Hi I have a lockup problem. Because of the nature of this problem (all I have done to solve it), let me give a background of my system.
My system came with all drivers preinstalled and Windows ME. After getting all the latest updates and fixes and flashing my BIOS I tested out Win ME for a while. I decided Win ME was too buggy and wasn't any better than Win 98SE so I promptly formatted and installed Win98SE. After updating everything in Win98SE I was satisfied (or so I thought). After using 98se I started noticing a re-occuring lockup. It seemed fairly random though so I didn't know what could be causing it. I tried numerous driver combinations, latest drivers, old drivers, formatting etc. Nothing worked. So I heard Windows 2000 PRO is more stable so I switched to that thinking problems would be solved right? Wrong. Lockups still occured and I tried all different driver combos, formatting, degragging, disk checks..bla bla bla I tried it all to get my system to work. I even tried Linux which guess what, was totally stable. However Linux wasn't for me AT ALL so I couldn't keep using that. So generally speaking here is what I did:
1) Tried 4 different OS's including Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows Millenium Edition, Windows 2000 Professional, Linux-Mandrake 7.2
2) Flashed to the Latest BIOS from EPoX.
3) Updated to the latest drivers, tried not updating drivers and just using old drivers.
4) Formatted numerous times installing just old drivers or just new drivers (I must have formatted at least 50 times in a couple months).
5) Changed around locations of my PCI devices, tried using ISA NIC instead of PCI.
6) Tried Cooling, why not? My video card was running a bit hot so I added a heatsink + fan with arctic silver thermal compound. The cooler was a cardcooler (TM) that has two fans. It is very cool. I also added a CPU fan + heatsink w/ arctic silver thermal compound. Also added a simple chassis fan. Seems illogical to do all this on a system that hasn't been o/ced but I did it anyway.
Those 6 things are the 6 things generally that I tried the most to solve my problem. I thought for a while that it is perhaps something wrong with my system? My System:
Operating System: Windows 2000 Professional
CPU: Amd Athlon Thunderbird 800 MHZ
Mobo: EPoX EP-8KTA (Socket A VIA Apollo KT133 AGPset) w/ latest BIOS
Video Card: Visiontek Geforce2 MX 32 MB
Monitor: Viewsonic E771 17' monitor
Hard Drive: Maxtor 20.4 GB 7200 RPM ata-66
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Live! Value
CD-ROM: Generic 52x CD-ROM
PS: 300 watt power supply, also have a surge protector
NIC: Netgear EA 201 ISA (also have FA310tx PCI makes no difference)
Floppy: Mitsuko 1.44
Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Elite
Mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer Optical
Cam: Intel Pocket PC
Speakers: Generic 2 speaker w/sub setup (suits my needs)
Cooling: Cardcooler video card fans + heatsink, chassis fan, CPU heatsink + fan, Arctic Silver Thermal Compound
I am currently using the latest official drivers for all of my hardware as I have noticed it makes little difference stability speaking. Some other things I have tried is disabling ACPI and installing my system as a standard PC so I can put all my hardware onto a different IRQ, that wasn't the problem (no IRQ conflicts). I have tried using Optimized and fail safe BIOS defaults, tweaked the BIOS, posted this problem on at least 4 other messageboards, no luck. The lockups seem to only occur while browsing the web and playing video games. I have tried various web browsers as well with no luck.
My last thoughts are this: it could be an incompatibility between my CPU type and MOBO type that can be fixed by a specific BIOS update which I don't want to test. I have tried ALL the obvious stuff like cooling, driver updates, formatting, moving around hardware, BIOS, etc. I just don't want to send the PC back because I will have to go computerless for about 2 weeks which would suck! If anyone can solve this problem for me then you are beyond a computer god -- there wouldn't be a name for what you would be called...please help!
My system came with all drivers preinstalled and Windows ME. After getting all the latest updates and fixes and flashing my BIOS I tested out Win ME for a while. I decided Win ME was too buggy and wasn't any better than Win 98SE so I promptly formatted and installed Win98SE. After updating everything in Win98SE I was satisfied (or so I thought). After using 98se I started noticing a re-occuring lockup. It seemed fairly random though so I didn't know what could be causing it. I tried numerous driver combinations, latest drivers, old drivers, formatting etc. Nothing worked. So I heard Windows 2000 PRO is more stable so I switched to that thinking problems would be solved right? Wrong. Lockups still occured and I tried all different driver combos, formatting, degragging, disk checks..bla bla bla I tried it all to get my system to work. I even tried Linux which guess what, was totally stable. However Linux wasn't for me AT ALL so I couldn't keep using that. So generally speaking here is what I did:
1) Tried 4 different OS's including Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows Millenium Edition, Windows 2000 Professional, Linux-Mandrake 7.2
2) Flashed to the Latest BIOS from EPoX.
3) Updated to the latest drivers, tried not updating drivers and just using old drivers.
4) Formatted numerous times installing just old drivers or just new drivers (I must have formatted at least 50 times in a couple months).
5) Changed around locations of my PCI devices, tried using ISA NIC instead of PCI.
6) Tried Cooling, why not? My video card was running a bit hot so I added a heatsink + fan with arctic silver thermal compound. The cooler was a cardcooler (TM) that has two fans. It is very cool. I also added a CPU fan + heatsink w/ arctic silver thermal compound. Also added a simple chassis fan. Seems illogical to do all this on a system that hasn't been o/ced but I did it anyway.
Those 6 things are the 6 things generally that I tried the most to solve my problem. I thought for a while that it is perhaps something wrong with my system? My System:
Operating System: Windows 2000 Professional
CPU: Amd Athlon Thunderbird 800 MHZ
Mobo: EPoX EP-8KTA (Socket A VIA Apollo KT133 AGPset) w/ latest BIOS
Video Card: Visiontek Geforce2 MX 32 MB
Monitor: Viewsonic E771 17' monitor
Hard Drive: Maxtor 20.4 GB 7200 RPM ata-66
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Live! Value
CD-ROM: Generic 52x CD-ROM
PS: 300 watt power supply, also have a surge protector
NIC: Netgear EA 201 ISA (also have FA310tx PCI makes no difference)
Floppy: Mitsuko 1.44
Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Elite
Mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer Optical
Cam: Intel Pocket PC
Speakers: Generic 2 speaker w/sub setup (suits my needs)
Cooling: Cardcooler video card fans + heatsink, chassis fan, CPU heatsink + fan, Arctic Silver Thermal Compound
I am currently using the latest official drivers for all of my hardware as I have noticed it makes little difference stability speaking. Some other things I have tried is disabling ACPI and installing my system as a standard PC so I can put all my hardware onto a different IRQ, that wasn't the problem (no IRQ conflicts). I have tried using Optimized and fail safe BIOS defaults, tweaked the BIOS, posted this problem on at least 4 other messageboards, no luck. The lockups seem to only occur while browsing the web and playing video games. I have tried various web browsers as well with no luck.
My last thoughts are this: it could be an incompatibility between my CPU type and MOBO type that can be fixed by a specific BIOS update which I don't want to test. I have tried ALL the obvious stuff like cooling, driver updates, formatting, moving around hardware, BIOS, etc. I just don't want to send the PC back because I will have to go computerless for about 2 weeks which would suck! If anyone can solve this problem for me then you are beyond a computer god -- there wouldn't be a name for what you would be called...please help!
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