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**The PIT** · 6 November 2001, 13:44

Has it ever worked ???
How did you test the dimms ???
Bios. Have you cleared the bios and then loaded the defaults ???
When you re-installed did you re-install with just the video card installed??
If you tested the dimms using software this ain't fool proof. Nothing like a new dimm to do the test with. Yes it could be the video card but if you re-installed with the other stuff in these maybe still screwing things up.

**Jorden** · 6 November 2001, 13:53

If i enter win2k in safe mode the computer is working fine. No problems. No freeze no nothing.

Was this the same for Win98? Or did you never try?

Safe mode doesn't use the Windows virtual cache system, as far as I know. Might be a problem there.

What is set up in your BIOS? Anything in there that looks out of place? Videorom/ram caching on that should be off? Tried going back to default BIOS settings before an install or login?

What is your Graphics Aperture Size set to? Standard 64, or did you try anything else?

Jord.

**efty** · 6 November 2001, 13:57

It used to work

Yes it worked fine a few weeks ago.
I removed the nic and the audio card. The only thing left was the vid card when I installed win2k.

I tried reseting the bios through the bios option and clearing it through the jumper on the MB.

The dimms where tested using tufftest. It is a selfbooting software that can run a rather exhaustive memory test and other hardware tests. I let the test run for a day without any problems.

I also changed the vid cards HW acceleration to none and still the problem persisted.

**The PIT** · 6 November 2001, 14:05

Three culprits left. After the AGP cache size.

1) Video card. If you can borrow one or buy a cheapo card to test.

2) Memory nice and cheap and the moment so swap that next or if you got several Dimms try running one one.

3) The motherboard. If the above don't cure it you're looking at that presuming you tried running with different single processors.

**MetalCartman** · 7 November 2001, 11:27

AGP aperture size doesn't matter since he's using a pci card...

I know the ATI mach64 pci, it's crap, sorry. Had three of them, the first one showed heavy distortions on the screen, even in DOS and froze the system after 30-45min, I think its memory was defective. The second one was very annoying, because it liked to change the refresh rate by itself, ignoring the driver settings, to get rid off this effect, I had to cold boot the system. The third one had none of the problems as mentioned above, it just died after 2 years.

If it is your vidcard causing your problems, get rid off it as fast as you can and look for a used G200 or G400.

Hope you get it fixed!

**efty** · 8 November 2001, 08:12

Still

I tried running WIn2k in VGA mode and it worked. At least it did not crash after several minutes of playing around with it. So I thought it must be the Vid card. I wanted to reinstall win2k with acpi enabled and with the rest if the hardware on. Now win2k will not install. It either freezes when installing networking components or during the initial install procedure. This f***ing MB is driving me crazy. I have so much schoolwork to do and I can't do it unless I fix this piece of shit. I matter of sadistic egoism

I think I will buy a new vid card and see what comes out of it.
I am aiming for a Radeon LE which is around 60 dollars. Any other suggestions besides Matrox? This computer has a 15 Inch monitor so no point in buying a Matrox card.

**efty** · 8 November 2001, 21:06

Back from microcenter

I just bought a new agp vid card ATI Radeon 7000. New memory stick 256mb pc133 and new motherboard battery. I hope everything will work this time, Otherwise I will smash the motherboard with a baseball bat, and then put it on fire.

Is it possible all these shit to happen because of th battery? I tested it with my multimeter and it was prety much dead.

**Wombat** · 8 November 2001, 22:08

It's not likely the battery.this. Batteries don't do anything once the board is running.

However, it's possible that the battery is so weak that your BIOS is suffering from bit rot.

Get a new battery, clear the CMOS, possibly even re-flash the BIOS, and reset all your BIOS settings. Why risk it?

**Paddy** · 9 November 2001, 00:11

Indeed...

Get a new battery, clear the CMOS, possibly even re-flash the BIOS, and reset all your BIOS settings. Why risk it?

**efty** · 9 November 2001, 01:32

The vid card and the memory was not the problem

Hmm wombat most probably u r right because I was setting the fsb and multiplier to its default setting for the cpu 4.5*66 and then saved the bios changes but once it rebooted the cpus were running at 500Mhz.

I will try and reflash the bios. This is the only remaining explanation besides a motherboard failure....

I will get back with the results.

**efty** · 9 November 2001, 02:16

Natta

New battery... new flashed bios. Nothing.

The situation is getting worse. Now i cannot even install win2k. Before I could install it without any problems. Now it freezes on the setup when it says "Setup is starting windows".

Also a few hours ago, i got a BSOD while installing "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"

Furthermore, now it freezes under dos when running scandisk!!! I checked the HDs with maxtor maxblast utility, did a low level format. Instead of using scandisk I tried NDD which does not freeze.

This is driving me crazy. I cannot pinpoint the problem. I cannot always reproduce the problem. I don't think it is a virus because I booted from a clean disk and performed a low level format. Is it possible it is a bios virus??? If yes what can I do?

While flashing, there was part of the flashrom that was not used. It is possible for a virus to reside there.

CPU temperatures are fine, always less that 40 C and vcores are close to 2v, the same applies for the other voltages which are well withing their tolerances.

How is it possible for whatever the problem is to get worse on its own. Also how can it start happening without any obvious reason. I did not install any HW or did anything to the computer internally.

Is there a program I can use to test the cpus?? Like the one intel had for its old math co-processors?

I cannot think of anything else.

Any suggestions are welcomed

**The PIT** · 9 November 2001, 02:55

Thats with the new Video card and memory fitted and nothing else. If it is it's looking like a duff motherboard I'm afriad.

**EdSki** · 11 November 2001, 05:26

eftychios,

I don't know a program to test your celerons, but if one is broken the problem is very likely to be your cache.

Bad cache will freeze up your system at intermittant intervals(Hope i spelled that right

) ,but the system will always crash after a while. It will even freeze up when in your system bios setup.

Maybe you could try how it runs with your cache disabled.

Have you tried it with just one processor? And perhaps trying the other if one freezes up?

Any processor you can borrow from another system? This way you can rule out if it's the mobo or one of the processors..Or do it it the other way around plug the the celerons in another system and see how they hold up.

Gtrz,
Ed

**The PIT** · 11 November 2001, 10:02

I think it's been tried with one processor. It's very unlikely that theres two faulty processors. Thats why I'm thinking it's the motherboard.

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