System no response intermittent

[quincy]

Not sure this is the right forum to post; Please move if not.

I put together a system last year (been working on it off and on) with some acquired parts & some of my own parts.

I have connected the following only at this moment:
Gigabyte GA-5AA mobo, k6-2 500 cpu, ati 8mb agp card, Quantum fireball 20gb 7200rpm drive, 24x cd & floppy drive, 300watt psu.

The symptom is:
System has no response intermittent while working.
When persist, it doesn't response to the keyboard nor the mouse.
Have to reboot it.
Just found out recently; When persist, press control, alt, delete then bring up the Windows Security screen, wait a couple seconds. Then press cancel, system is back & continue on.

At first, i thought it was software conflict. It is not.
Try Windows 2K & XP, no change.
Persist even when i was loading the OS.
Right now, no application install, just Windows 2000.
Persist even if i perform the OS setting.


Tried different psu, the cpu's heatsink & the fan is approx. 3/4" tall each.

Any assistance appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

 

[TheRod]

Have you tried removing all components except HDD and GPU. Unplug CDROMs, Floppy, add-in cards, etc...

If the problem is still there and you have a second HDD somewhere else, try it! If your HDD is slowly dying it might be the reason why there is some intermittent unresponse from your system. Never underestimate the power of an HDD that is slowly dying, sometime weird stuff happen.

You can also try this, when you have unplugged all the unnecessary stuff, connect your HDD to the second IDE connector, if this correct the problem, this mean that your other IDE controller is defective...

Humm... You can also try another video card or resetting your BIOS to default settings (I doubt it, but sometimes it can help - it's better to try stuff than not trying at all!)

--
A7N8X / <font color=green><b>AMD Sempron 2800+</b></font color=green>
Kingston DDR333 2x256Megs
<font color=red>Radeon 8500 128Megs</font color=red> @ C:275/M:290

 

[endyen]

It could be a heat problem. Try placing a house fan to blow cool air into the case. ( taking the side panel off may help). It could also be that your psu is dying.

 

[Crashman]

See if you can find a BIOS update for the board. Also check that sink to see how warm it is.

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[quincy]

TheRod.
All the suggestions have tried except the hdd.
Will try it this weekend.
Thanks

 

[quincy]

Crashman & endyen

Don't think heat related, the sink is cool not even warm/hot.
Bios is the most updated one.

One thing i noted lastnight, worse when use XP compared with 2K.

Thanks to both of you.