Hi guys,
I've just built my second computer after a 3 year break, and this one is more a hollowing out of the old shell and putting in all new components.
Anyway, this new set up is pretty unstable. Freezes and restarts occur when I'm pushing the machine with a few programs running, often ones that use a lot of disk access.
My new PC spec is:
CPU: AMD OEM 2800 SEMPRON SOA
Mobo: Abit KD7-A SoA KT400A DDR
RAM: 2x 512M DDR PC3200 (PC400) Memory
HDs: 200GB Seagate 8M/7200 ATA100 (and old 40 gig as slave)
and I figured the problems would probably be coming from dodgy BIOS settings. So here's what I've got:
CPU Operating Speed 2800+(333)
x-CPU FSB Clock 166
x-Ratio (FSB:AGP
CI) 5:2:1
x-Multiplier Factor x12
DRAM Clock 166MHz
DRAM Timing Selectable by SPD
When I put the DRAM Clock on SPD, it shows up on boot-up as running at 400 which I've read is incompatible with my Sempron processor. That's why I set it to 166, so it shows up as 333, but that hasn't solved my problems.
Could these problems be Hard Drive related? Basically I put my new hard drive as the master drive (with all correct jumpers etc) and just slapped the old one with XP still on it as slave. Here's a weird quirky thing which may be totally unrelated: I've since deleted the windows directory from my slave HD but the strange thing is that I get the impression that it tries to boot from that drive from time to time and it just stops on a black screen saying that <windows>/"some important file" is missing ... i'm pretty sure that is because it's trying to boot from my old drive, why?
This is all getting stupidly confusing I'm sure. I hope I'm not wasting all your time, but I have looked around and tried for a couple of weeks to solve this on my own before harassing you guys.
Any suggestions or bolts from the blue warmly accepted.
Cheers,
James (UK) puke:
I've just built my second computer after a 3 year break, and this one is more a hollowing out of the old shell and putting in all new components.
Anyway, this new set up is pretty unstable. Freezes and restarts occur when I'm pushing the machine with a few programs running, often ones that use a lot of disk access.
My new PC spec is:
CPU: AMD OEM 2800 SEMPRON SOA
Mobo: Abit KD7-A SoA KT400A DDR
RAM: 2x 512M DDR PC3200 (PC400) Memory
HDs: 200GB Seagate 8M/7200 ATA100 (and old 40 gig as slave)
and I figured the problems would probably be coming from dodgy BIOS settings. So here's what I've got:
CPU Operating Speed 2800+(333)
x-CPU FSB Clock 166
x-Ratio (FSB:AGP
CI) 5:2:1x-Multiplier Factor x12
DRAM Clock 166MHz
DRAM Timing Selectable by SPD
When I put the DRAM Clock on SPD, it shows up on boot-up as running at 400 which I've read is incompatible with my Sempron processor. That's why I set it to 166, so it shows up as 333, but that hasn't solved my problems.
Could these problems be Hard Drive related? Basically I put my new hard drive as the master drive (with all correct jumpers etc) and just slapped the old one with XP still on it as slave. Here's a weird quirky thing which may be totally unrelated: I've since deleted the windows directory from my slave HD but the strange thing is that I get the impression that it tries to boot from that drive from time to time and it just stops on a black screen saying that <windows>/"some important file" is missing ... i'm pretty sure that is because it's trying to boot from my old drive, why?
This is all getting stupidly confusing I'm sure. I hope I'm not wasting all your time, but I have looked around and tried for a couple of weeks to solve this on my own before harassing you guys.
Any suggestions or bolts from the blue warmly accepted.
Cheers,
James (UK) puke:
