Random Lockups- any help would be great!

[SammyBoy]

hey guys,

I am having a bunch of random lockups on a system that used to be totally stable! what to do? the only thing that happened was, I scratched a few leads, RMAed to asus, they sent it back, popped all the same stuff in it and now it freezes.

Im running win2k pro on a Tbird 900@1000 (overclocking doesnt affect stability, used to run it at 1060)

I have 256 MB good ram, 20gig maxtor, and formatting didnt help.

any ideas or opinions would be GREAT!

thanks a lot guys

-Sam

 

[Quad]

blah

you should probably wait for the big boys to come help, but i'll start with the preliminary stuff:

installed 4in1's, other drivers, etc?

 

[Snoop]

They possibaly sent you back a different board, try reinstalling the Via 4in1's, if that doesnt work, reformat

 

[SammyBoy]

same board...

have installed all drivers...(except for promise hard drive drivers which Im resolving now)

installed on a clean format


any other ideas?

my rig also freezes a lot in games, what happens is the screen freezes, and whatever sound it was playing loops over and over, kinda weird huh?

 

[Floydian]

The sound looping thing sounds like a video card freezing, at least thats what happened when my video card froze before (icky Savage 4). Check that its not getting too hot or maybe different drivers?

 

[SammyBoy]

oh yeah, its a radeon LE, just realized im running with drivers off the CD, hope that fixes things,

Ive got a fan pointed at it, but no fan physically on the HS, doesnt matter if I OC the card or not

 

[SammyBoy]

bump?

 

[SammyBoy]

bump plz

 

[bacillus]

do you have the win2k AGP patch installed! :frown:

 

[SammyBoy]

NO!
i didn't

i just formatted and I forgot it.

oh pretty pretty please let this fix it!

I dont think so though because It was freezing in 98 too

 

[SammyBoy]

guys?

what is the usual culprit when people have random lockups like this?

im gonna reinstall all my drivers now, and my stupid promise controller isnt working

ahhh....the aggrivation

 

[julianf]

scrached a few leads? what does that mean?

 

[mchammer187]

check the PSU? 300 W?

 

[SammyBoy]

i gouged a couple of traces

the psu is fine, its an antec 300w.

sometimes it freezes right away, sometimes i can move my mouse for a few seconds but not click anything and then it freezes

 

[MplsBob]

How about the following for starters:

(1) Remove all cards with the exception of the graphics card & see if that changes things. If everything now works,
insert one card at a time until it starts acting up again.

(2) Short the jumper pins to reset your bios to default values. (Check the owners manual for instructions on this.)

 

[Mem]

Try installing OS with just the basics like video card,ram,cpu,board,bios tweaks like disable all video shadowing,try running ram at slowest setting in bios,try agp at 2X & run the CPU at 900 until you get your stability back then reoverclock it.

 

[SammyBoy]

thanks

theres not much stuff

my win2k partitions are fat32, not nfts, could that cause instablity??? it didnt used to for me

 

[SammyBoy]

bumperooni

 

[SammyBoy]

plz guys!

 

[skace]

Hey Sammy,
Turn AGP down to 2x and turn off "Fast Write". Both these settings are related to video cards and are in the bios. Most likely you are pushing your video card too hard (hence why the problem appears to be random).

 

[Whitedog]

"They possibaly sent you back a different board, try reinstalling the Via 4in1's, if that doesnt work, reformat "

HAHAHA, reformat!

garage techies :|

 

[Hardware]

get a new mb boy!

 

[John P]

What I would do (i'm sure you already tried most/some of this):

1)Disable serial ports in BIOS to free up resources (assuming you don't need them)
2) Make sure no IRQ conflicts
3) Load plain VGA drivers, reload newest video drivers.
4) Make sure you have latest sound drivers.
5) Reload DirectX 8.0
6) Reload Internet Explorer (in case any files are corrupted)
7) Uninstall and Reinstall Windows Media player (or leave unitstalled until problem is resolved)
8) If 1)-7) doesn't work remove everything but video card and test. Or remove one card at a time til system is stable starting with sound card. (I use 3DMark2000 to test)
9) If 8) doesn't work try a different video card if you have one
10) Do all this not overclocked. Overclock after all this is resolved.
11) I like using 3DMark2000/2001 to test, if your machine can make it through the demo then run the benchmark in a loop of 5 or something like that. Any of my machines that make it through that seem to run fine.

What else do you have in your computer? I don't suppose you have a SBLive? I have heard people having problems with those.

 

[SammyBoy]

thx Jon P. I guess I will have to try all of this.

my only concern is the EXACT same stuff was in this before and I had everything clocked higher and it was perfect

OMG MY STUPID ASUS PC PROBE JUST POPPED UP TELLING ME MY +5 voltage was liek 5.5

STUPID FRIKKEN MOTHERBOARD

thx guys


oh yeah, no SB live

and i installed everything on fresh format

 

[SammyBoy]

any others

comp is working fine now, but promise controller isnt installed, thats gonna make sum trouble