"Steve Rennick" wrote in message news:yn5Kb.950474$6C4.912851@pd7tw1no...

wisdom here. my system is very unstable. it either hard-locks (have to
re-set or power right down, including the power switch at the back of the
case), or it randomly reboots (the hard lock usually happens either in the
middle of an app, or if i go away and let the computer go to "sleep"..i.e.
shut the display off...rebooting usually happens during a game...no, no
particular game, ANY game). before i go any further, here are my specs:

sounds like typical symptoms of a badly overclocked system. That
doesnt mean it is overclocked, but if its not and you now deliberately
underclock it your woes might be over. In other words something may be
below par frequency response wise, and slowing it would likely get it
to work ok.

Try that and see, either way you then know a bit more, and you may get
a stable system.

I would also monitor the PSU rails, check theyre within spec.
If you have 2 sticks RAM run it with one stick, then the other - again
if ones off you'll pick it up that way.

Remove anything non essential and run, see if it crashes again. Again
youre diving and conquering. All you need run for this is mobo, psu,
cpu, ram, vid card, monitor, floppy. Remove everything else, HDD,
other cards, etc. Boot in DOS and see if it runs or crashes.

that's all i can remember having done right now. the only things i can
think it would be now a
1) power supply is bad
- maybe
2) mobo is bad
- maybe, probably the most likely.
3) case is bad
- case doesnt normally affect anything.
4) processor is bad
- least likely.

Theres never a guarantee youll fix it, but the more you can narrow
things down the better.


Regards, NT