Old system stability, please help!

[Acolyte]

Hi there,

Im completely out of touch with overclocking and hardware at the mo, used to be into it all about 3-4 years back, but all my money goes on cars now lol. ANYWAY.........

heres my spec, i built this computer back in 2004 and its doing me well until lately.

- Antec TruBlue 460w
- AMD S939 Opteron 144 (1.8Ghz Stock)
- MSI K8N Neo 2 Motherboard
- 1 Gb of Geil DDR2 Ram (was the **** hot stuff, that ran 2-2-2-5 timings), limited edition bah blah

- WD Caviar IDE 80GB.

and at this second in time im just using an old Geforce 2 as im not playing games.

RIght, basically my computer was getting clogged and slow, and it started BSODING, i'd get IRQL_NOT_EQUAL to e.t.c and PFN_LIST_CORRUPT, e.t.c basically id get a lot of random BSOD's generally just after booting into windows, but they would be random, sometimes id be able to use the comp for hours without a problem.

Now ive got a new HD in there, fresh install of XP, and it runs nice and fast, but instead of BSOD's the computer will just restart now, again randomly, but its less frequent than the BSOD's used to be.

Ive compeltely cleared the case of dust e.t.c still no good, CPU runs cool as a cucumber, the PSU voltage rails are perfecrt according to the BIOS. how the heck do i start diagnosing?! im so out of touch, please help!

Oh i should Add, Firefox and opera seem to crash quite a lot, but they are the only programmes that seem to do so.

 

[Philtor]

Is the new HDD IDE also as im guessing you would have used the old ribbon cable so might be an idea to rule this out first of all. After that I would try running a few passes of Memtest. If you still have no luck then I would seek to borrow another PSU to test as the values being reported in the BIOS may not necessarily be accurate. I use a PSU tester myself to check the voltages on each line.

 

[4T5]

I reckon there is Stress on a power connector caused by Poor routing of your cables, Not noticeable but enough to blip the power for a reboot.
Yes I am speaking from experience.

 

[Acolyte]

Is the new HDD IDE also as im guessing you would have used the old ribbon cable so might be an idea to rule this out first of all. After that I would try running a few passes of Memtest. If you still have no luck then I would seek to borrow another PSU to test as the values being reported in the BIOS may not necessarily be accurate. I use a PSU tester myself to check the voltages on each line.

Hi there, its not a new HD, but its one ive had laying around for ages, it works perfect, ive got 2 cables tried them both, the HD gets a perfect read curve on HD Tach at 60mb/s.

Will try memtest, good idea! And ive got a multimeter laying around somewhere to test voltages.

Thing is though it will seemlessly do it regardless of what im doing, it could be idle on the desktop doing sweet FA, and it would still do it eventually

 

[Philtor]

Hmm that does sound like a power issue. Even better if you have a meter to check the PSU. If you have done any Overclocking then I would reset the BIOS also and take it back to stock settings. Hope this helps

 

[Acolyte]

It used to be a clocker, i used to have watercooling and ran the opteron at 2.8Ghz (anyone remember the sweet clocking opterons? ), i ran it on air after that at 2.5Ghz, it probably spent a good year and a bit with 1.6v shoved up its backside, but its been running stock for about 6 months now, just problems developed lately. Ill do memtest and multimeter results and report back a bit later.

 

[4T5]

Thing is though it will seemlessly do it regardless of what im doing, it could be idle on the desktop doing sweet FA, and it would still do it eventually

That's how mine was when one day it wouldn't start, I fiddled with a few connectors & it powered up, When I touched it real gentle it rebooted instantly, I think the plastic on the wires gets brittle over time & the wires don't form as easy as they should.
My system worked perfectly in every way Before & after but now I don't get no random reboots. completely embarrassing for an old hand like me but you Never stop learning do you & this caught me out by being so simple, Like me I know.

 

[Guest2]

Also - If the IDE cables are twisted try untangling them. I had one in an old machine that was that twisted there was a small split/tear on the cable I really hate IDE now, its takes up so much room compaired to SATA

 

[Acolyte]

Also - If the IDE cables are twisted try untangling them. I had one in an old machine that was that twisted there was a small split/tear on the cable I really hate IDE now, its takes up so much room compaired to SATA

Dropped my SATA drive and killed it