updating drivers

[dclive]

That to me suggests hardware or drivers, but without a dump there's not much I can do.

Perhaps another on here can assist more....

 

[flylice31]

damn its really startin to annoy me......so u highly doubt its the power supply? how about there is enough power or so but it's not functioning properly would it do something like this? what do you recommend me doing with the soundcard? can i replace it even though its built into the motherboard?

 

[dclive]

Well, it sounds like we've got multiple issues. Issue #1 is the sound card - when you disable it, you don't get BSOD's anymore, but (issue #2) now your machine freezes. To troubleshoot that, you can try using MSCONFIG to disable all non-Microsoft services and all startup programs, and then see if the issue comes back. If it does not, then enable services bit by bit until the issue comes back, and you've found your culprit. If I can elaborate, let me know.

Another method to t-shoot is to do a parallel install to another drive partition or directory (whether on C: or elsewhere) and see if the issue shows up in that installation. Don't install any drivers unless absolutely necessary (ie install Intel's chipset drivers, and try not to install any other drivers, if you can avoid it) If it does freeze then, it's more likely that it is hardware.

See previous comment on power supply comments.

Please normally clock (ie don't overclock) the processor so we can eliminate that as a culprit.

 

[flylice31]

ok i disabled all startup and non-microsoft items......cpu is clocked normal.....however i do have sound installed but i dont think it makes a difference because it still froze when sound was off......i even disabled it in the BIOS......i have no idea what the t-shoot paragraph is about so i dont want to mess with that......so does this indicate that it's a hardware problem?

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: flylice31
ok i disabled all startup and non-microsoft items......cpu is clocked normal.....however i do have sound installed but i dont think it makes a difference because it still froze when sound was off......i even disabled it in the BIOS......i have no idea what the t-shoot paragraph is about so i dont want to mess with that......so does this indicate that it's a hardware problem?

We've done two things - disabled the non-MS services and normally clocked the CPU. If the non-MS services were causing the issue, it was caused by software. If the change to normally clocking the CPU resolved the issue, that was the culprit.

The t-shoot paragraph refers to reinstalling the operating system to another directory so we can see if it's the OS installation that is the issue or hardware.

 

[flylice31]

oh sorry i didnt even mention that the computer still froze after all i did above.......so THAT means it's hardware now right? lol

 

[dclive]

The easy way to see if it's hardware is to install WinXP to another partition - without aftermarket drivers - if the same problem happens, it's probably a hardware issue.

 

[flylice31]

hey i may have found the solution......since we sort of narrowed it down to the hardware problem i opened up my computer.......people said the most common problems were either power, video, or ram.....so i thought ram would be the easiest to check......soo i pull out 256 mb of ram and it runs fine now! i also noticed that one of my ram cards was attached into a CHB section (colored purple) where my other ram card was connected to CHA which was green.......so i put the one i took out into the "same" CHA as the other one and CHB slot is empty.....and it hasn't frozen yet.......i also made a direct power connection from the radeon to the power supply (meaning i didn't connect it to the harddrive or cdrom drive on the way......tell me if that doesnt even make a difference........but if it doesn't freeze anymore i wanna thank you so much for ur help.......i actually learned a lot from this! talk to u later!