pc blues :(


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WARNING: Rant Alert

I just spent the better part of the day trying to get my PC up and running again after some hardware upgrades.

It's my first self-built and right now, I'm hoping that it won't freeze on me. I upgraded yesterday, adding two more optical drives. A DVD-ROM and a DVD-R drive. After uncertain troubleshooting, I got the drives up and running but my PC didn't want to boot properly or crashed numerously. Amazingly, I was able to stay on a boot till early today morning.

Thinking I had "fixed" the problem, I shutdown my PC to go to sleep. Next boot proved me wrong. Same problems as those I had in day one.

For those who don't know, I've had these problems at the birth of the PC. Luckily, a friend on the boards helped me out to pinpoint the problem I had was with the HSF step. Everything else was fine.

The next time I had problems was when the day was hot and I left my PC on without air conditioning. (Not a problem with an older DELL running P3 550MHz, but a problem with mine.) :(

So, I figured that the heat melted my CPU. It didn't. I did a full reassembly and of course 1st boot didn't work. Reseating cards and memory. Tightening cables and whatnot seemed to do the trick eventually.

Got fed up with problems, got Crucial memory and tried it out instead of the OCSystems memory I got. Same problems. Memory seems not to be the problem methinks.

Sigh. I can't figure it out then.

This last upgrade hopefully will be fine now. I won't know till I shutdown and reboot (or not).

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end: rant

Anyway. Here are my specs:

Athlon XP 2100+ OEM

Thermaltake Volcano 7

PC2700 DDR : OCSystems 512MB Copper Heat Spreader and Crucial 2 256MB

SB Audigy OEM

LinkSys 10/100 NIC

Gainward Ti4400 GeForce 4

MSI KT3 Ultra ARU mobo

ANTEC 1080B case w/ 450W power supply

Pioneer DVD-R A04

Pioneer Slotload DVD-ROM

Plextor 40/12/40 CD-RW

Floppy Drive (forget what brand, NEC I think)

I don't think I left out anything

Surely, this should be a killer system. No longer top of the line, but I spent a pretty penny.

Btw, case and cpu temp stay under 50?C. I also just bought rounded cables to improve circulation.

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This is mostly a just in case thread, asking for suggestions as to what I might have done wrong (in assembling this PC, not in this life;)) )

Thanks for your help.

edit: Great, just found out my SB card's not detected properly.:((

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I had a similiar problem when I built my first PC. Look at the back of the Power Supply.. what is the voltage set to? Should be at 115V. I had mine set to 230V and it didn't like that too much. :sleeping:

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I?ve had problems like that before, Have you tried updating your system BIOS?

Did your system run fine before install the extra drives? I am trying to see when the problem started

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Yeah, I thought it could be the mobo, but the diagnostic LEDs "seem" so helpful. I'm gonna check MSI's forums to see if others went through similar problems.

realmccoy, the problems happened before the new drives and after. Leads me to think that my connections are not very reliable.

(power supply set at 115 - had these problems w/ ac adaptors before so ...)

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That's a good idea about checking the connectors. I went to http://www.8dimensional.com/mainboard-reviews/ and read a few reviews on your main board and it is listed as 4.5 out of 5, but you knew that

Might I offer a bit advice to everyone that building there own system, buy the motherboard and process together from a certified AMD or Intel seller such as http://www.monarchcomputer.com

You get three year warranty on the product and they test the stuff before they send it to you

that's my two cents

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nWo4100,

Thats not true. I have one and it has a ****load of features that other companies dont have.

It seems that static has damaged either your mobo or cpu. Thats pretty much the only thing that can cause it. Another thing that comes to mind is there is not enough power supplied to the mobo. If it does not work take out non-essential cards and devices like your cd writer, if it works then your not getting enough power.

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I formed my opinion , because I bought a mainboard/ processor from FRYES I then installed the board afterwards the board caught on fire (before it got to the Boot screen ). When I explained what happen to FYRES they said it was my fault, and they would not replace the board even thou the receipt showed that I only had the board 2 hours.

That same day my nephew bought a board from FRYES and had problems

(I hate FRYES ,and there used junk)

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Zivan56,

I work in the computer business so I know what I am talking about. Many technicians I know say to stay away from MSI. They know more than anybody in here including me. I was just saying what they said to me.

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thanks for the warning regarding FRYES, realmccoy. buying a set mobo and cpu is also a good idea.

zivan56, esd probably got to my mobo or cpu? that sucks. i take precautions when touching my cpu parts to be grounded. wouldn't esd render either parts dead though?

either case, i've got to rethink my esd prevention strategy then. i hate esd. :(

i checked msi, and there's a new bios i could try, but now my floppy's acting up. the system sees it fine, but i can't boot from it. i insert a freshly made bootdisk (i've tried several) and no boot is found accd'ing to the system. :(

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I have just finished building a system using that board,with the same size cpu and same heatsink/fan.

I encountered similar problems e.g system not booting correctly and constant BSOD... using windows xp.It turned out to be a bad stick of ram...brand new

The things that I found are:

You can not fill all 3 ram slots...the system falls over

The Volcano 7 is not good enough to cool a 2100 chip

I changed it to the new Volcano 9 heatsink/fan...now runs at

39c idle....44c..load

Take out all the peripherals leaving just the video card,the hard drive and one stick of crucial ram...there have been bad reports of the oc ram failing.

The bios flashing is done from the hard drive with these boards,and does not require a floppy:

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Thanks Richie101 for all that info. I managed to get the bios update using the Live program MSI provides. Then XP wouldn't boot, so I just reformatted.

I got my SB card working by chaning PCI slots. I'll keep all those things in mind next time my PC runs into trouble.

Was your setup overheating with the Volcano7? Mine never went above 50?C, I don't think it even came close. In any case, I'm checking out the Volcano 9.

The RAM I have installed is overkill, but I want 512MB and Crucial only has 256MB of PC2700 when I purchased my 2 sticks.

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The Volcano 7 is a good heatsink,but the sensor is on the fan.

It will only increase speed if the case temperature goes up.

The Volcano 9 has a sensor which sits underneath the cpu and is much more responsive to temperature changes

Hope this helps you;)

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I bought a MSI KT3 Turbo ARU Mobo bout 2 weeks ago..When I first installed it in, the setup and first time it booted up was pretty fine..bought 512 DDR also and put it in..

Few hours later, I'm being attacked by BSOD..

3 days later, Struggling to find out answer, thinking *I refuse to go to a techician and let him/her fix it*

Boy, I was wrong..I didn't even think about diddly DDR in the day one! I tried it on other friend's computer and it BSOD'ed on his computer so I was friggin ****ed and tooked ram back and got other DDR but it was CRUICAL..

2 weeks later TODAY..It runs excellent..No more BSOD..:D

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