Hardware Upgrade gone bad

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Koinos, May 9, 2010.

  1. Koinos

    Koinos Private E-2

    I was doing a hand me down upgrade to a spare machine I have. I replaced the AMD 2800+ with a 3000+, swapped the RAM from 754Mb PC4000 to 1 GB PC3200 and swapped the AGP card to a newer model. After battling with WinXP Pro I had finally gotten into safe mode and things just wouldn't stabilize. I figured I had jacked up some piece of the new hardware along the way and decided to back out of the changes and take it one step at a time. So swapped everything back as it was but WinXP was still acting up, at first it would boot to Windows safe mode but real unstable then not boot at all. I also disconnected all the USB devices except the mouse. Finally did a windows repair install and can boot OK each time however real long start times. The most major issue I see now at power up is bios reports the CPU at 1250Mhz as does Windows, should be closer to 2.1 Gb or so. I tried the fail-safe and Optimized default in the bios with no change. Since the machine was almost useless with the small amount of memory I bumped it up to 1.25Gb with the donor sticks. Still slow boot and once into Windows its hit or miss to get access to the CD drives or start just about any program. Really hampering the ability to load Ethernet controller drives or anything else for that matter. I had begun to suspect that my PSU was screwing up but it looks ok via bios and from within Windows.
    This is on a ABIT NF7-S2G Mainboard. Socket A with a AMD 2800+ CPU. Below is the Voltage outputs from ABIT-EQ with Windows running.
    VCore = 1.68
    DDRV 2.61
    +3.3V = 3.30
    +5V = 5.03
    +12V = 12.28
    AGPVDD 1.5
    LDTV = 1.6
    5VSB = 4.94

    If you can think of anything which could be causing my CPU to only post at 1250MHz send me a reply.

    Thanks in advance.
     
  2. Koinos

    Koinos Private E-2

    Update..I flashed to the latest bios and after 3 boots the processor is reported correctly in Windows. Still real strange happenings in Win. Try to update drivers and never sees a CD Drive. Go into Windows Explore, stops responding as soon as I try to navigate the C or any other drive. Drops the desktop which then restores after a few minutes.. Too weird.
     
  3. Koinos

    Koinos Private E-2

    Finally got it restored. Turns out the PSU was causing issues but that wasn't clear till I put Windows on a completely different HD and run it with that drive alone. Would work for a few minutes then freeze then start to work again. I actually sat and watched the clock in WinXP stop for a few seconds then resume. No other indications. Hooked up a spare PSU and booted to the same spare drive and no freezes or trouble. Reattached the original drive and would boot but the OS was so corrupt from the attempted WinXP repair I figured a clean install was my best recourse. So now WinXP Pro is in and I've got the boards chipset drives installed and now I've begun the never ending task of Windows Security Patches from hell....

    Keep it QWERTY! :cool
     
  4. augiedoggie

    augiedoggie The Canadian Loon - LocoAugie (R.I.P. 2012)

    Congrats on solving a really difficult problem! A hint for the updates, get an SP3 here at Majorgeeks and install it from your hard disk and after that go to WU. Otherwise, depending on your original SP level, you could be there a very long time.;)
     

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