For the past few months, I have been having problems with my self-build home PC (running Wins98se) hanging up on me whenever I run certain programs which involve sounds and videos like Windows Media Player (just certain mpeg movies) and certain software which involves the use of audio like audio cleaning lab 2005 deluxe. I have had my PC for about 3 years with no problems whatsoever until the last three months or so and it is getting so frustrating indeed!
I had the JeanTech 300W PSU and had no problem with it for the 2 whole years
. I thought it might be the PSU not giving out enough powers anymore so I decided to replace it with a 400W JeanTech one:
+3.3v 28A
+5v 35A
+12v 17A
+3.3v & +5v combined give 220W
+12v gives 204W
Information about this:
http://www.jeantech.com/Products/Power_ ... /400w.html
After replacing my old one with the new one, again - no luck!
Next, I thought it could be the graphics related problem so I decided to replace my old GeForce3 Ti200 64mb ddr (no problem with it for the whole 4 years
until recently) with this mega MSI GeForce4 Ti4600 128mb ddr 4x. Guess what? The same 'freeze' problem persists and no luck! Damn!
My next step was to play around with two memory modules 256mb pc2100. I experimented each one in different slots and every other combinations - still no luck! I was asked to run the memtest86 and it did not find any errors. Phew!
These are the only hardware I have not tried yet.
1) Creative Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Sound Card
2) CPU Athlon XP 2100+ 255fsb
3) GA-7VTXH KT266A motherboard (installed the drivers and all that)
4) Rockwell hardware PCI 56k modem
5) NIC
However, I did experience with the HDDs and other IDE devices. You see, I have got 2 x 20gb 7200rpm hard drives, Sony CD-RW and DVD-ROM. I disconnected the powers feeding to secondary HDD and DVD-ROM. and thought by doing this would not pressurised the new PSU - after some time, problem came back!! No luck!!
My next step was to add more cooling fans into my PC.
1) 80mm System Cooling Fan
2) Exhaust Fan
3) Northbridge Chipset Cooling Fan (40mm)
4) Twin-Cooling fans for the main drive
Next! I decided to fresh install the OS and after successful refresh with all drivers, software, applications and windows updated. After a while, problems still coming back!
I have these applications installed on my home computer:
ZoneAlarm3.0 Pro
Registry Mechanics 4.0
Trend Micro Anti-virus
Serv-U ftp 3.0
DNS2GO
Photoshop 7 Pro
ACDSee 4
Umax Scanner software (button manager, textbridge and scanning software)
Epson Driver and software
Directx8.0
WinZip 8.1
Acrobat Reader 5.01
Admail Pro
Cyberlink DVD 2.0
DivX Player
WinAmp 2.80
MSN Messenger
mIRC
skyp
Magix Audio Cleaning Lab 2005 deluxe version
ICQ 2000b
Real10
Quicktime4
ntl ftp
NJStar Communicator
Office 2000 Professional Disk one and two
Windows 98 updates
Motherboard VIA-4-in-1 driver
nVidia 27.20 (Nvidia VGA Driver 27.20; Support model = all MSI Nvidia based VGA card; Description Recommended to be used for VIA KT133/ KT266/ KT266A/ KM266 based motherboard; Date 2002-5-3)
No matter what I tried, this probem comes back. I am running out of ideas now. Any suggestions here?
So by the way, I also dual-boot Windows 2000 Professional and whenever I play Video and Sound, I also having the same problem. However, playing games are unaffected
So therefore this problem is not software related.
Thanks for listening.........
Simon in UK.
GigaByte GA-7VTXH 266, 2x256MB PC2100 DDR, Athlon XP 2100+ (266), MSI GF4Ti4600-VTD, Internal 56K Modem, SBLive 5.1, 10/100 NIC.
IDE: 2x20GB HDD, Sony CD-RW & DVD-ROM
JeanTech 400W (+3.3v 28A; +5v 35A; +12v 17A and +3.3v/+5v => 220W & +12v => 17A)