MoBo problems?? (W98)

[Koil]

This is a cut and paste that I have been putting out trying to get some help w/ my particular problem.

Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated, and I figure its a great way to break in your new boards with this annoying problem. :)

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Ok, I have a PC Chips MoBo (922LR I believe) w/ a P4 2.0 ghz chip, 256k DDR ram, GeForce3Ti500

Now, I am 90% sure that all jumpers are in the correct positions. ( I am a quasi-tech nerd, but I always have that lil doubt in my head..hehe)

I have done a complete wipe of the HD and installed Win98SE, got all the bells and whistle updates from M$ and loaded the software that came with the MoBo for the on-board USB, vid, etc.

Usually the PC reboots when I am playing a game called Asherons Call 2, and its pretty graphic intensive. Normally I would think that it was just a bug in the game (its in the end stages of Beta) and that the problem was on there end, but I have had the PC reboot while sitting on the desktop, before I have ever even launched the game.

People have told me that the Via chipset on the motherboard needs to be updated, the BIOS for the MoBo needs to be updated, and possibly the BIOS on my vid card needs to be updated.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

First and foremost, have you ever been to PCCHips website?? Quite possibly the most horrific thing I think I have ever laid eyes on, and a huge gaping black hole as far as end user support goes. ( I know they deal mainly with whole-sellers, but still...)

I guess what I am here to ask, and feel free to redirect me if this is in the wrong place, is where do I start to figure out what actually IS causing the problem, do I need to update all of these components, etc...etc...

I know you can never get enough out of your computer, but running with the rig I have, once my computer is into windows (the only things being loaded are the registry verifier, power profiles, zone alarm) but my system resources are constantly in the low 70% area...is this correct? Is something eating up my resources that I don't know about. Grrr...one thing at a time, I know....

If there is more info that you need, or anything you can point me to in fixing this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time,
Koil


I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather, not kicking and screaming like the people in his car.

[scott.dugan]

Well first odf all. I would be looking at your system bios. Normally the maker of the motherboard will have updates on there site (Flash Roms) and at thwe same time they will have a description of the fixes for that release. You could also swend them an email describing your problem, As it is in the best intrests of the manufacturer to fix theses issues. ideo card, I have seen problems of this sort before, Once i had the same problem and fixed it with changi9ng the cd rom drive. I know that sounds funny but it's the trouth. I would uninstall your fire wall, What was it Zone alarm. I had an Email for denial of service for that product, I will see if i can find it. That would be one of the first things. Have you tried booting to an MSdos prompt and leaving the machine there to see if it reboots?
try this with your HDD plugged in and just walk away. If when you come back it has loaded windows you know that there is a hard Ware problem.

/images/forums/icons/cool.gif<font color=blue>Goanna</font color=blue>/images/forums/icons/cool.gif

[Koil]

Ok, I checked the rating on the PSU and its 300w, so I think this is sufficient, so I can hopefully rule that out.

As far as the boards in the machine, I took everything out, gave it the once over, and replaced just the vid card, which can only go in one slot, the AGP slot.

I made sure the memory was seated correctly and in the slot furthest from the CPU.

I updated the Via 4-in-1 drivers and attempted to update the BIOS, but the version I have currently and the one on PCCHIPS website is the same.

*pant*

Anyone know of anything else I can do??

I left the computer in DOS last night and came home to find it still sitting there, but once I reloaded Windows it rebooted 3 times in less than 10 min...settled down a bit after that, but it kept happening.

The weird thing is, it doesn't happen when I do intensive CPU usage or graphics...it can happen as I am pulling up IE, or clicking on an icon. I am beggining to think that maybe I need to re-install windows again or something.

I have a copy of WinXP on the way, so maybe I'll wait until that arrives and try my luck with that. I like win98 as it seems to be the most ironed out of the MS OS's, but at this point I will try anything.

Any further idea's I will try.....oh, and contacting PCCHIPS might be a little difficult as there website is horrid and there customer support even worse. I knew this buying the board, but since my cash flow is a little tight, I decided to go with the economical board.

Damn this is annoying. ;)

Thanks for the replies, btw!!!

I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather, not kicking and screaming like the people in his car.

[Andy-S]

Koil,

It's normally a critical error that causes the system to reboot. This can be hardware or software.

Two things you can try.

1. Load the standard VGA video driver and see if you get the problem. This will help rule out the graphics drivers.

2. If you have more than one DIMM installed remove them one at a time to see if the memory is bad.

Cheers
Andy

[BertImmenschuh]

I made sure the memory was seated correctly and in the slot furthest from the CPU.

Minor point but make sure the first DIMM is in slot 0 or 1 depending on how the board is marked, followed by the second DIMM in slot 1 or 2, etc. Have seen boards marked with the first slot nearest the CPU and also a few with it furthest from the CPU. Haven't heard of any rule-of-thumb that the DIMM goes in the slot furthest from the CPU.

Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement

[The_Dude]

Check your BIOS and make sure the Video Bios is not shadowed or cached, same for Mobo BIOS setting. In the days of dos games shadowing the video bios would speed things up. The draw back is the BIOS code is in ram and can get over written and screw things up. There is no advantage to shadowing it these days since it's stored in fast ROM and Windows ignores it after the boot up anyway.