Okay guys, for my epic tale of woe, I present the following.
I've built eight or so computers for my family over the years. I'm typing on one right now. But for some reason the gaming rig I put together for my sister about two years ago never has seemed to work right. She beleives It's demonic posession. I'm writing to solicit any fresh insight on the situation.
I'll begin at the beginning, hopefully getting the full scope of the situation will help any would-be advisors.
Started out simple enough, just a nice middle-range game rig. Original MB was an MSI K8N-Neo2 socket 939 with an AMD athalon 3500. Graphics were handled by a Nvidia G-Force 6800gt (remember this was about two years ago, not a bad card for the time.) in 8X agp. Storage is A WD 74 gig 10,000 rpm spindle SATA HD.
Partially, I do admit it's my fault. Got a bad motherboard, but since there wasn't the scratch for a new one right off the bat, I wracked my brains trying to trouble shoot away every other conceivable problem. Replaced the video card, had the memory tested, (passed just fine) flashed the Bios to latest version, disabled the onboard sound and installed soundblaster PCI card. Nope. System was still volatile and extremely unstable. Particularly when handling anything multimedia related. I was busy with work, and my sister gave up on her computer for almost a year, until she wanted to try World of Warcraft, and she drug the beast back out into the sunlight.
After finally bellying up to the bar, I replaced the motherboard. Swapping the MSI out for a FoxConn NF4SK8AA-8KRS. This necessitated an upgrade to a PCI-E Video Card, for which I selected a Diamond Radeon X1550 256 meg card. Other components remained the same. After crossing fingers and saying a prayer, computer POSTed without issue. Windows XP professional went on smooth as silk, and I sighed a breath of releif. UNTIL I tried to load WoW for her. Install went just fine, opening intro movies played just fine, but when it goes to the intial screen to accept the EULA. The computer will either lock up hard, or reboot. Yeah.. Great. A couple of times, windows wanted to send in an error report, and asking for details revealed the problem as a stop error. Driver confict, whoopie. Well, after updating the sound, video, and N-force 4 drivers, I'm beginning to wonder if the bad luck has followed me to the new board. When I tried to install the old Sound Blaster 24 bit card from the old machine, something funny happened. When I installed it into the first PCI slot, the computer suddenly wouldn't POST. When removed, it started up again no problem. When I tried the second or third PCI slot. The computer simply dosen't recognize it's there.
This board was ordered from NewEgg.com, so I've no worries about being able to return it. Just, before I do, I was looking for a second opinion or a concensus from other tech-heads. Is this a bad board, or am I missing something?
Any constructive comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I've built eight or so computers for my family over the years. I'm typing on one right now. But for some reason the gaming rig I put together for my sister about two years ago never has seemed to work right. She beleives It's demonic posession. I'm writing to solicit any fresh insight on the situation.
I'll begin at the beginning, hopefully getting the full scope of the situation will help any would-be advisors.
Started out simple enough, just a nice middle-range game rig. Original MB was an MSI K8N-Neo2 socket 939 with an AMD athalon 3500. Graphics were handled by a Nvidia G-Force 6800gt (remember this was about two years ago, not a bad card for the time.) in 8X agp. Storage is A WD 74 gig 10,000 rpm spindle SATA HD.
Partially, I do admit it's my fault. Got a bad motherboard, but since there wasn't the scratch for a new one right off the bat, I wracked my brains trying to trouble shoot away every other conceivable problem. Replaced the video card, had the memory tested, (passed just fine) flashed the Bios to latest version, disabled the onboard sound and installed soundblaster PCI card. Nope. System was still volatile and extremely unstable. Particularly when handling anything multimedia related. I was busy with work, and my sister gave up on her computer for almost a year, until she wanted to try World of Warcraft, and she drug the beast back out into the sunlight.
After finally bellying up to the bar, I replaced the motherboard. Swapping the MSI out for a FoxConn NF4SK8AA-8KRS. This necessitated an upgrade to a PCI-E Video Card, for which I selected a Diamond Radeon X1550 256 meg card. Other components remained the same. After crossing fingers and saying a prayer, computer POSTed without issue. Windows XP professional went on smooth as silk, and I sighed a breath of releif. UNTIL I tried to load WoW for her. Install went just fine, opening intro movies played just fine, but when it goes to the intial screen to accept the EULA. The computer will either lock up hard, or reboot. Yeah.. Great. A couple of times, windows wanted to send in an error report, and asking for details revealed the problem as a stop error. Driver confict, whoopie. Well, after updating the sound, video, and N-force 4 drivers, I'm beginning to wonder if the bad luck has followed me to the new board. When I tried to install the old Sound Blaster 24 bit card from the old machine, something funny happened. When I installed it into the first PCI slot, the computer suddenly wouldn't POST. When removed, it started up again no problem. When I tried the second or third PCI slot. The computer simply dosen't recognize it's there.
This board was ordered from NewEgg.com, so I've no worries about being able to return it. Just, before I do, I was looking for a second opinion or a concensus from other tech-heads. Is this a bad board, or am I missing something?
Any constructive comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
