Associate
- Joined
- 6 Apr 2008
- Posts
- 235
- Location
- Peterborough, England
Okay. I need help.
Recently purchased a load of bits to build my computer. They are:
Asus Striker II Extreme motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU
OCZ 2GB DDR3 1333Mhz RAM
Corsair TX750 PSU
LG BluRay + HD-DVD ROM drive
WD Raptor 150GB hard drive
And I'm using an old GeForce 5200 PCI graphics card while I decide what new GPU to buy.
My problem is that the computer freezes, powers down, and crashes randomly. First of all I tried installing Windows XP Pro (32bit) onto my new hard drive. It kept freezing during the "Installing Devices" stage but eventually made it through (I've no idea what changed). Then it would shut off instead of restarting during the installation. Then, once I managed to actually get into XP, it would hang or power off whenever I tried to touch my DVD drive.
Now, I didn't want to install Vista (Home Premium x64) until I got my new graphics card, but I thought it might be an incompatibility issue with XP, so I gave it a shot. But nope. As soon as the Vista installation gets out of the DOS-esque menus and onto the pretty backgrounded section it just hung. Every single time. I couldn't get any further.
So I tried XP again. With different hard drives (IDE), by removing everything from the computer that wasn't essential, by changing the RAM from dual channel to 2x single channel. Ran a few repetitions of Memtest, no errors reported. CPU doesn't go much higher than 50C. Nothing seemed to work.
The only interesting hint I did come across was that once I had installed XP and restarted the machine, it would hang or shut off at the loading screen (before the Welcome screen pops up). Upon restarting after the crash, if I select "Safe mode" it works fine. It's weird.
The things that have remained constant throughout my little testing process are the motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card and PSU. Unfortunately I have no way of testing any of these components on a different machine as the only other computers I have access too are 8+ years old or laptops. And like I said, the RAM showed no errors on Memtest.
If anyone has any ideas on what the problem could be, please let me know. I'm pulling my hair out here. I'm not sure what to try next.
Recently purchased a load of bits to build my computer. They are:
Asus Striker II Extreme motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU
OCZ 2GB DDR3 1333Mhz RAM
Corsair TX750 PSU
LG BluRay + HD-DVD ROM drive
WD Raptor 150GB hard drive
And I'm using an old GeForce 5200 PCI graphics card while I decide what new GPU to buy.
My problem is that the computer freezes, powers down, and crashes randomly. First of all I tried installing Windows XP Pro (32bit) onto my new hard drive. It kept freezing during the "Installing Devices" stage but eventually made it through (I've no idea what changed). Then it would shut off instead of restarting during the installation. Then, once I managed to actually get into XP, it would hang or power off whenever I tried to touch my DVD drive.
Now, I didn't want to install Vista (Home Premium x64) until I got my new graphics card, but I thought it might be an incompatibility issue with XP, so I gave it a shot. But nope. As soon as the Vista installation gets out of the DOS-esque menus and onto the pretty backgrounded section it just hung. Every single time. I couldn't get any further.
So I tried XP again. With different hard drives (IDE), by removing everything from the computer that wasn't essential, by changing the RAM from dual channel to 2x single channel. Ran a few repetitions of Memtest, no errors reported. CPU doesn't go much higher than 50C. Nothing seemed to work.
The only interesting hint I did come across was that once I had installed XP and restarted the machine, it would hang or shut off at the loading screen (before the Welcome screen pops up). Upon restarting after the crash, if I select "Safe mode" it works fine. It's weird.
The things that have remained constant throughout my little testing process are the motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card and PSU. Unfortunately I have no way of testing any of these components on a different machine as the only other computers I have access too are 8+ years old or laptops. And like I said, the RAM showed no errors on Memtest.
If anyone has any ideas on what the problem could be, please let me know. I'm pulling my hair out here. I'm not sure what to try next.
)