Mysterious Problems

[sbdragon]

Hello there. I am here for the very first time and I need help. I hope that somebody will help me here, because no one else I've tried could do.These are my system specs: MB MSI KT3V VIAKT333, AMD Athlon XP1600 (palomino core), HDD WD Caviar 40GB 7200rpm, ManLi Radeon 8500 64MB and - at last - APACER DDRAM 266MHz 256MB. I am experiencing various big problems with my system. A short description:
At any time my Win XP displays "bluescreen" and restarts the machine. This is not the OS' fault, because I've installed Win2000 and XP several times, with the same result. I also have <b>many</b> problems with 3D game graphics - not only with the speed, but I experience many strange things (for example something looking like lightning - a strange line is displayed for a short time). And sometimes graphics breaks completely.
At firts, I thought that something is wrong with the graphics card. But I tried another one and nothing changed. Then, I thought that the motherboard (QDI KuDoz 7Z-A VIA KT333) was the cause. So I changed my motherboard, but with no result. And now I think that the last remaining option is the DDR memory. What can you say about this? I would really appreciate any reply and I will be very thankful. I apologize for my English if I made any grammar mistakes, but I hope you would understand me

 

[johnoh]

Sounds like the power supply or memory to me. I'd swap out each.

<i>Reason the only absolute. Irrationality the only enemy. </i>

 

[Crashman]

I'm fairly certain it's a memory or power issue, like the last guy said. You could download a free program called MemTest86, but even if it tell you that you have a memory problem, power issues can also cause your memory to loose data!

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

 

[sbdragon]

I don't think it's bad video driver, cause I've already tried out many versions of ATi's official drivers as well as unofficial omega corner drivers. BTW what do you think about them?
Power supply> ok, I'll look into BIOS system monitoring. But do you really think that occasional power fluctuations could affect my overall video performance such way?

 

[sturm]

I had blue screens and problems in games also. Ended up being a bad stick of memory(2 sticks 256mb). Ran fine on just one stick, crapped out or wouldnt even post on second one. either buy another stick- which i would, or borrow a stick from a friend and test it.

 

[sbdragon]

I have 300W power supply so I think that's enough.
And I downloaded that memtest utility, but after about one hour of testing I realized that something went wrong. Then I looked into the readme (yes, run it at first and then look into readme). They wrote down something about 5 hours of testing, so I'll try another time maybe tonight.

 

[bum_jcrules]

I agree.

That Palomino is a thirst little CPU core. It might be power.


So Sbdragon,

What are the 3.3V, 5V, and 12V line maximum ampere ratings? What make and model of your PSU? If you only have 12A on the 12V line it is a power issue for sure.

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