Hi everyone, I'm at my wit's end. I'm just going to copy and post here what I posted over at GG. I figure the more people who read this, the better chance I have of solving it... Sorry for the long post.., but here are the multiple posts about my issues. It's quite the chronicle.
Man am I going crazy. I just bought a new HP a640n, w/ an amd 64 3400+, 512mb 2700 ram. I installed my Radeon 9800 pro 128mb and my old soundblaster live card. I played Farcry and the tower would beep every so often in the middle of playing (the HP tower, not a tower in the game ). Suddenly, the game would freeze for a second, and then the whole screen would turn blue and the system would freeze until I reboot.
This never happened outside of the game. So I'm playing Morrowind and the same thing happens, the tower beeps (just one beep, a few minutes pass, then another lone beep). Then the frozen blue screen. I called up HP, they walked me through a few steps, and things seemed to be working fine.
In comes Doom3. Everything is fine. I install the new ATI beta and a few hours later: beep, freeze, blue screen, reboot. I roll back to a previous driver through device manager, and to be safe, I reinstall the previous, non-beta driver. Now the freezes are closer together. I'm doing a system restore from this past Monday to see if it helps.
Does anyone know why this is happening? HP was helpful, but it keeps happening! Is it possible the new computer is a lemon? Should I do a full system recovery? Please help! And thanks ahead of time.
Ok, so I did a system recovery after spending a couple of hours burning all my files to cds. It reboots with all of my programs and files still there! I thought they would be gone. Is this normal?
Then I boot up Doom3 and the SAME BEEPING NOISE comes from the tower! I removed all drivers from the old card, installed my Radeon 9800 Pro, installed the new drivers and everything seems fine. I also have the power cable hooked up to the card inside the case, so as far as I know the card's fan should be working, but I do think all of these problems come from the card installation; and the card worked fine in my P4 1.8.
Is there a way to find out if the card is getting enough juice? Or if it's taking too much juice from the case? I will call ATI tomorrow when they open.
I think I found the problem...
In bios, the video card setting (I don't remember exactly what it's called) was set to PCI and not AGP. Apparently, when you install a new card the bios resets to PCI. I HOPE that this was the problem w/ the lock ups and BSOD. I guess I'll have to play Doom 3 for a few hours to make sure it doesn't lock up! Now the bios is set to AGP.
Does anyone know about the effects of setting it wrong in bios? Does it make sense that this was the problem?
I'll try the cooling technique. Do you think it might be a power issue? I have the card hooked up to the power inside the case, but would power suddenly become an issue in a high-end game? Is there a more stable way to cool the case than keep it open with a fan blowing on it, or a way to check the power?
Eureka! I think...
I finally opened up the tower and looked at the power supply: it was 250 watts! According to
http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/, I needed at least 292 watts. So I bought a 350 watt power supply, loaded her up, and now for the test: one straight hour of Doom3. I hope that this cures the problem.
DAMN IT!
You see, everything seems to be running fine. Doom3 cruises along great, the power supply was installed easily and the computer is running without a glitch. But then, when playing a game, the tower STILL BEEPS! I turn off the game before the system crashes at that point.
This happened with the computer on my desk, rather than IN the desk, with the case open. So, I've:
-spoken to tech support with HP and ATI. ATI suggested power may be the issue, hence the new power supply. HP tried but did not come close to solving the problem.
-I've done a system recovery, but nothing changed.
-I've changed the power supply, but nothing has changed.
-I've opened the case, but nothing has changed.
-I went into SmartGart and changed the settings from x8 to x4, and disabled fast write.
-Still, the tower beeps at me and I won't play until the game crashes.
Interestingly, when I played Doom3 at first, it did not beep until 45min or so into the game. When I restarted the game after having it off for about 15 minutes, the beep came about 5 minutes into playing. These beeps ONLY happen when I'm playing a game.
So now is it still a heat issue w/ the graphics card or CPU? It does feel a bit warm in there, but I don't know what's normal for it to feel like. Should I get that Arctic cooling thing
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewprodu...3watch&ATT=Fans
or do I need to cool the whole tower? I really have almost no money to spend here. Maybe heat is not the issue, but what is left? There are no error messages, everything else works great, even games. Maybe this computer is a lemon or who knows. I don't want to return it to Compusa, because I cannot afford a new computer, even after the refund. I now have, as a recap:
-HP Pavilion a640n
-Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb
-on board sound
-512mb 2700 ram
-160gig harddrive
-AMD 64 3400+
-with a 350watt power supply, up from 250.
What is left that could be causing these beeps and potential lock ups? Please help!
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Any help is most appreciated!
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