Hardware causing complete lockups

Hey guys,

Alright, in the last few months, I have been having a lot of trouble with my computer. First, my CPU fried, and 3 days after I got that back from warranty, I lost my graphic card. I replaced the mobo and the power supply, so about half of my hardware is new within the last 3 months.

Anyway, since I have put it all back together, I have gotten 5 completel lockup/freezes. This has been since last Wednesday. It seems like it would be a video card problem, but I wouldn't think so (I got a brand new 9800 pro last week). I am doubtful my motherboard is acting up already, as well as the CPU and PS should be working fine....

To further explain my problem, I finally connected to the Vanguard Beta Server, and it just stuck to one frame, stopped the music, but kept the image on my screen. All the fans inside my case were still running.

My rig consists of...
Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb
AMD XP 3200+ CPU (400mhz)
1gig PC3200 DDR400 ram
80GB 2mb HD
Asus A7V800-X mobo

I have come to the conclusion that either one peice of my hardware is conflicting with another, its a HD issue, its a monitor issue, or it is still my new video card...

Thanks in advance

--Kibb

 

Forgot to mention that I have tried the latest ATI official drivers and the omega ones, as well as I have DX9~

--Kibb

 

Your first post seems to suggest that your problems appeared very soon after you replaced one or more of the major components of your system. It's not clear which one, but it may not be coincidental.

Try swapping in a temporary replacement for the component you upgraded/replaced soonest before your problems appeared.

Before you swap hardware items: if that component required installation of drivers for it, try uninstalling those drivers and letting Windows reinstall them -- preferably using the latest drivers provided by the manufacturer rather than the drivers supplied with Windows.

 

Sounds like a possible short is going on. Did you correctly mount the mobo? Does the BIOS display the correct PSU readings?

 

I think I found my problem.

I decided it might be a RAM issue, so I took out both sticks and swapped them around. While I had them out, though, I took a second to read the labels...

And.. One stick read PC2100..... .I don't know HOW this happened, as I built this computer myself and I never remember even owning a peice of PC2100, but yeah. My RAM didn't match. I know this isn't always lethal, but either way, it would cause my other stick (legit PC3200) to run at PC2100 speeds, correct?

Anyway, yeah. Upon bootup, my Freeram XP showed that I only had 512 RAM installed, which was definetly not normal.

I powered down and took out the stick of PC3200 and left the PC2100 in the first slot (main). My computer booted up properly and is running fine. As for the PC3200... I took out the PC2100 and tried the 3200, and lo and behold, I got to the POST screen, and it refused to go further. My monitor shut off and entered power saving mode, so I am assuming that my PC3200 is faulty RAM.

Anyway, to sum all of that up in a sentence...: I discovered one of my RAM was 512MB PC2100, not PC3200 like the other one, and upon swapping out each RAM and testing on it's own, only the PC2100 would work properly.

Note:: I made extra care to ground myself when dealing with my computer, so I'm ruling out the chance I might have fried it myself through touching it, but I guess it is possible.

Anyway, I'm pretty much 100% sure it was my RAM all along. I just have 3questions that I'm not sure about:
1. If I had one stick of PC2100 266mhz running along with a PC3200 at 400mhz, would the PC3200 slow down to 266mhz to match the inferior hardware?
2. Would it damage any component of my computer running 2 different peices of RAM?
3. How far can a computer go without having a peice of working RAM installed? Post?

Thanks so much guys

--Kibble

 

Every system that I've dealt with will run all the ram at the speed of the slowest chip installed, and this shouldn't cause any additional component failure.

 

If you have been running the comp for a while like this theres a chance you have corrupted some files on the harddrive,if it were my comp I would reinstall windows just to be sure but thats up to you

all the mobo's I have dealt with if theres no ram installed or dead ram nothing happens at all when you try to turn it on,but I believe some newer mobo's will turn the comp on and display a no ram installed message a great leap forward

Simple test remove the ram and see how far you comp gets

 

Thanks

As for the corrupted files, I formatted and reinstalled Windows XP last week when I got my video card back, so I'm pretty clean right now.

Thanks for the help Im gunna go buy a 1gig PC3200 now and see how much better my computer is

--Kibb