New System! Problems! Help!

[Tamerlane45]

Hello,
My new system I just recently put together is having major problems. I am getting lock ups and critical errors on every game I install. Also, I get lock ups on the desktop and the system reboots without warning. It is an Athlon XP 1700+, Asus A7A266, with a PNY Geforce3 Ti 200. I have gone through three operating systems, XP, Win2k Pro, and now I am running Win98 SE. None of these problems were solved by any of them, so I am assuming that it is not the OS. My cpu temperature is about 40 C without a load, and that seems a bit high. I have even turned up the voltage to the cpu. What could the problem be?
Thanks in advance.

 

[Duvie]

The temperature is not bad....


could be 2 things in my mind:


1) insufficient power supply or one that is failing...

2) bad stick or sticks of ram

 

[Tamerlane45]

The ram should be fine...I have two sticks of crucial 256 DDR pc2100. My power supply is 300...perhaps I do need higher, anyway I can check?

 

[indianduddawg47]

yeah - plug everything in your comp. leave it on for 5 or so minutes and feel the power supply - if it's hot you should get more wattage.

 

[Tamerlane45]

The power supply was very cool...maybe it is something else?

 

[indianduddawg47]

try using sdr ram.

 

[Tamerlane45]

I can only use pc133 in my board, it did the exact samething.

 

[limsandy]

VIA PCI latency fix

 

[Tamerlane45]

The Asus A7A266 has an AliMagik1 chipset, how is this VIA driver going to fix my problem? Or should I even try it since I don't have a VIA chipset?

 

[Ionizer86]

VIA PCI latency fix

Um, the A7A266 uses the ALi Magik 1 chipset; the Via patch *may* not work

If you are overclocking or anything, be sure to try going back to stock speeds (if you've changed the ram to CAS2 for example, move it back to CAS2.5 and see what happens).

 

[indianduddawg47]

try lowering the fsb to 200 mhz

 

[Tamerlane45]

I am not overclocking my system, im having enough trouble with what its supposed to do
I was looking around in bios and I could not find away to take the fsb down to 200, is that right or am I doing something wrong?

 

[Tamerlane45]

Well, I found a way to bump down my Mhz to 1100. So, that would be a 200 fsb?

 

[Muadib]

Before you start messing with overclocking, you should make sure everything works first. Go back into the bios, and set everything to the default settings. Disable agp fast writes, and set your agp mode to 2x. Set your ram timing to SPD, and your FSB to 133 which I think is the normal setting for your cpu, as it is for mine. Leave both your cpu and ram voltage set to auto. I agree with you, your temp sounds high, but you don't say what your motherboard temp is, so it's hard to judge. Your temp is within the spec for the cpu though, so you should be ok. However, I have an XP 1800 and with my cpu at full load I have a mb temp of 31, and a cpu temp of 36, so you can do better.

 

[Tamerlane45]

Well once I bumped everything down, it worked fine, no lock ups, reboots, or errors. I did however order a new heatsink which I will be getting sometime this coming week. Since its working fine now...im wondering if its the power supply...maybe that 1.4 needs a little more than 300 watts of juice?

 

[Muadib]

I would run it the way you have it now for a few days an make sure it's stable. Run something like Seti to get your cpu running near 100%. If it reboots then I would agree that you need a new supply. What are your temps like now?

 

[Tamerlane45]

Right now the cpu temp is about 45 C, and the mobo is around 23-25 C. Its been running very stable for me, other than my mouse pointer seems to lock for a second, then is suddenly fine. I even played a game with everything up and a high res, no reboots, very stable.

 

[Muadib]

Are your temp with the cpu under load, or when idle?

 

[LetsPlayGames]

a mate of mine has to run his 1400 athlon at 1333 or it locks up, and the thing never even gets hot!
Funny cos my 1400 XP(1600+) easily goes to 1545 and the temp goes up just 2-5 degrees

 

[veryape]

Have you tried removing components and only leaving what you absolutely need to be sure it's not the power supply?

 

[Tamerlane45]

Those temperatures are at idle speed. I did pull all of the essentials out of my machine, fired it up at 1.46 Ghz, and it rebooted on its on. That makes me think it was getting very hot. My new heatsink should be here in a day or two, maybe that will fix my problem?

 

[Muadib]

I agree with you Tamerlane45, you are running on the warm side for an XP cpu. Which hsf did you order, and you are using some sort of heatsink paste, right?

 

[Tamerlane45]

The heatsink im using now is the retail that came with the processor. The new one I ordered is the Thermaltake Orb 1. Right now im using AS II with my current heatsink, and I plan to use it when the new one arrives.

 

[Tamerlane45]

I was looking around in the mobo manual once again, and I noticed I could up the voltage on dimm slots. I increased it, and I am now running stable at 1.46 @ 133 with both sticks of ram. The only problem is that about every minute or so, I get a system hang of about a second or two. Could that be the PS? Or will the new heatsink cool my cpu better, creating better stability? My cpu is now running at 47-48 C idle.

 

[Bovinicus]

I would guess that it is the power supply or the motherboard. Just because your PSU is not hot does not mean that it isn't being strained. Give a rundown of the specs on your system. I say try disabling unnecessary devices in the control panel. After disabling each device, give your system a test run to reproduce the problem. If the problem is reproduced, keep disabling devices until you get to the point at which the problem no longer occurs. Hopefully you will eventually disable the component that is causing the problem, and then you will know what you must do. (Sledgehammer) =)