Possible bad hard drive??

[vegasgmc]

Ive been having a problem for a while and its driving me up the wall. I have a second computer built with spare parts from various upgrades of my main system. It runs perfectly except for anything multimedia. Whenever I play a game or try to run a benchmark, 3dMark 03, it will crash back to the desktop. The games play perfectly fine and all of a sudden Im at the desktop. No errors at all, nothing in event viewer. Ive changed motherboards, memory, video card and disabled optical drives. Ive run diagnostics on the hard drive and it checks out.

Specs
XP1700+
Elite nForce 2 mobo
512mb PC2100
Radeon 8500 and 9500
SB Live Digital card
WD 20gig hard drive-6 years old with lots of use.
DVD, CDRW, DVDRW

 

[ManyVoicesOfMe]

You didn't mention your operating system.....what ya got?

 

[vegasgmc]

Win 2000 Pro. I installed XP Pro on another partition and got the same results. Also dug up an FX 5200 and everything worked fine. Tried my 9800 and no go. So it looks like I have an nforce board that wont work right with any Radeon card. I borrowed a hard drive from a friend. If that doesnt work I guess its the board. Ive heard of nForce boards no working with 9600's but Ive never had a hick up from the one in my main system.

 

[Tarkus]

Have you tried different video drivers? oh, just reread the thread. I've heard of people with problems with ATI and nForce. dunno if there was a solution to go with that trivia, but you may try different nVidia MB drivers too. 5.10 are the latest release, or 6.14beta but you'll want to stay with the 5.10 network drivers. How about the latest BIOS flash?

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Have you considered the PowerSupplyUnit?
That may be too weak. Probably needs around 300w or better to work properly.

 

[vegasgmc]

Finally figured it out. Posted it a few days ago but it hasnt turned up. It turned out to be a compatability issue with the ECS board, Corsair memory and Radeon cards. I replaced the Corsair memory with Kingston and Spectek and everything was fine with the Radeon cards. The FX card works with any memory.