I have an MSI Neo4 with an Athlon 64 chip (socket 939) running WinXP SP2. No overclocking.
Ever since I built it 18 months ago I've had problems with it freezing periodically. No messages in the event viewer, almost never any BSOD (the occasional machine_check_exception, once every 50 times) to go by; it just stops cold.
I've been fiddling with RAM chips in the hopes it could be a bad memory chip, but all my Prime95 and Memtest86+ tests run great for hours on end. Recently though, something a little strange happened. I was watching a Craig Ferguson clip on youtube, a site which leads to a crash fairly often, when sure enough, the box froze a minute or two into his monologue.
I figured here we go again, but before I could hit the reset button the screen went black, then the audio came back on, and for five seconds the video ran again as normal. Then it froze again.
After I rebooted the box the BIOS wouldn't go past recognizing the CPU. No memory test, no errors either, but nothing else. Just sat there.
After rebooting a few times with no change I turned off my USB hard drive in preparation of calling it a night. To my surprise the BIOS picked up where it left off and I XP loaded normally. Any ideas what's going on here?
I've had the machine freeze plenty of times before when the USB drive is off, so that can't be a culprit here, could it? Anyone have an idea what the heck is going on here?
I should mention - the MSI board has the latest BIOS on it.
Ever since I built it 18 months ago I've had problems with it freezing periodically. No messages in the event viewer, almost never any BSOD (the occasional machine_check_exception, once every 50 times) to go by; it just stops cold.
I've been fiddling with RAM chips in the hopes it could be a bad memory chip, but all my Prime95 and Memtest86+ tests run great for hours on end. Recently though, something a little strange happened. I was watching a Craig Ferguson clip on youtube, a site which leads to a crash fairly often, when sure enough, the box froze a minute or two into his monologue.
I figured here we go again, but before I could hit the reset button the screen went black, then the audio came back on, and for five seconds the video ran again as normal. Then it froze again.
After I rebooted the box the BIOS wouldn't go past recognizing the CPU. No memory test, no errors either, but nothing else. Just sat there.
After rebooting a few times with no change I turned off my USB hard drive in preparation of calling it a night. To my surprise the BIOS picked up where it left off and I XP loaded normally. Any ideas what's going on here?
I've had the machine freeze plenty of times before when the USB drive is off, so that can't be a culprit here, could it? Anyone have an idea what the heck is going on here?
I should mention - the MSI board has the latest BIOS on it.
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