Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (
More info?)
In article <40de63e8$0$18192$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au>, "Sharon"
<mailto_sgflower@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> I have a ASUS P4S533, Intel P4 1.60 GHz, 512 MB ram, 80 gig HD I have
> partitioned in half, OS and all saved Doc's on other half, Display card
> RADEON 9200 SE, CD-RW and normal CD drive, Creative sound blaster card.
> Recently in the middle of playing games or just reading mail my PC decides
> to reboot or close the game down and give me the desk top to look at. I took
> the game I thought was the culprit off my PC but it's still happening. It is
> very frustrating so if anyone has any ideas as to why this could be
> happening I would greatly appreciate any help.
>
> Sharon
I have a set of test programs I like to run:
1) memtest86 from memtest.org. This is a memory test program, that
you use with a blank floppy diskette. The program will format the
floppy and put a bootable test program on it. You set the machine
to boot from floppy (if that option isn't already set up) and
let memtest test the memory. You can leave it running overnight,
or if you are in a hurry, just do several passes.
2) While in Windows, you can use Prime95 from mersenne.org to do
its Torture Test. This is a computationally intensive program
that will find any weakness in your processor, Northbridge,
or memory.
3) The third test is to run 3DMark2001SE (madonion/futuremark).
That is a DirectX 8 test program. There is also a 2003 version
of the program, and it requires that DirectX 9 be installed.
If you leave the program running in Demo mode, and enable
looping, the test can run overnight. I use this to identify
whether the video card and AGP slot are healthy.
Considering this is an SIS chipset, I have a feeling the issue could
be AGP related. You can try different versions of whatever chipset
AGP driver SIS offers, in the hope that improves stability. You can
also play with video card drivers, as I've found quite a difference
between driver versions, with either ATI or Nvidia cards. My opinion
is, that a driver invented around the time the card came out will be
the best, as a driver released today, focuses on video cards that
have just been released, and sometimes support for the older cards
suffers. Some video card drivers have been "over-optimised" in
later releases, so it pays to try a bunch of them, until you get
stability.
Also, in the DirectX install, there is a program called Dxdiag, and
it lists whether AGP Texture acceleration is enabled, and so on.
This is handy for determining whether the video card has in fact been
set up correctly. On the systems I have here, I've always had to
fight with the install process, to get the acceleration features
enabled. Even though I de-installed any old video drivers before
adding a new video card.
So, try a few of those tests, and see if a particular test fails
frequently. That might help narrow down the problem. While it could
be a memory problem, the video card/AGP slot are more likely to
be the problem. (One quick test, is to reduce the AGP setting. If
AGP 4X is enabled in the BIOS, set it to 2X and see if the problem
disappears or not. If using an ATI video card and its Catalyst
driver, you have to make this change via the SmartGART tab
in the Display control panel, as ATI ignores the BIOS setting
when programming the interface.)
http://download.sis.com/ ("chipset", "agp gart", will get you a driver)
If you try a new driver, it may help to uninstall the one you are
currently using. That may be why this happened:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=2hb1b5Faqpq8U1%40uni-berlin.de
HTH,
Paul
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