[barton986]

My system crashes every time windows starts to load.
-I've tried booting to safe mode, no help.
-In BIOS CPU temp is 45C, system temp 35C
- I've emptied the system to just cpu, mobo, ram, OS HD, vid card and cooling system
-- the hard drive boots fine on another system
-- Ran memtest86 overnight for about 6 hours, memory looks ok.

- I tried formatting and reloading XP, cuz that had fixed my random crash problems before, but it was no help here...actually come to think of it thats when the system started crashing EVERY time i tried to boot...previously it often crashed upon boot up and would randomly crash while doing stuff in Windows...

System:
- AMD Athlon 2100
- MSI KT4 Ultra 333FSB
- Kingston 256MB 400MHz DDRAM
- older nVidia vidcard (circa 97 or 98 i think)(don't have anything to swap it with to test that out...)
- Maxtor 40G 5600/ WDig 40G 7200 (i've tried booting the system with both...)
- 350W Power Supply
- WinXP, AMI BIOS


Could flashing to the newest BIOS, or clearing the CMOS do anything here...? I've done about all the home remedy tests that I know of already....what else can i try to do here.....???????

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No, flashing the bios won't help. could you list the voltages reported in bios of the +12v, +3.3v and +5v.

If the ram and hard drive are good then you need to consider the power supply (psu) next. Maybe the voltages in bios will tell us something or if you could swap it out with another known working one of 350w or better.

Rick

[Doby]

No, flashing the bios won't help. could you list the voltages reported in bios of the +12v, +3.3v and +5v.

If the ram and hard drive are good then you need to consider the power supply (psu) next. Maybe the voltages in bios will tell us something or if you could swap it out with another known working one of 350w or better.

Rick

[barton986]

Vcore: 1.760V
+5: 5.25V
+12: 12.471V
-12: -12.317V
-5: -5.127V
Battery: 3.504V
+5V SB: 5.090V

didn't see any 3.3v listing anywhere...i guess that might be the battery?

i guess i should also mention that the FSB is set to 100MHz and DRAM is set to 200MHz, though from what i know about those settings those shouldn't be causing any probs....

[Doby]

Your voltages look good,

i guess i should also mention that the FSB is set to 100MHz and DRAM is set to 200MHz, though from what i know about those settings those shouldn't be causing any probs....

Yes they are incorrect for you cpu, go into bios and load optimized defaults this should set the fsb to 133 and the dram clock to 200. Then lower the dram to 133 and see if you can boot into windows.

Don't forget to save when you exit.

Is this a new build?
or if this system has been running for awhile do you know how these setting could have got changed?

Did you upgrade the ram to pc3200?

Rick

[barton986]

ok, i changed the FSB to 133 but when i went to the dram timing the freq had been set to 266 and it can't go any lower. 266/333/400/auto are my choices here.
is this bad? and why should my fsb not be 333 thats the advertised speed on the box?

i built the system about 2-3 years ago. i recently formatted/reinstalled xp and reset the bios settings, thinking that might fix something.
my system was working reasonably well with the dram set to 400, i forget what the fsb setting was that worked along with that.

[Doby]

Without going into the details 266 would be correct because 133 x2= 266 its just the way your bios list it, most bios list the ram freq at 133. I can't explain right now its complicated but set it to 266.

So set the fsb at 133 and the ram freq at 266 and see if that helps if not reply back and I will see if I can get your manual

Try and update the video card drivers, you mentioned it was old.

why should my fsb not be 333 thats the advertised speed on the box

Thats the max fsb of the motherboard the stock speed of the cpu is 266 mhz anything higher and you would be overclocking

Rick

Edited by Doby, 12 May 2005 - 07:19 PM.

[barton986]

i tried those settings with the same results, though i did notice a brief BSoD for a split second, so i'm going to put the oshd in this computer later today and switch the settings to see if i can get the bs to stay up and get some sort of error report

i had already checked the manual for my mobo so here's the link to that:
http://www.msi.com.t...?UID=356&kind=1

as far as the vidcard drivers go i'm not sure how i would update them, i'll double check when i go and change the bluescreen posting settings, but i'm pretty sure this old school dell i'm currently relying on has some weird video card slot...i may be remembering an even older gateway though so i'll check it out
would that work to update my vidcard drivers while my harddrive is also in this dell system, then move them both back to the crashing system? that would be the only way i can think of to update the drivers since i can't get into windows.....

jonathan

[barton986]

i updated to the latest nvidia driver, didn't help...
the vidcard is a geForce 2 mx btw

i also changed the settings to keep the BSoD posted
it gave me a pretty generic message:

"a problem has been detected....."

this is the "tech info" it gave me...i don't think its too helpful but i'll put it here anyway (in case random hex codes do mean something to someone)...

***STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF9E49640,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)

i've restarted the system several times now and it gives me that exact same error code/address info/whatever that actually is... not sure if that makes it more helpful or anything....

[barton986]

i tried booting into safe mode again and this time i noticed that the system always crashes when the file "agp440.sys" is loading...(tried it several times)

i'm not sure exactly what that means, but it led me to remember that when i first got the system i had a problem with a VidCard gone wrong...

it did all sorts of weird stuff like make the screen look like it was melting...i wound up trashing the card, but if that vidcard was that messed up could it have damaged the AGP slot on my mobo?? cuz the vidcard in the system now worked fine on this Dell...

is this a possiblity and is there any way to test the AGP slot...?

[Doby]

Sorry so late getting back but read this artical give it a try and let me know.

You may then have to use a program called driver cleaner to remove all remenants of the video drivers.

then restart the "agp440.sys" service and reinstall the most current video driver for your card.

Rick