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[Help] - Change of heatsink freezes Windows boot


redder

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ok here's what happened, i had a problem with my old heatsink, it stopped working, i changed it bought a new one, its working good i have a AMD Athlon XP 2200+, the fan is working at 2500 RPMs and the processor at 38/39 C in idle.

When I tried to boot up XP after the switch it would freeze during the boot screen, the blue loading bar froze as well, I tried to run a linux live CD which didn't work when it used to before, i tried to run windows install CD, it freezes after it loads all the necessary things to start the installation, it doesn't even go to the first install screen, it just freezes after loading everything.

i tried changing the memory, tried only with one slot of memory, and then tried the other three i had on the mother board, (3x256MB), no changes, I tried unplugging everything but the hard drive, still no changes, reseted the bios settings, including decrease the memory speed from 333 to 233, i downclocked the processor to see if any changes would work and still nothing.

I don't know what is wrong can you guys give me a hint?

Title Edited - Please follow new posting rules from now on.

--Zxian

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i havent tried removing the heatsink and cpu yet, i reseted cmos and am running memtest to see if there is anything wrong, and i doubt that the heatsink could be misplaced, i left it yesterday idle on the bios screen for two hours and the temp was stable on the 38 and 39 celcius, but i will try that as soon as the memtest is over.

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What heatsink did you replace your existing one with? Are you sure it's sufficient for cooling your processor?

Memtest86 does not heat the CPU very much, since it was designed to test memory.

Either your heatsink is installed in a slightly tilted position (very common mistake on the Athlon series CPUs since they have a small die) or you have used too much thermal compound.

Idling temperature ~38-39°C is a bit on the high side. If everything else is installed correctly, it seems that your heatsink is not powerful enough to cool.

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I replaced the old heatsink with one exacly like the previous one, same model same brand, it worked before for two years. I'm not able to Idle it anywhere else but BIOS because I have no OS to idle it in and inside XP's safety mode the board program to measure temp and fan speed doesn't work. And by the way, what heatsink do you guys sugest? I have a Artic Cooling Cooper Silent 2.

I disabled every single mother board feature (Audio, LAN, USB, etc..) reseated the heatsink again, tried with and without CD rom player, with a diferent VGA, with one of the three memory modules (tried each one individually).

Windows still doesn't work except on safe mode without network, no live linux cds ive tried work, they boot up but then stop in the middle with a kernel error (i don't know linux so i don't know what those errors are about).

I have no idea what it can be, memtest reveals no errors on the RAM memory, I tried memtest again, this time i messed around it and asked it to test all BIOS memory (?? im not sure of this) and there it tested something where it gives errors non stop, I don't know how to interpert these error messages, I went on memtest site and it doesn't help much.

What do you guys think?

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Did you take the heatsink back off and checked the thermal paste. Make sure that the thermal paste isn't on any of the bridges!

Yes.

I'm going to try switching the power supply tomorrow, I know it sounds stupid, but once I fixed a similar situation by changing the power supply.

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I'm not able to Idle it anywhere else but BIOS because I have no OS to idle it in and inside XP's safety mode the board program to measure temp and fan speed doesn't work.
DOS boot disk? Boot to a DOS prompt and leave it there. It should boot alright, since the amount of work needed to load a DOS kernel is considerably less than any other OS.

It will then heat the CPU, as unlike most other OSs DOS runs in a continuous loop and doesn't halt the processor when idling.

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I had a similar problem with my athlon xp 2000+ after replacing the fan and heatsink. it would boot into windows then EXACTLY (and i mean to-the-second) 3 minutes after running it would freeze, completely. solver by taking the heatsink and fan off, cleaning the old therml paste, re-applying it and reseating everything. MAKE SURE YOUR HEATSINK IS ON THE CORRECT WAY UP! On the Socket A athlons, it is able to be fitted either way, but I've found there is only really one way up for it that works.

Hope this helps

HougTimo

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