What should a burned CPU look like ??

[SladeZero]

Hey there,

I have tried several things to get a couple of things working on
my comp. Everything from cooling (case fans & HSF), new PS,
different ram, and formatting with a reinstall of the OS.
I was just wondering if this could be my CPU.
I know when a CPU gets burned it usually bites the dust. Well,
I was needing to know if it is possible for a CPU to get partial
damage and still work with minor problems with things. Also,
what COLOR does the core of the CPU turn to when it gets
burned. Mine has a little ting of a SHINY copper color in the corner
area of the die. This is an Athlon 900 T-Bird. It runs 98SE fine.
2000 and XP are lost causes right now. Some items still
have probs running. I have run out of clues. I have
thought about a new CPU, but don't want to spend the money
and it not solve the prob. Anyone have any PICS of websites of
what this would look like or any info to help me out.

P.S. - The things I am trying to run do ok on my old Celeron 500
Compaq

SladeZero

 

[DAPUNISHER]

That's a headscratcher you got there! It would be great if you could borrow/buy another CPU(in the FS/FT forum you could probably pick up a similar CPU for next to nothing) so you can determine if it is indeed the culprit. Also, you could run the HDD's diagnostic utility on it to make sure it's OK (do you have S.M.A.R.T. monitoring enabled?) and that would leave just the mobo since you've changed every other major component and addressed potential heat and power issues. EDIT:BTW, it's always a good idea to Clear the CMOS, pick fail-safe BIOS settings, try a different IDE cable, try RAM in different slots, and to do the install with just CPU, Vid card, Ram, and HDD(barebones) as well

 

[Soulkeeper]

i fryed a 1ghz thunderbird before
couldn't even see anywhere it was messed up
i've seen pics of ones that develop a small black spot around the substrate or small holes
sometimes it is internal

but your situation does sound like DAPUNISHER said
a scratched or broken off part can definately cause issues
i scratched my 600 slot A athlon's die
it still worked i just got lucky it wasn't a bad scrape (took a peice of a corner off)
but you could lose transistors that way which is the cpu's internal
and can result in unexplained behavior

you did mention tho that you didn't have the issue in win98 but that it occured only in win2k and winxp
perhaps it is a driver issue
maybe you don't have the proper motherboard drivers installed (ie: 4 in 1's) ??


i dunno just some thoughts
--Soul_keeper

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I don't think he could have a driver issue because you don't need chipset drivers to do an OS install from scratch and he can't get XP or W2K to even install. He also mentions that some things won't run right in 98 SE so it's most likely hardware related IMO.