Computer Freezes

[awergh]

Acer V80M Motherboard

Intel Pentium III 750Mhz Slot 1

1x128MB PC133 SDRAM

6GB WD HDD

Diamont Data CDRW 30x6x4

The computer freezes when just about doing anything at anytime.

The RAM is not bad because ive used different ram and it still freezes

The CPU runs at 733Mhz rather than 750Mhz

Only one RAM slot works

Ive tried diffrent different HDD, RAM, PSU dissabling stuff.

i managed to install w98 without freezing at one stage by either

dissabling the secondary ide chanel or taking out all the pci cards.

Dream Linux LiveCD, NT4, 98se all freeze.

Started freezing all of a suddon pretty much after an hour or so of aoe2 over two days on win2k.

It is possible that another cap has died because i replaced 2 caps.

but when i had the bad caps it wouldnt freeze when installing windows

tried running prime95 on nt4 and it froze eventually.

when it is frozen there is nothing that can be done it just has to be restarted.

[3aces]

sounds to me from what you tell.....could be a overheating problem.....can you get any temp measurements???

[ringfinger]

Overheating or under/overvolting possibly too.

[3aces]

i just reread the problem, you say only one RAM slot works, does the other slot genuinly not work, because if it doesnt you may have a fried board, and i had a 433 celeron it was my server pc, now that started reporting at 500mhz, and i rang around and found out the the chip had only semi-burned out now i laughed at this point, but the guy was right becasue two weeks later it went BANG!! lool........

but you might wanna get us some temp reading then we can go deeper into the problem lool

and also if you can use a different PSU, i have a feeling it could be something only as simple as that

[awergh]

ill try a different psu soon,

from since i got the mobo it has always run at 733Mhz

if i put a stick of ram in the second slot it doesnt get recognised.

i dont remember any temperature options in the bios

[awergh]

Ive found that by putting an AGP video card in and no PCI cards it doesnt freeze.

(also cleaned cpu heatsink and fan)

but now i cant use my network card because its a pci card

[3aces]

sounds to me your motherboard has gone horribly wrong, can you get a hold of another board to try everything in?

[awergh]

i dont have another board which supports p3 slot1

ive tested the network cards, agp video, hdd

the main untested thing is the cpu, but it ran fine with prime 95 for 72minutes but it did get an error with memtest when i was using a pci video card.

the computer doesnt freeze when the network card is installed. it only freeze once there is network activity like when you start firefox

[3aces]

ok maybe a incompatible network card could be the fault, try a different network card

[bonestonne]

at first i thought it was a socket 370 board...since you've now said its a slot1 architechture, it might be the SSE1, SSE2, and SSE3 stuff being incompatible...its possible that i'm wrong, but if the network card is quite newer than the board and processors, it'll cause issues...also, slot 1 and even slot 2 processors will get very hot [more-so the higherclocked ones]...if i had my sisters camera handy i'd take a picture of the case fix we did to her old computer a while back...theres an 80mm case fan screwed on the side of the case [drill four holes, and then use 4 long screws, take four nuts to hold the screws in place, another four nuts to make the fan position a lot higher, and then 4 more to keep it in place...] easier to get a pic than to explain. if i can tonight i will... it just blew air onto the CPU, as it doesn't have a heatsink...my slot 2 Xeon CPUs used to run blazing hot, i went out and got some arctic silver for the heatsinks, and now its more efficient and runs cooler, so you could try that if it has the right type of heatsink...however, if there is no heatsink, its just overheating...slot type processors are blazing hot because they're usually pretty big and obstruct airflow, so as much as you'd want to take out fans, chances are, that would just cripple the system.