Stumped - Random reboots and failure reloading XP

[econnelle]

I have an older Asus Terminator II system that I built for someone. I built a few of these because they were great deals for what they offered at the time.

2.4Ghz Celeron 533mhz bus speed
256 megs PC3200 Ram
40 Gig WD HD IDE
48X CD Writer

This was budget the whole way back then.

System ran perfect until about 2 weeks ago. Went to install NAV 2007 and it started to randomly reboot. Now it gets about 1/2 way through loading XP and reboots.

I backed up the data and tried another PS, no luck. 2 other sticks of ram, no luck.

Tried to reload XP and get two different errors. One with the original HD and ram I get:

stop: C0000021 Unkown Hard Error

About 1/2 way through loading the files off of the CD, this is before the license agreement and all that.

Throw in a 250 gig drive and get an error cannot read UHCUSB.SYS, error in line xxxx. I recalled the .SYS file from memory so I might have it a bit wrong.

Swapped in the new ram, same error.

It acts just like bad caps but none of them look even close to being bad. The interior of this thing is immaculate, they must vacuum it 🙂

PS, Ram, HD...doubt the CPU is bad...guess the MB could be bad but its rare and I don't want to try swapping that until I have some more background on the error.

When it does boot into XP it runs fine, then just reboots, no warning, no pattern.

Any idea's?

Its an ASUS P4P8T motherboard in the unit.

Thanks

 

[oynaz]

It seems like the only thing you haven't tested is the CD-writer. Try another if you can.

 

[econnelle]

I've been away for a few days but I tried out the Ultimate Boot CD, its a Linux distro with a bunch of nice low level hardware diags.

Boot it up and run CPUtest and the computer will not respond to CONTROL-C but will respond to CNTRL-ALT-DEL.

Ran Memtest, it locks up within 3 seconds and I've tried 4 different pieces of working ram.

It acts just like bad caps but I've gone over each one carefully, no popping or leaking.

CPU runs at 54c with Smartfan on, 44 with it off, same failures with it off.

Looks like the MB.