Not sure what the problem is.

Espada04 · May 5, 2008, 10:45 PM

Hello, before I state my problem. the current specs of the system is

A64 X2 3800+ stock cpu cooler with AS5
4GBs of RAM
AsRock 939DUAL-VSTA
Diamond Radeon HD2900XT also stock cooler with AS5
OCZ GameXStream 700-Watt Power Supply
dual 22" LCD Monitors

The problem I'm having is my system would out of no where randomly lock up. The mouse freezes and the keyboard becomes non responsive. so the only way I can resolve this is resetting the computer.

I recently cleaned out all the dust in the heatsinks and repplied thermal paste onto both the GPU and CPU. This however has not solved anything. I thought it could have been RAM so I replaced it with the RAMs of another system but that didnt work either. The system still randomly frooze.

I don't know if it could be video card causing this problem. It should have a 6pin + an 8pin PCI-E connector connected, but since my power supply only came with 2 6-pin I have that connected. I'm not sure if that could be my problem or not. Or it could simply be overheating video card.

A friend of mine told me it could be the motherboard since it only takes a 20-pin motherboard power connected as opposed to the 24-pin most boards take these day. But If I replaced the board, I dont know which board to get since there aren't many 939 boards left in the market.

So my conclusion is it's either the video card or motherboard. What do you think the problem might be and what do you think I should do to resolve this issue. I'm getting tired of it randomly freezing.

>.<

any help would be great!

Oh yea. my system is not overclocked, everything is running stock speed and im currently using catalyst 8.4. I also have a IDE Controller Card installed and a X-Fi SoundCard as well as a Linksys WiFi Card.
and if this matters. im also running Vista Ultimate 32-bit edition.

retard · May 6, 2008, 05:39 AM

Is your HDD ATA or Sata ?

I ask this coz i had the same problem once and i changed my Mobo coz of it and the problem didnt go away .. it turns out the ATA133 HDD cable had been faulty and gave me problems. Thats when i changed it for Sata and had no problems since

If you are on ATA try changing the cable and see if it helps before you decide to change anything else.

Espada04 · May 6, 2008, 11:04 AM

I have 3 ATA and 3 SATA. I could try switching cables to test if they are faulty!

It's gonna be hard finding out which one is faulty.. lol
maybe i should just replace them all. lol

oh yea. i also notice that when im using dual display. one of my screen keeps blinking.

retard · May 7, 2008, 05:47 AM

it should be the one your OS is on. If any other one is the problem it shouldnt freez up your rig only give you problems runing something from those drives . Check your system drive and change the cable see if it goes away.

Espada04 · May 9, 2008, 08:03 PM

I decided to try and remove the sound card and try using onboard sound to see if its possibly causing problems. and the fact the crackling noise was getting rather annoying. but that apparently stopped the system from randomly locking up.

but now, tho i've only experience this issue once. The system ran fine for like 2-3 days, then out of no where the system just rebooted. lol tho i havent tried your suggestion yet, i should but it looks like it's not the cable fault. or do you believe it could still be the cable's fault for this random reboot ? The system drive is running sata so it should be hard to replace. assuming i remember which drive is the system drive.

retard · May 10, 2008, 05:23 AM

Right click my computer -> properties -> Advanced (tab) -> Settings (under startup and recovery) and uncheck Automatically restart.

This will show you a BSOD when there is a problem instead of just rebooting with no info than you can see what is causing the reboots.

I think you should locate the system drive and change the cable before you do anything else but its up to you. I changed my motherboard just to find out it was the HDD cable that was the cause of my troubles. Im not saying this is your problem im saying it might be and i think you should check it out.

And i dont see why would it be hard to replace ? it easy just unplug them and plug in the new one.

kris23 · May 10, 2008, 11:23 AM

the problem is either the registry or bad HDD sectors.

need to run chkdsk to verify your HDD integrity

Espada04 · May 14, 2008, 01:01 AM

Thanks for the help. Will do a check disk as soon as I have time to spare.

Since this is my topic about my computer problem. I still have one more. its not a big problem, but its just weird.

but before i start, i've read about how dual display + ati cards = problems. I've had alot of atidamag or however that file goes error when running it with XP using Cat 7.3, but now Im using Vista.

When I turn on the primary monitor. Apparently windows has a tendenacy of switching the aero affect off to run vista basic scheme then automatically going back to aero affect as if I just came out of a game or something. Like I turn the monitor on, the screen blinks. 5 seconds later, the mouse appears in the center of the screen, and 5 seconds after that the rest of the desktop shows up and it resumes normal operations. If anyone know what the problem is and how to solve this, that would be awesome!

**ChaosMinionX** · May 14, 2008, 01:06 PM

I would have to say check your RAM despite changing it with another set (the voltages/timings might not be set right for the old or new set you put it) the other thing too is, one of the DIMM's could be damaged, or the RAM itself could be damaged.... I would run Memtest 86+ with each stick individually and see if it errors at all.

The other thing I would be curious about, what did you change recently on your Computer, and when did this freezing start to occur? And how old is this system?

Espada04 · May 14, 2008, 02:24 PM

I would have done so too. but even if there is an error. the memorys are out of warranty and i currently dont have money to buy new ram.. lol

the current configuration is about 3 years old. but the system was upgraded to vista last year. I dont exactly remember when the freezing started happening, But I do remember the video card drivers continously crashed the moment i installed Catalyst 7.3 using an x800pro, current motherboard and cpu, and 2GBs of RAM. and running on XP. I thought it was the video card overheating cause it was running dual display. and I was planning on replacing the video card anyway. so I bought an HD2900XT which didnt solve anything. but I bought it cause I wanted to upgrade. Turned out it was the catalyst 7.3s and dual display that were causing these issues. but back then i didnt know, so I kept reinstalling XP and it didnt work. cause a clean installation of XP kept giving me BSOD and VPU Recovery. So I gave up and installed Vista. That somewhat solved the issue but I still had problems using Dual Display. So I gave up using Dual Display at the time. and the problem went away. Now I'm running dual display and the problem kinda returned. but at least the current drivers are a little better than the 7.3s and i also tried removing the sound card which apparently solved alot of problems as my system is running stable now. besides that weird monitor problem.

and right now it hasn't randomly restarted on me nor has it BSOD and its been running for around 4 days and 19 hours. hopefully everything is fine again. if not. then i'll be posting here again.. hehe..