Have tried everything and it still freezes.
Have tried everything and it still freezes.
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WildfireS3

Original Poster:

9,885 posts

269 months

Friday 9th January 2004
quotequote all
Rexently did some maintainence on my fathers computer.

Athlon Thunderbird 850 on VIA KT133A chipset with GeForce 2 MX in it.

Was running really slow, so I formatted, put a Geforce 2 Pro in it and a Thunderbird 1200. But the computer did not start. All lights came on but no joy. After much prodding it started, but became tempremental and required multiple turning on and off to get it to start. Eventually switched the processor back to the old one and it starts.

But then it started freezing for no reason. Everything is the same. I reinstalled the old drivers that worked and put the MX back in it. Formatted again but still it dies. Sometimes right after windows starting. I have changed the fan on the processor.

Could the previous processor (the 1200 which doesn't work any more) have damaged the motherboard??

I have tried all I know, swapped RAM, taken out all PCI cards systematically and still no joy. But now I have gone back up North and am not sure what to do!!

This is the first time taht I have not been able to fix a computer. I am going to get him to try the fail safe defaults in the BIOS, but that is my last resort.

Anybody got any ideas??

mr_yogi

3,288 posts

272 months

Friday 9th January 2004
quotequote all
have you tried the BIOS CMOS reset? or even better flashing the board with the latest BIOS?

WildfireS3

Original Poster:

9,885 posts

269 months

Friday 9th January 2004
quotequote all
Hmmmm..... Not reset the CMOS yet. Will see if my bro can find the right jumper.

wedg1e

26,949 posts

282 months

Saturday 10th January 2004
quotequote all
Could be the Mobo doesn't like the nVidia chipset.... had some probs with my BX2000, dropped in an ATI Rage 128 and hey presto.

FunkyNige

9,579 posts

292 months

Saturday 10th January 2004
quotequote all
Could it be the motherboard can't handle the quicker CPU? My old system was an Athlon 900 and I remember reading in the manual the quickest CPU it could take was 1GHz.

agent006

12,058 posts

281 months

Saturday 10th January 2004
quotequote all
Dodgy memory?

d-man

1,019 posts

262 months

Saturday 10th January 2004
quotequote all
WildfireS3 said:

All lights came on but no joy. After much prodding it started, but became tempremental and required multiple turning on and off to get it to start.


That sounds like a power supply issue, maybe the power supply is pretty close to the limit even with the original hardware in it. Can cause random lockups like you describe and you've checked pretty much everything else. I suppose the cpu could have damaged the motherboard, but it sounds unlikely.

shamus1972

252 posts

296 months

Friday 16th January 2004
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Sounds like it's overheating - have you checked the fan?