 512MB. It works well for 24 hrs( I was running folding + prime95), but then it bluescreen. i also tried booting with another HD which also has XP PRO installed. I can boot safe mode, but with the normal boot it will freeze as well.

Finally, today at some point, i unplugged all my HD and was trying to boot from floppy. it fails in the middle of booting. After some more rebooting, i am able to boot from CD, and i try to reinstall windows. But the windows setup gives me a bluescreen 2 minutes into setup.

As i have tried two sets of memory, i am pretty sure this is not about the RAM. And by the nature of the freezing/crashing it doesn't seems to be HD related either. I am wondering if it's the CPU, the MB or the PSU. (graphics card? any chance?)

Provided i don' t have a spare CPU/MB/PSU, how should i go about finding out which part is defective?

On a related note, these items are all bought from newegg. Shd i RMA to newegg directly or contact Asus?

Alternatively, if i can be 90% sure it's a MB defect, i will probably just get a new MB. I can't afford to buy MB+CPU+PSU though..

PS As of today, the system won't beep when i am booting..

Addy
 
And by the way, i don't think it's a heat problem . my CPU and case temperature are never higher than 40.

Another weird behavior: i set the ram timing to 3-4-4-8 in BIOS, but cpu-z and sisoft both report my timings as 2.5-3-3-6.


Addy
 
Hmm.. i removed the sound card (an Audigy2 ZS) , and now the system seems completely stable. (well folding+prime95 for 1.5 day). But do you think this is due to the sound card went bad? or still potentially a MB issue?

Addy
 
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