Out of the blue system lockups

[Erasmus-X]

About a month ago, I upgraded from an ancient PII 400 to a Athlon XP system. My new system has been relatively stable, although once in a while it'll just lock up right out of the blue. This first started happening earlier this week when it locked up while I was playing an MP3 in Winamp. It also just recently happened as I was posting a message on a discussion forum. I wonder what's going on? My system isn't even overclocked yet, so I know that can't be the problem. I have the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers installed. Here are my specs:

Supermicro SC760A full-tower ATX case
300W Supermicro PSU w/redundant cooling
Athlon XP 1700+ CPU, cooled with Alpha PAL8045+Delta 80mm 68 cfm fan
Epox 8KHA+ motherboard
512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM
Nvidia TNT2 32MB AGP video card
Adaptec AHA-2930U PCI SCSI card
Maxtor 13.6GB 5,400 rpm ATA/33 hard drive
Plextor UltraPlex40 40x SCSI-2 CD-ROM drive
Teac CD-R56S-600 6/24 SCSI-2 CD-R drive
Castlewood ORB 2.2GB external SCSI-2 removable drive
Sound Blaster Live! X-Gamer PCI sound card
3Com 3C905B 10/100 PCI NIC
Microsoft Windows XP Professional

Any insight would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[Erasmus-X]

<bump>

C'mon, someone's gotta know something.....

My system locks up after a little bit of idle time now. It's very annoying.

 

[Journeyman]

I've heard that installing the 4-in-1s under XP is a bad idea, and that you should just stick to the native WinXP drivers... Have you upgraded any other drivers lately? Seems like a lot of the stability issues people have with XP are simply bad or incompatible drivers. This would be my first guess.

Other than that, it seems possible that your 300w power supply isn't up to the task... Have you installed any additional hardware recently that would require additional power? If not, it would seem odd that it would start after a few weeks, unless it was just straining the power supply some way from the beginning and it's starting to go bad...?

What are your system temperatures? Have you started running the heater in your home lately?

...Just some thoughts...

 

[Erasmus-X]

Thanks for the reply.



<< Other than that, it seems possible that your 300w power supply isn't up to the task... >>



Perhaps. It's on the AMD approved PSU list, and none of my components are particularly demanding on power. Furthermore, I haven't installed any new hardware since I've upgraded to this CPU/mobo combo with DDR RAM.



<< What are your system temperatures? Have you started running the heater in your home lately? >>



According to PC Health in my BIOS, my CPU temp averages about 36 degrees celcius (I would hope so, because my HS/F set me back about $90) and my system temp averages about 32 degrees celcius. So, I'm actually running pretty cool.

I don't run a heater in my home because I live in Phoenix. The coldest it'll EVER get here is like 40 degrees fahrenheit. Hehehe......

I updated the BIOS last night (the factory revision was dated 10/17/01) to the 11/2/01 version. So far, everything seems stable, but I shall report back after extended testing.

Thanks.

 

[Erasmus-X]

^ bump

UDPATE:

After upgrading the latest BIOS, still the same problems. I'm starting to think it might actually be my PSU. It is only 300W, so it could be the culprit. And sometimes my system will lock up and then when I try to reset it, it'll just hang. But then I pressed the little red switch on the back of my PSU and it would let me reboot again. Really weird. What do you guys think? I'd really like an educated opinion before I go blow $90 on an Enermax 431W.

All I really want is a half-way stable system. I don't mind a crash every once in a great while, but every 1-2 hours is just ridiculous.

 

[visceral]

When it seizes up, does it seize up as in the mouse n keyboard stop responding and the screen is frozen, or is it a BSOD? Random BSOD's can be as the result of bad ram you see.

The psu could also be the culprit as said throughout this thread.

Another thing, that TnT2 may well be overheating if you are unlucky.
I would suggest disabling agp features one by one to see if that helps.

CAS timings is another! at one time i had mine set to CAS 2 when it was CAS 3 and i DID get something similar to this. Another cause is the PS2RATE program which for some reason after a couple weeks install starts to lock up my system.

 

[Erasmus-X]

Well, it's never a BSOD that happens. It usually just freezes my mouse and keyboard. And I always have to wait a while before powering back on because it won't even let me right away (it will just hang and not post). I don't know why my TNT2 would be overheating, because it never did in my old system.

 

[flyers1]

<< Well, it's never a BSOD that happens. It usually just freezes my mouse and keyboard. And I always have to wait a while before powering back on because it won't even let me right away (it will just hang and not post). I don't know why my TNT2 would be overheating, because it never did in my old system. >>



I would tend to think the problem was more heat related because it dosent let you reboot right away. If it were a momentary lag in power from your PSU, a reboot should be all that is needed.

Your CPU temp sounds fine, how is your MB temp?

 

[Erasmus-X]

My motherboard temperature is fine......like 30 degrees.

 

[Vinny N]

Could you install MotherboardMonitor and give us some voltage readings for your 3.3v, 5v, and 12v rails? Or at least check the BIOS?
Though MbM might be handy if you try and log the readings, maybe it'll indicate that something really is happening with power at the time of a lock up?

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

What version of Det's are you using with your video card?

 

[2336]

This might sound silly but - is the P/S cooling fan running okay? As flyers1 said,

<< I would tend to think the problem was more heat related because it dosent let you reboot right away. >>

 

[Erasmus-X]

I just installed a different power supply, an Antec PP-352X. It is rated at 350W.

So far so good....but here are my MBM readings anyway:

+3.3v rail: 1.52v
+5.0v rail: 4.89v
+12.0v rail: 12.16v
-12.0v rail: 2.20v
-5.0v rail: 0.69v

I'm really no expert on these readings so maybe you guys can make something of them. I'm hoping that I just had an improper power supply. I really don't want to RMA this board.