Any ideas?

I got my new AMD dual core 4200 CPU in yesterday. I reset the CMOS (had a light oc on the old one) and it had trouble. It would randomly crash. No BSOD, just would restart every few minutes. PSU looks ok I guess, 5.01 and 12.3 volts read off a molex. I have tried 2 hard drives, and I get the same error during win XP installation. Can't read a file cyycoins.chm? Tried another XP disk and another CD rom, same error.

This system has been working great until the CPU change. I put the old CPU back in, and get the same error. Right now, I am formating and will try to install XP again before I go to work. Will try to run Memtest while I am gone. Any ideas on what is up with this computer?

Specs
DFI NF4 Ultra D
2x512 Crucial Ballistix RAM
OCZ 600 Watt PSU
AMD 64 Athlon 3500 and 4200 dual core CPUs tried
PCIe Radion X850xt GPU
2 Seagate 320GB SATA drives (not in RAID)

All the fans are spinning, rechecked all connections, reset RAM and GPU, no luck. I am worn out right now from work, just wondering if I am missing something simple.

Thanks

E

 

Have you tried with just one hard drive connected ?
As you know, sometimes XP will not load on sata drives without the sata driver (f8)-- I know some just will not load without it.

 

Thanks for the tip. When I got home from work today, I had multiple errors on memtest (pretty sweet to have Memtest on the mobo). So I swapped the RAM, same problem, right at 9% it would lock up on winXP installation. Looks like I got the combo failure!

I put in another optical drive, and it is happily installing away. Looks like it is working now. No idea what caused it to stop working. Hopefully I will be up on the dual core CPU in a little while. I hate typing on a laptop...

E

 

Well, so far all seems to be well except I am up on my old RAM. Guess I will see how Crucial is on RMA's Monday. I am having an interesting experience getting the folding running right, I think I have it figured out where it will run. Ugly, but it runs.

I hope you have a good weekend.

Eric

 

My first thought was the memory, but as you had crucial, and were going to run memtest, I left that off.
Interestingly, the optical drive is not that frequent in being iffy, but I have seen it happen - Glad you solved the problem, good luck with the dual core, I have'nt tried Amd for some time, but I used to get very good performance from older versions (mine's the Intel core 2 duo E6400)
You should get some better performance for folding, as the second core can be adjusted in Intels, by a little program - called cpu-control.- I have not looked to see if it runs on AMD.

 

Apparently it does AMD, TOO.
http://www.koma-code.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=88&Itemid=93

 

Oh it gets better. I am on my 3rd optical drive. All is well untill I try to install a game like Counter Strike. It installs just fine. Just will not ever start. Oh well, I got the folding running.

I have never had 2 optical drives die on one computer like this.

No games for me so far.:cry

E

 

Your motherboard particulars (ASUS,Asrock, Biostar, Gigabyte ?)- Have you updated your Bios?

 

The board is a DFI nf4 ultra. I got Far Cry to work, so now I think my counter strike CD is scratched, it stops during installation (get an error message can't read file, corrupt media or drive, something like that). Looks like Walyworld had CS source for $28 or so, will pick it up and try it tonight. If it won't install, I will look into the BIOS update.

If it works, I had a bad run in with some drives, if it does not... I had a couple of other programs that would not install properly untill I put in the other optical drive.

E