Weird problem..

[peonyu]

Hi, I just setup a new system and im having a very strange problem. Basically if I leave my system off for a half hour or more and then turn it on, XP will blue screen and freeze either during or before loading, and i have to hard reset, and it does that like 5-10 times in a row [freeze then i reboot it 5x] before it finally boots up perfect, and whats more, once it is in windows its perfect-no problems at all, i can even safely do a shutdown and reset and it'll come up fine again. What gives? I got no idea what the prob could be really since if there was a problem im assuming it would interfere with games and regular use and it doesnt..it just screws up if i keep it off for awhile.. and ive had 98 on it before and it did it with that aswell. Any ideas?

ak77-8xn mobo
512 166 ram
2800+athon
400w psu
radeon 9500 pro
40gb maxtor

 

[CokeJunkie]

hard drive might be on the fritz..

 

[RustyNale]

I saw a similar problem once...a circut on the mobo had a crack, when cold the crack opened just far enough to cause the boot to fail, once the board/circut had warmed up the circut would close and it would boot just fine.

Have you tried reseating all you cards, ram and cpu? Make sure that your cpu's contacts are clean and dust free.

 

[SpeedScorpion]

maight be a power-save-option in BIos???
Turon Off HDD after some Minutes or so????

good luck! =)

Scorpio

 

[WeeWolf]

How could it be a circuit? Cold contracts heat expands... when you trouble shoot for cracks you use a cold spray to spray on the area you believe may have a bad circuit if it functions for about 5 seconds after you spray the area you know you are narrowing in on the spot.
It could still be a componant but it would have to be another problem.

 

[peonyu]

update: I took the advice about the hard drive and am now currently installing win98 on a old 1.2gb fireball, so far no errors during install.

Now this leads to the next question: if the system works fine with this old ass drive, but doesnt work [flawlessly] on my modern one, what are my options [besides buying a new one-fyi im a broke ass college boy]-Im thinking that doing a low level format may be a good idea, but i have some questions on that as well:
1- will it fix most problems if its successfull
2- -Really- how safe is a low level format, i hear that most are not successfull so if thats true plz let me know
thanks

 

[peonyu]

:beer:

 

[Askalon]

Does it work now with the old HD? Did you use different cables or use the same ones? I would try to put the old HD back in, if it does it again, it is likley on the PCB of the HD. I have seen it happen where when it is cold, the contacts pull away from each other, once it warms up enough, the contacts close. What you can try is let it boot to the blue screen, let it sit for about 5 to 10 minutes. As everything is running it should warm up, if you reboot and it comes up perfect, there is your problem.