Cascading problem....

I have a white box that I built myself. I use an AK-73 PRO (A) motherboard with an Athelon 1100, 32MB Diamond Viper & WINME. I had upgraded to XP but decided that I didnt like it because it only ran generic versions of my printer, video card, and scanner. Thats when the problems began. I started by buying a 120 gig HD (ULTRA ATA DBI-UV120GT2 made by Buffalo) from a local vendor around here (I am a US Navy sailor stationed in Japan). I had never had problems with Japanese hardware before & didnt think that this would be any different.

Upon install WINME wouldnt install the software that came with the HD. I figured no problem, I could just format the **** thing & be done & overwith.

Then I started getting memory errors. Most of the time they came within 20 minutes of use the computer. I would have to reboot. Or it would just reboot itself for no reason. But most of the time it just froze up. So I started uninstalling hardware until I was left with just the computer hooked up. On one occasion, the motherboard cried out that I had a damaged CPU. I blew the entire board down with some compressed air & was up & running again. But it still froze up. So I went back to WIN98 thinking I could bring it back. I started installing things & it started freezing again. I tried to run a baseball game in DOS mode & it worked like a champ. I even worked out some bugs that I had been having with one of them. Great! I have a $1200 machine with about $1000 worth or peripherals that is only good for games in DOS mode.

So then I got to the point where I was about to go back to the 10 gig drive when I got the "CPU damaged" message again. I blew down the board, only to get the same thing. I then removed the CPU & fan & blew them down too. Then I replaced the CPU with a different one. Still no dice. My wife is bugging me to buy a COMPAC or DELL with XP on it, but I swear by white boxes. Right now I am swearing at & around mine. Any ideas before I lauch on a new career at the post office?

Thanx in advance

damien a

 

Soumds like a heat problem. Do you have case fans?

One low in the front blowing in and one in the rear, high near the ps blowing out.
The heat will build up in the case without the proper airflow and they will get overheated. And heat is the worst enemy of a computer. Sure hope you do not have it in one of them cubby hole they have in computerdesks. They are about the worst thing in the world as there is no airflow in them. You have to have cool air blown and the hot air removed .

 

I have one in the rear by the power supply. I also keep it on top of the desk. The cubby hole in the desk is where I keep the scanner.

I have had this computer for about three years now & before this I only had one other problem. Why would it just start showing up now?

 

"I have had this computer for about three years now & before this I only had one other problem. Why would it just start showing up now? "

How about a virus? Some of the olders ones even wipe out the BIOS. But, also after 3 years parts will wear out. At 3 years I have had capacitors fall off the motherboard.

When was the last time you cleaned the inside of the case?

 

I cleaned the inside of the case right before I made this initial post.

I also reformatted a couple of times & partitioned the drive using a boot disk & FDISK.exe from the DOS prompt.

 

Run Scandisk /surface , and see if you can find the manufactor's diagnostic tools. If so run it.

Do you have more than one stick of ram? If so, run only one at a time as one of them may have gone bad. If you only have one, see if you can borrow a stick a stick. But you can see what Memtest has to say about the ram.