Old System Driving Me Insane...

[tuffgong]

I have an old Slot 1 Motherboard (Legend QDI BrilliantX 1).

Whenever I boot up, try to partition the drives or even install an OS it freezes. I have switched RAM, Hard Drives and CPUs and nothing can stop the freezing.

Could this be a power issue? I am using a 250w PSU. Additionally, I have Networking, Sound and USB PCI cards inthere, as well as an ISA Scanner card.

Could something be wrong with the motherboard? Sometimes when I format the drive it gets to 99% and stops even though BIOS reads the hard disk properly.

I am mixing RAM, but I have also tried one stick at a time to no avail.

 

[alzan]

Have you tried resetting the CMOS (usually involves moving a jumper on the motherboard); the manual, if you have it, should have instructions).

Might be your PSU; have you tried booting with minimal hardware (video, drives and memory)?

 

[tuffgong]

have tried minimal hardware as well as different video card, cpu and ram. i even took the HD and DVD-ROM out and it still froze...memtest shows no errors but does freeze. i'll try the cmos.

update - cleared cmos...same problem...what on earth could it be?

 

[tuffgong]

looks like it was the cpu...its supposedly supported but my guess is that it really isnt. bios recognizes it fine which is strange. perhaps it was overheating...it has a passive heatsink. even bios was giving me low temps though.

 

[alzan]

Good to hear. If your case design allows, try to get a fan to blow across the CPU, I'm guessing it's a Pentium II proc, 266-400 MHz range; I've got one in my older system but it's got the fan built in to the heatsink.

alzan