I'm stumped - random crashing prob.

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Guest

Guest
Initial System.

Epox 8KHA+
AMD XP 1700+
Thermaltake Volcano fan 6cu (4500rpm)
Crap Omni 300w PSU
ASUS 7700 TI graphics card
Sound Blaster Live 5.1
Generical modem
Windows ME

Ok, I put this marvellous little beast together and had problem with it crashing during install of windows. I dropped the core speed from 133 to 100 and this stops the problem, of course it leaves my wonderful 1700+ running at 1100.
I downloaded the latest bios from EPoX, I've checked to make sure my graphics card drivers are all up to date and as soon as I boot up at 1700 the PC crashes on either dialling up to the net or during any game.
I checked out a number of posts mentioning similar problems and it seemed that the PSU might have been a problem. So I upgraded to an Emermax 430w PSU, which should have been enough.
Anyway, the PC still crashes, just not as quickly. So whereas before it would have crashed immediately on dialling up or 5 minutes into a game now its taking 10 or 15 minutes.
So I dropped my CPU core voltage by 2.5 and that seemed to make another difference, the PC now takes 20-25 minutes before it crashes. However this is really starting to bug me.
The CPU is running anywhere between 35-45 degrees when on, I've got a very good fan that should be able to cope with that and another fan on the back of the box sucking anything out. So I don't think its a heat problem. My PSU is big enough and ugly enough to power a miniture nuclear sub, so I can't see that its power. The 3.3v rails and 5v rails should both be well within tolerences even with all the devices I can think of running. However I can't help but think that dropping the voltage helped somewhat and that perhaps therein lies the problem.
I'm intending to try dropping it further but I'm wondering if thats going to affect performance at all. So that's question 1. Question 2 is does anyone else have any other ideas as to what might be causing this problem?

I've played with every BIOS setting I can think of, don't have any conflicting devices in my device manager and am still coping grief. Have tried Windows 98 and that still had the same problem. So it's not the OS.

Can anyone lend me their sage advice... please.
 
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HonestJhon

Distinguished
Apr 29, 2001
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what type of ddr are you using?
and it might be your psu!
if it is some crap power supply..then you might not be getting the correct voltages to the cpu/ram, which would cause lockups, which are going to be more exxagerrated at higher clock speeds!
so check that out...like try and get ahold of a better psu.

-DAvid

-Live, Learn, then build your own computer!-
 
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Guest

Guest
Sorry I've got 2 * 256meg Nanya PC2100 DDR.

And I've replaced the crap PSU with the Enermax 430w. Which is not only approved by AMD and on their web site as a compatible PSU but about 2 or 3 models higher than the standard.
 
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HonestJhon

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Apr 29, 2001
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and it still has this problem?
hmm
maybe someone else will come up with an idea...i cant think of anything at the moment.
have you taken everything out like the lan card, the sound card, and anything else other than the video card, and the cpu/ram?
and see if it does it then.
just leave the hard drive, the cpu(and heatsink of course), ram, and video card.
then try it then, and see if it locks up.
if it does, then there is something else.
if it doesnt, then it might be some irq problems.
in that case, check it out, and see what is on what irq.
the video card should be by itself...

-DAvid

-Live, Learn, then build your own computer!-
 
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Guest

Guest
I've tried it without the modem, CDRW and DVD. The only two boards I haven't yanked are the sound and video.

But I'll yank out the sound and see what happens...
 
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Guest

Guest
Hmmm...

Ok this is going to sound a bit daft.

Firstly when I had the generic 300w PSU it would lockup usually when I dialled up to the internet, I'd get the inital communication noises and then as soon as it moved into verifying my user name and password it would usually lock up. Or it would wait until about 30 seconds into viewing web pages and then lock up.
When playing games, MOH usually, it locked up at any stage between starting the game and up to 20 minutes in.
But the best benchmark I had for measuring the success/failure of whatever I was mucking about with, and this is the daft bit, was playing Pinball on the computer. You know that really simple game that comes with solitaire etc. Usually 15 seconds in it was locking up.

After I upgraded to the Emermax PSU its now not locking up during pinball (which I thought was pretty neat), and games and the internet are only locking up every so often. But I've had no more than 1/2 an hour of uninterrupted play so far.

So whereas before it was pretty easy to tell if it was broken or not, its now getting more difficult. However I think I'm slowly getting there. The only problem is I'm running out of options.
 
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Guest

Guest
Ta, will try all that and report back on success or failure...
 
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Tiberius13

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Jan 28, 2002
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What kind of crash? Does the system blue screen or just reboot on you?

I had a problem like that which stemmed from a bad stick of memory. Since you have 2 sticks, try running with each stick seperately, and in all possible slots.

I have also heard of gaming instability being fixed by raising voltages on some systems. Since your problem is triggered by the modem, etc... it makes me wonder if it could be a device conflict however. I would strip down the system so it just has the graphics card (ie. get that sound card out of there... it's my prime suspect). If you get stability, add each additional card one at a time and test... until you lose stability again. If your BIOS supports reserving IRQ's, etc... you might want to try setting aside IRQ 5 for your sound card (Sound Blaster Live cards tend to like this). I have also heard something about disabling sound emulation for DOS games when having problems with a Live card... ?

Best of luck with it... start with the RAM... then without the sound card... and hopefully you won't have to continue your troubleshooting beyond that.
 
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Guest

Guest
OK - I think after days of buggering around I've finally fixed the problem.

Thanks all for your suggestions.

In the end it looks like by Mobo was pumping too much power into my cpu. The post was telling me that core voltage was 1.75 or 1.74, however I loaded up the utility that came with the mobo to mointor temp, fans, power etc. That told me that the cpu was running with about 1.8 volts. So I've changed the bios to reduce the amount of volts by .5

Initially I tried this at .25 and that sort of helped fix the problem but not quite. So I've been online all day and the thing is still going. We'll see how stable it is over the next couple of days but all in all it looks ok at this stage.

Once again thanks to everyone who chipped in. Much appreciated.
 
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Guest

Guest
If the BIOS is misreporting how much power is going to the CPU, I would seriously suggest contacting your motherboard manufacturer and finding out if it's a known issue, and if there's a BIOS update that will fix it... you definately want your motherboard to tell you the truth about such things :)
 
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