PC resets itself

  • Thread starter Thread starter Barir Malik
  • Start date Start date
B

Barir Malik

Dear All
I have read most of the postings and would like some advice on the
problem below.

I have made 2 identical PC's for my twins.

Specification:

Asus A7V333 mobo; AMD 1700XP pro + heatsink; 256 ddr mem; 60gb hd; 1
dvd; 1 cdr; radeon 7500 64ddr. 300W psu. All 8 months old. OS - XP Pro.

My sons pc works a dream and no problems to report. My daughters though
since the word go, started to reset itself. Never crashed though (blue
screen). She could work on the pc but it would mainly crash during a
specific routine.

There are certain features she cannot do when playing Sims or Need for
speed. She cannot access Encarta without it reseting. My sons pc has the
same software and there are no such problems. I observed that the hd
activity light was glowing and it sounded that the hd was always quite
active before a reset.

I have changed the psu but it still did the same. The motherboard has no
troubleshooting documetation and I am at a loss.

Can anyone suggest anything. Even a diagnostic that could highlight the
problem.

Thank you

Regards

Sammy
 
Dear All
I have read most of the postings and would like some advice on the
problem below.

I have made 2 identical PC's for my twins.

Specification:

Asus A7V333 mobo; AMD 1700XP pro + heatsink; 256 ddr mem; 60gb hd; 1
dvd; 1 cdr; radeon 7500 64ddr. 300W psu. All 8 months old. OS - XP Pro.

My sons pc works a dream and no problems to report. My daughters though
since the word go, started to reset itself. Never crashed though (blue
screen). She could work on the pc but it would mainly crash during a
specific routine.

There are certain features she cannot do when playing Sims or Need for
speed. She cannot access Encarta without it reseting. My sons pc has the
same software and there are no such problems. I observed that the hd
activity light was glowing and it sounded that the hd was always quite
active before a reset.

I have changed the psu but it still did the same. The motherboard has no
troubleshooting documetation and I am at a loss.

Can anyone suggest anything. Even a diagnostic that could highlight the
problem.
Click to expand...

- ATI 7500! You didn't even get them a 8500?! Well never mind, it's
not my business... :)

You should first rule out the easy stuff. First turn the attention to
your RAM.

Do an optical inspection to verify that the RAM-stick looks to be set
properly. Use a flashlight.

Go to the bios. You set the FSB-clock to 133 and multiplier to 11.
Right? And memory settings to 'auto'?

Check out memory settings. They're probably already fairly low, -
100%, 133MHz=DDR266, CAS Latency 2.5 ? But try lower them more, like
CAS 3, or lower memory frequency from 100% to 60%. I assume RAM is
PC2100, DDR266, CL2.5?

Now check out if the PC survives the earlier software problems. If it
does, you need to replace the RAM. You can verify this, if you want,
by trying your sons RAM.

If this isn't the problem, I would suspect OS and drivers next. Since
the computer basically works? ...until enough ram is allocated or some
routine is called, I don't think you have any other hardware problem.


Two other thoughts strike me. The 7500 drivers doesn't have any good
rep. Does your daughter have the exact same driver and DX version as
your son? And were they installed identically, in the same order?
Secondly, what's a "cdr"? Would this be CDRW? Are they identical? In
that case, did you install XP on your sons machine with this
disconnected and install XP on your daughters machine with it
connected?

And you installed mobo drivers on both machines?
Bios revision is exact same on both boards?

(If the two machines are indeed identical, another further diagnostic
manouver would be to try the other video card.)


ancra
 
on your daughters PC, go into control panel and then "system", select
'advanced' tab, then press settings under startup & recovery - disable
(un-tick) auto restart.
once done, close system properties box and use the pc as normal.

now instead of a restart, there should be a BSOD that apears when a crash
occurs.
there will either be a driver file (xxxx.dll, xxxx.sys, xxx.drv etc) a fault
code (0x00000008 etc) or fault description (fault_in_non_paged_area etc)

that should assist in fault finding - weather it be a hardware fault or
software fault. once you have your suspictions, swap the hardware to your
son's pc for testing. if the fualt moves to the other pc - theres your
problem.

as for another post about the hardware being identical - that really means
NOTHING (no attack on the poster). just because the hard disk are IDENTICAL
(size, model, make etc) it doesnt dismiss the fact that there could be a
faulty capacitor, resistor, or chip etc.

hope that helps for diagnosis
tim
 
Back
Top