Asus P4B motherboard P4/1.7GHz/512MB - Win98SE freezes

[brunsr]

Just built a system: Pentium 4/1.7GHz/512MB SDRAM, Asus P4B motherboard, 300W power supply, slots:
AGP - ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder
PCI 1 - empty
PCI 2 - SB Live! MP3+ 5.1
PCI 3 - USR Faxmodem 56K
PCI 4 - 3Com 10/100 NIC
PCI 5 - empty
PCI 6 - empty
-disabled onboard audio on motherboard by moving jumper
-40GB HD
-DVD & CD-RW
-and lots of fans (power supply exhaust, front intake, rear exhaust & cycloneblower exhaust card fan)

Formatted the hard drive and installed Win98SE with no errors. System comes up in 640x480 mode. Install video drivers and switch to 1152x864. Install modem drivers. Now whenever I boot the PC, the system will run for about 2-3 minutes and then do one of the following: 1) lock up completely (mouse still moves but entire screen is
frozen); 2) screen will go blank and monitor goes into offline mode (but computer is still running); 3) screen will get suddenly very bright and freeze. Keyboard totally inactive, only way to get out is hard boot. No PCI interrupt conflicts present when I look at each device. BIOS settings seem to be correct.

This is my brand-new computer I've been trying to get up and running
for several weeks with no success. Am I missing something? Any tips on what to look at on the BIOS and/or motherboard jumper settings?

Any help appreciated!!
Randy B

 

[ramani]

Hi
Is the computer booting up correctly in SAFE mode.. If that is the case, the VGA driver may be creating the trouble. For a while, set the VGA driver as standard VGA, 16 color or 256 color as the Safe mode sets it and then keep working for a while.

1. Just open the case cover and make sure that the fan of the CPU is working correctly when you power on.

Hope this helps you to identify the problem ramani :-9
(Subramanian.G),FoxAcc, ramani_g@yahoo.com

 

[Guest_imported]

Well Randy all I can think of is that maybe all your fans are sucking much of the precious electron juice from your system and causing it to die. ????

Good luck

 

[john426]

if the screen changes colors.... like to a purplish tint, then maybe you have bad ram on that video card. even if it is new, it may be bad.

 

[Jables]

Your story sounds almost EXACTLY like what happened to me and my new dream system that I built, however, mine is an AMD system. The thing we have in common though is the ASUS brand motherboard. I had the system built and was foaming at the mouth ready to use it, but it would always just freeze or go completely blank. The only way back in was through a hard boot.

After about six months (yeah, six) I had tried everything under the sun. Don't ask me why I didn't just give up and start buying new components. I was bound and determined on this thing, for some reason. On a whim, I ordered a new BIOS chip for the motherboard. This cleared up all of my problems. I guess the board just shipped with a bad chip.

Before this, I had tried all sorts of things. Running winbench on it, running the sytem file checker, reinstalling windows a thousand times, reinstalling hardware and software, reconfiguring the PCI cards, and on and on, ad nauseum. Still, the system would just lock up after about an hour.

If you can eliminate the possibility of your video card being DOA, you should look into the BIOS chip option.