Hey guys, I just put together a new rig, and I'm having trouble with it freezing up. It seems like each time I turn it on, it gets to a little bit farther point. I was able to get it to install Vista, after about 4 times of it freezing up, and can now get to my desktop. I installed my motherboard drivers, but it froze up again before I could restart (I was on my desktop for about 5 minutes).
I know that it is not the Vista disc I was using, because I have copies of Home Premium and of Ultimate, and they both would freeze during setup. I'm not sure what to do to fix this problem, but any help is greatly appreciated. Help me get back to fraggin' ASAP!
Here are my specs:
New* EVGA nForce 730a Motherboard
ATI x1950pro
New* AMD2 Quad-Core 9950
New* 2 x 2 Gigs DDR 800 GSkill RAM
550 watt power supply
2 200 GB IDE drives (I installed Vista on one of these)
1 500 GB SATA drive
first question: are you using the 64bit ver for Vista? 4GB of RAM won't work otherwise.....
you could test if this is the case by just putting in 1 of sticks and trying again.
if you do you have 64bit and/or 1 stick still doesn't work, then get memtest here, http://www.memtest.org/ , and burn it to a disc and boot from the disc and run it. leave it running for a few hours. if there are no errors, then the RAM's all good but if not, then you need new RAM.
if that checks out OK then we'll need to go from there....
_________________ "You´re a mean one.... Mr LiNcH"
double check the power supply. make sure its not switched to 230 volt by accident. it should be at 115. i had that same problem before. also, if the memory was bad, the system wont load at all in my experience. also, check everything in bios. make sure everything is good, like your clock multiplyer, FSB, voltages, etc.... the only other issue i might think it could be is a bad hard drive. i've also had that happen. good luck.
It wasn't bad memory. I tried my brothers DDR2 800 ram , and had the same thing happen. I will try to look around in BIOS to make sure everything is alright. Also, I don't think it is the hard drive because I tried installing Vista on each of the hard drives and i have the same problem on each. Since it would freeze even when I was just booting with the Vista disc, does that tell you anything? Could I possibly just have a bad motherboard?
try clearing the motherboard cmos. You either ave to remove the little battery or a jumper from the motherboard. There should be instructions in your motherboards manual.
try to run a linux live cd on it to see if it loads all the way up or try to install xp on it, some machines have trouble running vista especially on a amd processor using the nvidia chipset, running a live cd like knoppix would tell you if it is hardware related or just a incapability issue with vista and that chipset witch is what I think is happening!
Ok cool. Thanks for the feedback guys, I will try all of those things out. (I have tried resetting the cmos, but no change)
An update though: A few times, my computer hasn't been able to make it past the cmos screen, and once or twice it failed to even show a post screen. It would just sit there with a blank screen forever after I turned it on. I don't know what that indicates??
If that is the case i would say you have something that is flaky in hardware my guess would be ram or even the processor, but don't rule out the motherboard, if at all possible i would test the processor and ram from yours on a different motherboard and if it freezes then just the processor on a different motherboard, its obviously a hardware issue if it has problems posting!
Update again: When I turn my computer on, it does not do ANYTHING. It just sits there, lights on, fans spinning, with a blank screen. I'm going to try to get a new motherboard. Does that sound reasonable? I am trying to find out if I just got a faulty mobo, and I should get it replaced, or if there is some compatibility issue, and I should get a refund and buy a different one.
Any ideas? Here are the links to what I have right now.
well in my experience if it won't video up its probably the ram or the processor, I would try to find someone with another am2 motherboard and test your ram and processor first then move on to the possibility its the motherboard, but in no way am i saying its not the m/board! If I was you I would get a quad intel as the amd quad are rittled with problems! One other thing to think about is your power supply, quad use alot more power and it is possible that your power supply is just not enough, or it is possible all those hd's your running jumpers are not configured correctly, try unhooking all of your hard drives and see if it videos up and if so try using only one hard drive in the system and try installing to that drive to see how it runs.
Oh, ok. I think I can try out my processor and ram on my brother's computer. Also, we got a snow-day so I have some extra time on my hands. So, I think I'm am going to take my computer all apart and throw it back together, to make sure I don't have any of the connections messed up. And I'll only use 1 hard drive. I'll report back, thanks for the help!
yeah, i was gonna suggest just running one HD to see what happens. also, if your mobo has onboard graphics, maybee just try installing the OS without the ATI card in there. then download the drivers. etc...
Ok, here's what I've done today so far. I rebuilt the computer with only 1 HDD connected, 1 stick of ram, my dvd drive, and my processor. I used on-board graphics. I had no problems with installing windows. Everything runs smoothly. I was able to put in my 2nd stick of RAM with no problems as well. I installed mobo drivers, and that worked fine also.
I tried putting in my graphics card, and here is where I started having problems with freezing again. So, I tried my brother's Nvidia 8800GT out in my computer, and I had similar problems with freezing. I know his graphics card works because I am on his computer right now. So it seems like either the motherboard PCI express x 16 slot is bad, or my power supply is not giving it enough power. Does that sound like a good conclusion? I am going to bring BeMo's power supply over here and try that out, with my video card installed. If that doesn't work, then I'll send back the motherboard, I think.
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