Random lockups, reboots,etc, on home built system

[capri]

Hello,
I built the following system in June,
Tyan S1590S Mobo
K6-2 450
Ati Xpert 128
2-64mb PC100 dimms (syscon? I think)
Impression modem(conexant pci)
SB PCI 128 sound card
Mitsumi FX320s CD-Rom (from old system)
6.4g DMA 33 HD Western Digital(primary)
8.4g DMA 33 HD Maxtor(secondary)
Info imagereaderISA SCSI interface scanner(from old system)
Epson Color 400(old system)
There is a 300watt power supply that was not even a year old in the tower.
Here are the problems: The computer will lockup in Outlook express, IE, WP7, locks up in Jedi Knight, Halflife, also, the games will just boot you out to windows(98 se). Sometimes, the computer will just do a cold boot, usually in IE,and OE. I have norton util, and crashguard comes up frequently, without being able to recover. When it works, it works great, but these problems are driving me nuts! Where should I start to T-shoot this?
Thanks.

 

[KGB]

Have you tried the latest VIA drivers for your MoBo?
Are you having any resource conflicts or IRQ sharing issues?

 

[kwisatz]

Another ting you could try is setting the FSB to 66Mz to see if it stabilises the system - I know it's not a viable longterm solution as it will decrease performance, and the CPU speed will be limited to 5*66(333).
But it did fix the stability problem on one of my friends K6-2 system.

 

[RJRD2]

I had a similar system with similar problems...the problem for me was heat related..I put s big cooler on the cpu and added a case fan up front to suck air into the case..all my lockups went away..

 

[Shukla]

I don't like ATI. I've had alot of troubles with their drivers. Try a different vid card if you can.

Try this:
1. Underclock you vid card (if possible).

2. Take off one piece of h/w at a time and check for lockups.

3. Build system from ground up (but start with a clean install of Win98 SE)

BTW: Norton Crashguard sucks. I have never been able to get good recovery's. It doesn't work and Norton hogs system resources. Come to think of it, how much free memory do you have? Are you running Real Player? That things a major memory hog.

 

[capri]

I'm not sure which VIA drivers version I have, how can you check this?
I have the latest video and sound card drivers.
Windows says I have 78% of system resources free. Norton says I have used 41mb(including this web page).
I don't think it is a heat issue, because every time I touch the heatsink, it is only warm, not burn your finger hot like the cyrix p166 I had before. Plus, the case fan blows right across the cpu fan/heatsink. I had a local computer shop guy tell me that K6-2's don't need fans!! Ha!
I don't have realplayer, and the only norton stuff running at all times is crashguard and recycle bin.
Now for the IRQ stuff:
Under Dev man-PCI bus properties-IRQ routing status:
IRQ steering disabled
IRQ table has some errors
I checked the IRQ table and found no IRQ sharing with the exception of holders for IRQ steering.
I also checked details on some of the not-totally locked up crashes:
Faults in various .dll files and memory addresses(although they usually start with 018f), but usually fault #c0000005. Well, thats it for now(got to get up early for work).
Thanks for the input so far!

 

[kmike75]

Oh man... I could go on and on about my troubles with an Xpert 128 apg and an ali chipset... I gave up and installed a voodoo 2000 pci, and became a stable, happy puter owner

500 k6-2
Gigabyte GA5AX
Voodoo 2000 pci
Sound Blaster Live
Creative 52x ( wish'in I used Kenwood )
128 mg pc100
Seagate 4.3 gig
& something I won at the county fair...

 

[eia430]

Hmm, sounds like you have a ghost in the machine... well if an exorsism does not work I have a few other suggestions. First off you are going to have to narrow down which area your problem resides in. Check heat first... does your lockup problems occour random times even when the computer is cold and you just turned it on? Or does it occour after 15min or more of running? If the problem can occur right at start up when the computer is still cold then it most likely is not a heat problem. If it is a heat problem then carefuly poke around the inside of your computer and see which parts are hot then take steps to increase cooling there. If it's not a heat problem then onwards we go. Disconnect all non essential components from the motherboard, take all NIC, sound, etc cards out and only leave the bare essentials. That should be your video card the main HD and perhaps the cdrom. Did that make the problem go away? Next would be going into your bios and reducing front side bus timing. Then check the memory timing setting CAS latency and other memory timing adjustments found in the bios to their highest or slowest adjustments. You should be getting the idea now that all I'm doing is going from General areas one by one getting more specific each time to track down the culprit. Random lockups and program failures are one of the hardest problems to track down because so many things can cause them all with near identical symptoms. IRQ conflicts can occur and cause your problems despite that windows says there are no conflicts. I've tracked down random bugs to loose powersupply connectors, faulty keyboards, driver conflicts, virus scanners, bad PCI slot connections etc. Good luck with your quest, just remember to look in general areas first and only get specific when the problem or dissapearance of it points you to a specific area then test individual components in that area. (get ready to pull your hair out, I've done that many times)

 

[Kynyght]

Check it out the new drivers for VIA "4in1425a" !!!
I had the same problems as you (kind of)
Now I downloaded this nre driver and it seem to be working fine.
Let's give it a try!