computer probs

[savior]

k the problem ive having is frequent lockups. i might get 6% of my first pass started and it locks up. it did this when i had my vid card too overclocked a year ago , but the card is at default clock right now. system is 900 athlon(not overclocked) 640 megs ram, 30 gig hd, running windows 2000 pro sp3, i just redid it bout a month ago. i dont remember installing anything that would cause problems, only thing i did install was norton firewall. was also wondering how often to redo windows after encoding so many movies? i have dont about 6 movies but with complications about 15 encodes total.would this cause lockups at anytime?? also would vid/audio codecs cause lockups?? it doesnt take me long to redo windows , but i would pref not to since i just got everything the way i wanted it lol. anything else u need to know???

thank you very much for all your help.

[jggimi]

You say you reset the CPU so that it no longer overclocks -- I assume you mean back to standard voltages and front side bus speed, both. There are a couple of things I can think of:

1) Permanantly damaged CPU from prior overclocking.

2) CPU is still overheating anyway -- insufficient/blocked airflow.

There are motherboard monitoring tools that you can run from windows that will show you temperatures from the thermistor underneath the CPU, and from thermisters on the motherboard (if you have any). I used to use one when I overclocked. I don't use it anymore, and can't remember which one I used. There's a Hardware Forum here where you might find some links, if Google isn't helpful to you.

In this way, you can determine if CPU heat is causing the problem. Note that the thermister underneath the CPU can report a temperature of 10C or so *less* than the actual CPU temperature.

[savior]

it was the video card that was over clocked , it was just the mhz that was adjusted on it. its a gainward gf2 ti 500xp golden sample.
the processor has had no overclocking done to it since i dont need it. i read on doom9s site you should do frequent reinstalls of windows but how often??? like after how many encodes , would this cause a prob?? i also just found out a friend of mine had the klez virus so now its a possibility i have it :( well thanks for the input im gonna do a viri scan and see what i can find. if nothin guess il just redo windows :)

thanks for your time

[redcane]

Windows tends to get itself in a knot kind of quickly, espically when installing/unsinstalling a lot of program dlls. It shouldn't matter how many encodes you do since that doesn't affect the windows core system. What matters is how much other settings have been changed, and how many dlls have been moved and mangled.