Hardware fault - PLEASE HELP!!!

[the_stiffmeister]

My machine keeps locking up and needs to be powered off to restart. I've got an AMD X2 4800+ 2gig RAM, ASUS A8R-MVP mobo, Seagate 250GB SATA II drive + 1 extra IDE HDD and 1 extra SATA drive. 1 DVD ROM and 1 DVD RW, plus Radeon X1900 XTX HIS silent heat pipe. I've tried unplugging the extra Hard drives and DVD RW, removed half the RAM and swapped it round so it looks like the board, GFX or CPU. (It's not the hard drive beacause this is new and it was doing this before I bought it.)Any ideas on how I can narrow down the fault anymore?
Thanks.

 

[the_stiffmeister]

This has been running for a few months, no OC'ing, haven't updated the BIOS - will look into this. Has been happenning for 2 - 3 weeks.

 

[SuperK86]

I've had this issue before, when I built my first own computer.
I blame your motherboard. I had a faulty Azza motherboard which would lock up under stress, when doing conversions, or watching any type of video. My first instinct is your chipset is unstable.
Does the system randomly lock up in any task, or is it specific tasks you perform that makes it keel over?

 

[the_stiffmeister]

Looks like I owe you a beer mate :-

Version 0503 2006/04/14 update

Description A8R-MVP BIOS version 0503
Fixed system will sometimes hang if using AMD Athlon4800+ CPU

Have updated and ran BF2 with no probs (praise the lord)

BTW it locked up randomly but mostly whilst palying BF2

Cheers.

 

[the_stiffmeister]

I spoke too soon, it's still doing it. Any other sugestions?

 

[SuperK86]

does it hang while idle?

I still blame your motherboard.
I do believe you got unlucky and got an unstable one.

 

[swifty_morgan]

Bios isn't the only thing needed when swapping for a dual core processor. You should update all your chipsets on the motherbaord as well.

You will have to goto amd's website and get the right updates there. There may be two, although I only needed one.

Also, goto microsoft and do an update to see what it finds. Easy work there.

 

[the_stiffmeister]

Hopefully answers to all questions:

It does hang when idle, I just left the machine on with all the temp readers + task manager on the screen so I could see if anything was hot when it froze but don't think these values are anything to go on:

CPU (usage 1%) 38c
MB 39c
GFX 50c

Took about 30 mins for it to freeze

Ran memtest86 3 passes - All OK

GFX card is HIS silent heatpipe version

I did have a problem with the on board LAN so I disabled it and stuck in a seperate LAN PCI card - possibly a sign that the mobo is dodgy?

 

[swifty_morgan]

Dude............ I went over to newegg and read the reviews on this board. I've never seen so many white dots, for any product, in my life, than this board. Hard to believe for an asus board, but if I were you, I'd rma it back if I could, and invest a little more money into something a little better.

 

[SuperK86]

Like I said, I already blame your motherboard. I've been through this same situation.

There might be another issue, and that might be conflicting drivers. Drivers aren't easy to rid of, even if you uninstall and reinstall newer drivers, your old files oftentimes are still archived and maybe even used on the system.

There is a last resort you can lean on.
keep your computer running on as little as possible. take the audio out, and/or disable onboard. disable onboard lan. disable any other port you're not using. use one chip of memory, one hard drive, and one cd drive running on one ide channel.
Format.
Format your computer, install windows.
do not update your system, just let base windows drivers do it's thing. let it run, if nothing happens, download the latest video drivers. try that, then download the latest chipset drivers. if still it's go, continue updating the system. if still good to go,
start reinstalling old hardware.
Put in your other memory stick, let it run.
put in your audio, let it run.
put in your extra hard drives and what ever else you have, and let it run.


Your motherboard has already gotten bad reviews with disappointing performance using what I call untrustworthy ALi solutions. If any of this fails, I still, still blame your motherboard.

Good luck, let us know how you fare!

 

[the_stiffmeister]

Gutted. I though ASUS boards were good. I'll do what you say and re-install the OS, with stripped down hardware. If anyone can recommend a decent board which supports crossfire and socket 939/dual core please let me know.

 

[asdasd123123]

You could always do a memtest, just make sure to disable legacy USB support because there's a bug with memtest and that "feature"

 

[SuperK86]

AMD CrossFire-based ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe, the Sapphire Pure CrossFire, and the Abit AT8-32X are some of your best choices.
Odd you should see your motherboard up there? Apparently your motherboard, the A8R-MVP got bad first impressions, but in later revisions, the A8R32-MVP it gave top performance on most of the benchmarks.
The next runner-up in performance would be the DFI CFX3200-DR, which I do believe burns a hole in pockets.

For the record, ASUS boards are supposed to be reliable... I think you just got a bad apple...

but maybe a reinstall will fix all problems and the world will be happy?