Help with PC configuration...

[rosstarino]

Hello

I hope and pray that some knowledgeable individual can save my investment.

System:

AMD Athlon 1.33
ASUS A7A266 Motherboard
512 m DDR Ram (Crucial)
Creative SoundBlaster Live 5.1
Elsa Gladiac GT (Nvidia) 32 m DDR graphics card (AGP)
I/O Magic 16 m graphics card (PCI)(Second Monitor)
80 g IBM Deskstar 7200rpm HD
2 g Western Digital 6400 HD (used as swap disk)
10/100 Network card
Copper ORB heatsink

Operating system
Windows 2000 Professional

Abstract:

The system smokes when it is working, but all too frequently it freezes and I have to perform a hard shutdown to reboot. Occasionally I get a blue screen, but most of the time it just freezes. No mouse movement no ability to CNTRL ALT DELETE, nothing responds. For example, during a typical 2 hour time period it may crash 3 times and it seems to be directly related to the load on the system (go figure, ha ha!) Particularly when gaming (Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Unreal Tournament, Myth) I have the problem. I have noticed that all of my added devices graphics cards, sound cards, etc are using IRQ9 and offer no way to change them, other than designating them in the BIOS. From what I understand this is OK that newer technologies allow multiple uses of the same IRQ. I have tried all the things in the following list to resolve this issue.

Posted at Google Forums for ASUS Motherboard
Read post replies (looks bleak for ASUS)
Tried moving sound card to #3 pci slot
Tried running RAM sticks by themselves (2 sticks of 256 m DDR)
Tried running single AGP adapter (took second PCI video card out of picture)
Reinstalled operating system 3 times(one installation of Win98 2nd Edition)
Removed 1 of 3 exhaust fan (was told could be causing negative airflow inside box)
Downloaded and installed BIOS and software/driver updates from everyone!
Disabled AGP Fast Write in BIOS nothing else in BIOS has been tampered with.
I am not overclocking and temperature thresholds seem to be within acceptable levels

None of the above mentioned things have resolved the issue, if any of you can provide some advice or something else to try I would greatly appreciate it.

A severely worn out and frustrated computer hobbyist

 

[Maruis]

To get rid of the IRQ problem you unfortunetly have to re-install.

Here the answer for IRQ's in Win2k.

Use the URL:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q252420

At the bottom of the post you will see how to setup Win2k to get rid of it.
Hope this Helps

Maruis
"I sleep at home not on my Job!"

 

[rosstarino]

I looked at the Microsoft page

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q252420

and it seems like something I might give a shot before I head out and buy a new motherboard. If I am understanding correctly you think I need to specifically configure the IRQ's for my devices and disable(in the BIOS) plug and play operating system?

 

[jaeddy]

I believe there is also an MS article dealing with system freezes in regards to certain AGP video configurations and memory page size settings in the registry. Let me see if I can dig it up for you.

 

[jaeddy]

Missed the part about this happening with Win98 as well. The MS site indicates the fix for this was included in Win2K SP2, but given the cross-platform nature of the problem I suspect that is a moot point.

 

[TheGov]

Don't know if this has any relevance, but I had a similar problem with different hardware (Voodoo 2 16Mb). The PC would just freeze in games and on web sites with heavy flash content. Tried loads of fixes from MS, 3DFx etc. no joy. I upgraded to XP (clean install) and still had the problem. In the end I tried a different 3D card and it cured the problem. It seems that the Voodoo card was faulty, but the fault would not show up with diagnostic software.

 

[2bemcse]

do you have a CPU cooler installed ?
this really needed in AMD systems !
because without they run to hot and this makes the system freeze.

 

[rosstarino]

Yes I have the copper orb CPU heatsink and fan and I am running a 350 watt power supply, one case fan on the front and two exaust fans on the back.