Constant system crashes

[Dazbo666]

I'm just about pulling my hair out at the roots with my 2 month old build....

The system constantly "hangs" and occasionally completely crashes, and I just can't figure out why.
Sometimes it works OK, but more often than not, freezes soon after the Windows screen has booted.... then I have to reboot in an attempt to restart the PC.

I've tried different 2 different hard disks, formatting and reinstalling, changing PSU 3 times, changing the memory etc etc.... and the result seems to end the same each time - eventually
The "normal" running temp is about 50-53 C and I'm running Win XP Pro... my system spec is in my sig...

PLEEEAAASE HELP?!?!

[jmebonner]

We don't have any sigs here, they're disabled, so if you could post the specs, it would help a bunch

[Dazbo666]

Ooops, sorry.... here ya go...
--- XP2600 --- MSI KT4VL mobo --- 2 x 512Mb DDR PC2700 --- Sapphire Radeon 9500 Pro --- Liteon DVD ROM --- Freecom 32x CDRW --- 80Gb Maxtor 7200rpm HDD --- 4.2Gb Seagate 5400rpm HDD --- 550w PSU --- Windows XP Pro

[jmebonner]

Has it worked at all, or has it been working fine and is just now giving you fits? What brand is the ram?

[Dazbo666]

It's worked fine for about a month or so, but in the past 2-3 weeks, been messing me about on a regular basis.
The ram is PC2700 DDR from SavaStore which has very good user reviews on the site

[ZL1]

Originally posted by Dazbo666
It's worked fine for about a month or so, but in the past 2-3 weeks, been messing me about on a regular basis.
The ram is PC2700 DDR from SavaStore which has very good user reviews on the site

you installed a clean version of windows and it kept doing the same thing ?
and after you changed the ram it did it again ?
in that case we can rule out those 2 (by the way you said it worked at the begining, did you install the original OS ?)


is the board auto=tunning or requres manual input ?

also do you have a generic v-card around ? try that for a day or two, also remove everything else, keep the system close to bare, this is temporary just to pinpoint the problem

I dont think you have a spare board+cpu around , do you ? that would be the easiest way to pinpoint the problem, if you replace those and keep the rest of the components and the problem is gone you are very close to a solution, if its not then you have to go component by component


Dan

[ZL1]

I forgot, if you want to test the ram, there is a very nice tool out there , memtest86 http://www.memtest86.com/

run a couple tests



Dan

[Dazbo666]

Gonna run memtest today, then test the system running with one strip of memory at a time, cos I've ruled out just about everything else....

[sunxiaol]

I think its your vid card, I had the same problem with an older system I had and when I switched video cards, there was no problem.

[Dazbo666]

The vid card is a new Sapphire Radeon 9500 - I bought it about the same time as the rest of the components for the new system.

I guess I can try putting my old 32mb All-In-Wonder card to test the system, but I'm gonna have Vietcong and Splinter Cell withdrawal symptoms if I use my old card!! heehee