Computer Hardware Help

[ACCLUDE91]

My last kick-ass computer got blown up by lightning. I pieced together a decent one from some old parts I had and I have a lingering issue I cannot resolve.

About every 3-4 hours, the computer just freezes. no BSOD, no errors, it just completely stops everything. It didn't start until after I installed the Radeon 7500 card. I've un-installed and re-installed several times. Completely removed software and re-installed. I've tried the XP drivers, Catalyst Drivers, and the Omega drivers and it does the same thing with all of them. It's not overclocked either. The CPU isn't overheating and if you feel the chip on the video card after it locks up, it's not extremely hot or anything either. I have 6 fans in the case and nice ones on the CPU and video card.

PC info:
Athlon XP 3200+ (Bios only recognizes it as a 2800+) running at 2.09ghz
768 DDR333 memory
Don't remember the board right now, Via something...
Radeon 7500

Here's a shot of hardware conflicts:


Any help would be appreciated!

[Shippo]

have you tried clearing the bios yet?

If you know the make and model of the motherboard it would help, but if you can't figure it out try this to reset the bios.

turn off your pc, unplug it, and remove the battery (it will look like a watch battery). Give it about 1-5 min without the battery to clear then install it back in, and start her up.

[ACCLUDE91]

Yes, I've done that as well. Plus I chose the "reset bios" option itself. It recognizes the card itself fine in BIOS. Either I got a freakish bad card or one of the conflicts is making it lock up.

[CB7Perfection]

knowing the type and exact spec of the motherboard would allow me to be able to provide you with such help.

[chile]

increase your vdimm voltage...ram/memory...

[ACCLUDE91]

here's some more info:



mobo:
MSI KT4V
MS-6712

Bios settings:
DRAM Freq. - 333
all other ram otpions set to default
AGP mode - 4x
Aperature Size - 64MB

FSB - 166mhz
CPU Ratio - x13

Vcore - auto
DDRvoltage - auto
AGPvoltage - auto

[b33rnut010]

how many watt PS?

[cp[mike]]

having a ton of computer repair experience im going to have to say it sounds exactly like a memory problem... the chips on the board actually going bad. definately try chile's suggestion to see if you can get it to work right, but if you try a different card youll almost definately find that the problem goes away. if not that, i see that you are running multiple sticks of memory on the motherboard.. try using the computer for a while while having each of the memory sticks removed one by one. narrow it down to see if one of the sticks of the system memory is going bad, it could be coincidence that it went bad around the time you installed the new video card...

[sublime]

well knowing that vid card is way out of date, it doesnt hurt to upgrade?

[ACCLUDE91]

well knowing that vid card is way out of date, it doesnt hurt to upgrade?

I had a 4x 16mb card in there before. The Radeon7500 IS MY UPGRADE CARD! lol

Yeah I did not have this issue with the last card. Only after this video was put in. I can do some crazy graphic intensive stuff and there's no issues and other times I might do something as simple as close a browser window and that'll make it freeze. There's no rhyme or reason to it. It just gets confused and freezes sometimes.

I'll try the memory thing. One stick might be bad. They were in the machine that blew up. I threw another stick out cause it didn't work at all anymore, but these two seem to be working. I'll still test them tho.

Anyone selling an 8X AGP card for cheap?

[chile]

go to ocforums.com....people always selling cheap shit in there.

[ACCLUDE91]

I pulled the Radeon 7500 AGP card and put in a Nvidia GeForce FX 5700LE PCI card. It's been two days and it hasn't crapped out on me yet. Either the card was bad or a setting somewhere was bad but this one seems fine so far. Thanks for the help guys!

[Smokinspeeds]

Good to hear it's working, If it ran for a couple hours then froze I wouldn't say it's the memory. Memory that's bad-going bad as far as the problem's ive incured would always be triggered by something non-time related. Also the ati cards are known to get REDICULOUSLY hot, and even with all the fans if the card was an off-brand ati or even knew with the heatsink moved a bit anything is possible. The card could be a lemon. (RMA or get your money back if that's the case!) And in the future if you need any graphics cars or any computer stuff I can get just about anything from this huge swap meet. Like used stuff for an older computer for really little $$

[accordme93]

yeah i have problems every now and them with my Radeon 9500 pro. Especially after a reformat and fresh install of XP. The new Catalyst drivers wouldn't work with the old version of Win XP so I had to upgrade to SP2. I leave my computer on all the time and once in a while when i hop back on it the video card just stops working. the monitor just stays in the sleep mode and won't wake back up. or sometimes when i reboot the display won't work at all even though the windows has fully booted.

i think next computer i build i'll be going back to Nvidia

[Smokinspeeds]

i think next computer i build i'll be going back to Nvidia

Yeah right now if you do the homework for the price offerings the nvidia in the same range as the ATI pwn every time pretty much. Plus they run cooler, which means cooler case, cooler cpu, longer life everything.