Patrick, I have a few thoughts. You may have already tried these.
First, since it locks up during your BIOS/CMOS setup, the operating system is probably not a factor,
unless the HTPC stuff is hard-coded somehow. (I am not familiar with this.)
Second, since you have two sticks of memory, you can try using only one at a time to see if it will run
well without the other stick, which would then assumed to be bad. In the CMOS setup you can try to turn
off the Quick-Test and see if that will catch anything for you. At least it might check the memory
better.
Do you get any beeps? You don't mention any, so I assume that you don't. They can indicate a problem.
Since this looks to be a homebuilt, you can try an old hard drive - just to see if it consistently gets
you past the hardware boot process. If you have an old power supply that you can swap in, that might
indicate a weak/failing power supply.
It sounds as if something has been failing intermittently and is getting worse. That could be in the
logic or in the hard drive, so that doesn't help much. Naturally, you should check all cables.
----- Original Message -----
From: patrick
Subject: [PCBUILD] computer constantly locks up... help!!!
I have the below listed system setup for about 6months, and it was working find until about a month ago.
That was when it started to lockup iccasionally when I was watching the TV (via the 9800). Then it
became more frequent, and it would lock up occasionally during DVD play, and when just starting the TV
app. Now it locks at various points during boot-up, and when it does manage to start it usually locks
within 2minutes of being in windows. I have it lock-up during boot, while in BIOS setup, when I have
booted to MEMTEST, and when I have booted to SPINRITE.
I have my primary drive partitioned to 6gig and 74gig, approx, and EVERY time I boot now it wants to
chkdsk the 74gig partition, whether I have done it before or not. I have to this point assumed that was
because I have to power-off the PC when it locks but now I am not so sure. The OS in on the 6gig
I originally thought it a memory error, then a disk drive error (see above) but now I am leaning to a
motherboard or chip error. I am not sure where to begin now, other than from scratch again. any
suggestions or tests to be recommended?
Note that I am NOT using the MCE as my interface, I use a program called myHTPC
Patrick
WIN-XP MCE
Athlon 64 3200+
GIGABYTE GA-K8NSNXP-939 nForce3 Ultra
Corsair ValuSelect 1gb Ram (2x512), DDR SDRAM 400 - 2.5-4-3-8 -- dual channel
ATI AIW 9800Pro
MyHD130 v1.65.2u
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