Random Crashing :(

[Hiro2k]

Being a computer geek and a mod, I feel kinda bad posting my problems, but I'm fed up!

About 2 months ago I got my new Athlon XP 2500. I was so happy that I could replace my old XP 1600 with a faster processor. But then the troulbe started. First my bios was too old to support any of the new Barton Cores, so I had to flash it. Ok no problem, now that it's flashed I change the fsp to 333 and it hangs....... oh wait there it goes, just took a while. Now I decided to see how far I could overclock it without problems. I manged to get it to post at a speed = to 3200+. Cool but I took it down to the 2800+ by change just the multiplier and not the bus. So then I start getting a few random lock ups in my games, and I think it's just my OpenGL not working, so I switch the ones that I could to D3D (Half-Life mostly). Then I re-format cause it starts happening to all my games! So now I install everything and now my OS is locking up. I have dual monitors and I noticed sometimes it would freeze when my wallpaper changed and 1 monitor didn't refresh the image. So I disabled the other monitor, and it was up for about a day without crashing. But I rejoiced too soon. It died on me again! Normally I hear an error, but the screen freezes before I can read the error. But this time when windows came up, It showed me an error. It was nv4.dll (or something like that) AHA! There's the culprit, my video card. So I update the drivers from nvidias website to some newer ones that are not listed on the main page, but it hasn't helped. It's frozen twice since then. :(

So what do you guys think it is??? It could be all sorts of things. I need help, I can't get any work done and this is the only PC at my disposal.

Thanks Alot in advance.
My PC specs are in my sig

[dvd_maniac]

What are the temp of cpu & Motherboard?
Also, what about memory. Did you try to do a test with a benchmark program? I assume the memory is new with the rest of PC? So maybe defected. Do you have any problems at default (NO Overclocking) settings?

[Hiro2k]

The temps are well within the normal range, I built this PC for mild overclocking and so I got a nice fan for the CPU and I installed extra case fans.


These problems occur when I'm not overclocking, in fact I underclocked it just to see if that was it. But no go.


I have never been able to finish the memory test because of the stupid freeze so I can't say. But I also thought that perhaps my RAM was bad, so I underclocked the RAM (lowered the timings etc....). But that didn't help it any. It could be any number of things :(


Also this setup is not new, I've had it all for over a year now so it seems strange that it would start acting up all of a sudden. The processor is the newest thing in here.

[port66]

manually set you ram voltage to 2.7

[Pyscrow]

Had a similar problem when I got my new Athlon, would run ok for a week or two, then random lock ups would start, getting worse until it refused to boot, then if I forced a BIOS reset, by moving a hard drive or PCI card it would work again, but go through the same pattern.
I run 4 computers at home, so replaced everything by swapping parts around, except the board and chip, over a period of trial and error, flashed the bios, underclocked both CPU, and board (memory), and still the same problem.

Drove me nuts. Unfortunately I had bought the motherboard and Chip from different suppliers, whom both informed me that the others product was at fault, not theirs, they could do extensive testing for me at $60 per hour, but as it was an intermitent problem no guarantee of a fix.

I gave up on it and now run a P4 3000, running like a train, no lockups. Athlon box now stripped and chucked in spare parts bin.

[vinkes]

@ hiro2k

What kind of psu (power supply unit)do you have?
Could you post your voltages of your psu?

[Soulhunter]

Got similar problems, (random reboot) while playing games... :(

But ONLY while playing games !!!

No reboot while a 20h / 100% CPU usage video encode...


So far I have discovered that for some reason DirectDraw acceleration gets disabled after some time !!!

But Ive no clue why... :confused:


Bye

[BruceL]

@Hiro2k
Do you still have your old CPU? If so, try putting it back in and see if you can get back to where you were when operating stable. If stable with the old CPU, maybe the new one is flaky.

[Hiro2k]

Originally posted by BruceL
@Hiro2k
Do you still have your old CPU? If so, try putting it back in and see if you can get back to where you were when operating stable. If stable with the old CPU, maybe the new one is flaky.

I'm gonna try that later today. But if it is dead, what can I do? Do I send it back to AMD or what? Never had a problem with hardware before so I don't know the procedure.

[BruceL]

@Hiro2k
I don't have AMD hardware so I can't speak for them. But, I did have a similar experience with an Intel CPU I had put in my daughter's computer. At the time her system was P4 and all mine were P3's, but I borrowed a friend's CPU. When the hardware all ran stable with the borrowed CPU, I called Intel's customer service and explained the instability problem. They gave me an RMA number for return and they sent me a new CPU.

[BruceL]

@Hiro2k
Just curious, did you get your stability problem resolved? You have not posted about this in a while.

[Hiro2k]

Funny that you mention it, it turns out it was my video card. So I just bought me a new ATI 9600 today!!

Woohoo!!!!!! :D

[ukb007]

My system is somewhat similar to yours. I had a similar problem; moreover, bizarre things happened (like after writing a CD 'successfully' with Nero, I found that it wasn't recognised by windows).

I traced the issue finally to the two factors:

1. (I'm pretty sure this was a reason) Bad sectors in Primary Master HD
2. (I imagine this was also a culprit) RAM modules from a not-very-known company (RAM issued faint clicks whenever it was required to act)

I changed my HD, and installed Kingston RAM modules. Now everything is ok. No overclocking, though. I'm too sedentary for that.

Regards.

[bit-wise]

One thing to check is your CAS Latencies. Make sure that the level you have specified (2 or 3) matches what the memory is capable of handling.

If it doubt, set it to 3 (slower). If you have semi-bad memory, if your latency is set to 2, you won't get a crash until the system is under load.

Best thing you can do is borrow a stable memory chip and see if your issues go away. That will at least eliminate one potential issue.