Recently I have rebuilt my pc, following a failed mobo. Last night I started reinstalling windows. Everything was going fine except a couple of nasty mid-install restarts which meant I had to install windows again.

I finally got windows installed and everything seemed to be fine. All was working, I installed my norton anti virus, downloaded the updates and installed my broadband software.

then after the necessary norton restarts I started copying some files onto my pc from my external hdd. And it crashed! I know the external hdd works properly as I use ut regularly with my laptop and there are no probs and all the files on it are fine.

When the pc restarted it crashed a couple of times when it reached the "windows is starting" screen.

After a couple of tries I got windows started and was presented with 2 error messages as follows

1 "windows UI encountered a prob and needed to close" send error report, blah blah

2 "windows has recovered from a serious error"

both wanting me to send the error report to microsoft.

This has happened every time I start the pc within about 10minutes of using the pc.

Any help, much appreciated


Andrew

Hi Andrew, welcome to SAF

Sounds like a random memory or videocard problem to me

After reinstalling Windows, have you also loaded the proper motherboard chipset/video drivers and utilities before installing anything else ?

As I said above, try to swap your memory sticks, and eventually starting with one of them at a time if you have more than one.

Post back with results and PC specs.

Chris

Hi Chirs,

Firstly thanks for your quick response. The original specs of my pc were

CPU Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz (Northwood)
Motherboard ECS SF2
Memory 1GB DDR RAM - PC2700
Hard Drive 120GB Maxtor HDD
CD Drive Lite-On XJ-HD166 16x(48x) DVD-ROM
Lite-On LTR-52327S 52x CD-RW
MC Reader Flash Memory Card Drive (7 in 1)
Video Card nVidia GeForce FX 5200 (128MB)
Sound Card Realtek AC'97 audio
Speakers Advent SP-120N
Modem Conexant PCI HSPi V.92 (CX11252-11)
Network Card Realtek 8139 / 810X (Onboard)
Case Jupiter
Keyboard Advent PS/2 keyboard
Mouse Advent PS/2 mouse

It was an advent 3118 pc from pc world, which i had added another 512mb stick of RAM to.

It was a bit of a mare and the mobo died and fried my hdd. It actually fried 2 hdd's one of which was brand new and turned out to be the initiation of my probs. I thought the PSU may have been suspect so replaced it too, on a budget though, as I am still at uni studying Architecture.

Anyhow I have replaced the PSU with thisPSU

I replaced the mobo with thisMOBO

and added another 1Gb stick of PC2700 ram to the available slot, on account my lack of readies to replace my rather dated graphics card.

I also got this hdd

its the 160gb 7200rpm one, to replace my now horrible lack of disc space.

I also puchased a new case and a fan as my current mobo was a micro atx and the case wouldnt support a normal sized mobo obviously!

So thanks for your initial thoughts and no I havent installed the video card drivers yet, or the mobo chipset (whats this? on the cd that comes with the mobo? should really read instructions! )

Will try this and then if no joy then I will try removing the new stick of RAM to begin with.

Cheers

Andrew

Check also the mobo jumpers, double check the cpu core voltage settings ones. Voltage levels may be found on BIOS settings and must be within the processor tolerances.

Chris

Hi chris,

I actually had a look at the voltages in the bios already, but wasnt to sure what the allowable voltages were. Any ideas or where to find out?

Also can u tell me a bit more about the mobo chipset?

Cheers

Andrew

You definitely have a hardware problem. If you note, you already had to reboot twice just while installing Windows, so that was an indication that your problems were already surfacing even before the OS was installed.

I agree with Ironbender that the most likely suspect at this point is bad RAM. The only way to test this out is to replace it with a new stick of DDR and see if the problems stop. Don't be shy about borrowing one from a friend for a few minutes. If no joy, we can take it from there.

Do not tell me that you rebuilt your comp without checking the processor/mobo/chipset specs
P4 works from 1.40 to 1.75v depending on specific model, please take a
look at http://support.intel.com/support/processor...b/cs-007991.htm

Your must have a motherboard chipset drivers and utilities provided with. It's important to carefully read your mobo manual and install the software. You can download it (if you do not have the disk) from http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/Downloads/Pro...nuID=41&LanID=0

Warn that, if your mobo jumpers are not properly set, you may fry your processor or other peripherals.

Chris

In addition to Chris' comment above, make sure that the power supply you are using is not for atx platforms (AMD) but intended for Pentium platforms.

Right, everything is working grand! It was a faulty RAm stick by the look of things. Still dont quite understand some of Chris's lingo, but hey, everything is working this far, and unless I come back sayinge everything has exploded then I am happy!

Cheers for your help chaps


Like that smiley!

Hey Andrew,
I hope you did not messed with vcore/cpu voltages, as you may have some troubles in the future.
I am glad if your system is running, and you are always welcome here.

Chris

Hey Chris,

Nah I didnt really touch my CPU voltages in the BIOS (No overclocking!) Its all good. Thanks for your help and sorry for not understanding some of your terminology.

Kind Regards

Andrew