[Help] - Change of heatsink freezes Windows boot

[redder]

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

I already reseated the heatsink and thermal paste after cleaned four times, its not the heatsink, and it's not about the computer freezing, it works fine, BUT no OS boots up, it freezes but it isn't because of the heatsink or processor, only XP freezes, I tried to boot Linux and it doesn't boot and it also doesn't freeze.

XP Installation CD will not run the installation after it loads everything up into the RAM

Tried a diferent VGA card and no changes

Turned off every board feature and BIOS settings, downgraded the CPU and RAM speed

Ran with only one memory module and tested each one

I have no idea of what it could be!!!

If it was the mother board would it even work? How can just a heatsink change do this??

[nmX.Memnoch]

There's one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet. It's possible you damaged the CPU core when you put the new heatsink on.

[redder]

There's one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet. It's possible you damaged the CPU core when you put the new heatsink on.

If that is it then why is XP able to boot up and work under safety mode?

[RJARRRPCGP]

There's one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet. It's possible you damaged the CPU core when you put the new heatsink on.

If that is it then why is XP able to boot up and work under safety mode?

Because it's not under a higher work load. It probably is fine until it's being put under a higher work load then it crashes.

Edited March 4, 2006 by RJARRRPCGP

[HyperHacker]

If the boot process is overheating it, then after it freezes, immediately reboot and check the temperature. That would tell you whether it's heating up. Idling in DOS or the BIOS or running Memtest won't really do much, as the CPU load is very low.

Also, what was the error you get in Linux? Did you try removing all network cards (since safe mode without networking works)? And have you tried poking at BIOS settings; turn off advanced features, turn down CPU speeds if possible, or just reset to default settings? I found my computer runs really, really slow if I just change too many BIOS settings, and stays that way until I reload the defaults.

[LLXX]

There's one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet. It's possible you damaged the CPU core when you put the new heatsink on.

In particular, check the corners of the die. Make sure they're not chipped and that there are no cracks in it. Edited March 5, 2006 by LLXX

[quinriva]

I didn't bother reading everthing here, but I once had the exact same problem. It turned out that the rentention clip on the heatsing was backwards. Anyway this means that the heatsing actuall sits about 0.5mm above the CPU (well on the old Althon XP socket A), and doesn't actually make contact (even though it looks like it does, and the thermal paste is smeared is if it did make contact. Double check to make sure that it is definately the right way around. Booting to BIOS was fine because it didn't heat up enough, but running windows always failed.

When I checked my CPU I noticed that the edges where all chiped from overheating. I reversed the Rention clip and seated the heatsing correctly and everything worked fine after that (even with all the holes in the CPU).

Anyway other then that you could always check that the bios isn't set to power off on CPU fan failure (the fan speed monitoring wire could be faulty).