Stupid hardware problems...

[liquid62]

Ok, here is what's going on:

Randomly, the computer will restart itself or just shut off. Sometimes when it shuts off I'll have to unplug it and wait a minute before re-plugging. When I put the plug in there is like a little power burst where the lights and fans come on for about half a second.
Next, the computer is less stable running games. If I start to run say Call to Power 2, I'll get a game going and in no more than 5 minutes the machine will lock up or restart. When I'm just screwing around in W2K Pro it'll survive much longer.

Ok, here's what I've already done:
Switched power supplies, because of the power issue.
Unplugged my extra HD, CD-R, DVD, and took out the dxr3 board.
Switched video cards just in case.

Of course, none of that worked. I'm assuming there is a motherboard problem now. It's a MicroStar MS-6195 (K7 Pro) running an Athlon 650 with 128MB Crucial PC100 RAM.

So, is it the motherboard? That's what I'm thinking now...
Thanks,
Dan

 

[GL]

Unfortunately this could be a bunch of issues but you looked to have covered many of the bases already.

Are you running your videocard at AGP4x? If so, drop it to AGP2x and see if things stabilize. Make sure you have the up-to-date VIA 4-in-1s as well. And of course, if your CPU is overclocked, bump it down to its original speed setting.

-GL

 

[liquid62]

No, the other video card I tried was an S3 Virge GX, PCI. And it's not overclocked either. And the MSI uses the AMD chipset, not VIA. Thanks though.

 

[GL]

Damn it uses the AMD 760? Haven't been in the market for a board for a while so I'm not too up to date!

The only other thing I could think of is RAM. Crucial is a great brand but maybe it has gone bad or your motherboard doesn't like it.

Have motherboard BIOS flashes helped the situation at all or has it existed regardless of what BIOS version you have?

-GL

 

[liquid62]

Don't worry, it's an old board, got it just under a year ago. I had the RAM replaced too, I forgot to mention that. I had an AOpen 128 PC100 and the Crucial PC100 and the problem still occurred. I'd use just one, and it still did it. Then I sold the AOpen chip and actually had the Crucial chip RMA'd and replaced. But alas, that didn't do it!

I also upgraded the BIOS but that didn't do anything.

 

[sandorski]

Sounds like it could be heat. Your cpu, vidcard, or mobo could be the culprit, could be another card though. Put a housefan blowing into the open case and see if your problems go away.

Another possibility is a bad or corrupt driver install.

As for fans spinning/lights flashing when plugging in, that's normal for most ATX mobo systems.

 

[liquid62]

Yeah, I don't know about heat. The case is open and the room is about 70 degrees F. Oh, another thing: it did it once when I was in the BIOS setup. That's what really made me think motherboard.