Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests whats the deal? CPU locking up

Simon, Not to knock your advice but CPU can still function even when they are overheating they just loose stability. I think you've been wandering around in the Intel world for a little too long. The either works or doesn't idea is just plain wrong.

I argee with about the Memory alot of times the miss matched memory will cause problems especially if it's from a second or 3rd tier manufacturer.

Also there shouldn't be any remnants of his 98 install on the 2000 system since you can't do a straight upgrade from 98. If it where Xp this would be a different story. The only thing that might be a concern in this part is that he may have left the old file system intact and had a virus or two on the system when he did. Therefore infecting the new OS like it did the old.

My recommendation is still to look at the system and check the fans. If they are fine and you system still does it after pulling out the ram then look at downloading the VIA Drivers from viatech.com The VIA chipsets have some PCI compatiliblty issues with Windows 2K. Also have you done the Service Pack updates to 2000?

incredible advice so far guys and I really appreciate it. I will spend this weekend checking the things mentioned and we'll see where we're at. I'd still like to use this for my home CPU if I can get the bugs out so I hope everything works out. thanks again for the advice though, I'll report back in a few days.

You may be able to get CPU temps from the BIOS. So you could check this without opening the case.

I somewhat agree that a cracked CPU generally is a it works or doesn't. But in servicing computers, I've seen where broken solder joints don't manifest themselves until the reach certain temps. At that temp, the circuit is open. When it cools back down, contact is restored until it heats up again.

FWIW,

TB

There was a scam last year where Compaq was putting chips slower than they were advertising and turning up the clock speeds on them, after awhile they would overheat and lockup all the time. I had a girlfriend that this happened to, she contacted the company where she got the computer and they replaced it for her through Compaq free of charge....

Ryan

The Athlon die on the CPU will break if you use the wrong heatsink. (And it will not work if that happens!) Athlon's also produce great amounts of heat so if you CPU fan didn't work your CPU would have burned up in about 5 min. after the fan died! I had memory problems with mine. (Also an Athlon 900) The don't like Micron! I know that's a big name in memory but that was the first question the tech people asked me. "What brand of memory are you using." I switch to Kingmax modules as they suggested and boom problem solved! Athlon's are fussy. I think that a clean OS install is a good idea too! I think AMD's website has info on known memory conflicts. Did it run fine before you upgraded the memory? Plus getting to the memory modules is easy so I would start there.

i'm being good...

There's your problem. I build all my own machines, I like to know exactly what's in them. I used to work in an electronics shop when I was younger and every time we sold a HP or a Compaq, half those people would bring it back in less than a week. Not to mention the crapload of useless software that comes on them and the fact that their almost impossible to upgrade anything on (Pretty hard to upgrade the video card when there's no AGP slot!), doesn't make them a good buy in my mind.

I had numerous and repeated lockups on my pc from the day I got it, ~1yr ago. I had Win98SE with 256MB ram.

I downloaded a program called Cacheman which helped a LOT. There are settings for 95/98/ME

You may want to try it.

One more reason to not use AMD. Flame away !!!

Good luck.