Severe lockups....

[ATW]

Over the past couple of days, I've gotten at least 15 lockups...most being while playing games, others just at random while on the net or doing something within XP. It seems to not want to boot up, but after a few restarts it finally does it, but this morning after refusing to do so, and then a reset, it went directly to the bios and told me the hangup was due to an incorrect cpu setting. It was at 1800mhz...as it's been since day 1. I exited the bios, got it booted, and back to the same stuff....lockups within the first 2-5 minutes of gameplay or just at random. I tried system restore, which it refused to do in all 5 attempts. Is a (gulp) reformat the only solution?

[scott_d]

What kind of temps are you getting? Check in your Bios right after a lock up and see.
Also, what kind of PSU do you have and how old is it?

[ATW]

Antec 400w PSU, 6 months old. Temps according to Asus Probe are 120F CPU and 91 Mobo.

[Markoman01027]

120*F is kinda high. Perhaps that is why you are receiving the lock ups. How is your cooling setup?

The first thing you want to do, is clean out all of your Case Fans, and especially the heatsink. Applying a fresh paste of thermal grease will help out.

You should have 1 exhaust fan and 1 fan in the front, plus a good CPU fan and a good Heat sink.

[ATW]

Actually that is a low temperature. I have the 2 standard 80mm Antec fans and 2 Thermaltake 52cfm 80mm's, and TT Volcano 9 CPU fan running at 5500rpm. I've had lockups while gaming in the past, maybe only 3 or 4 times since building this system 6 months ago....but the last couple days has been ridiculous.

[Cricket]

Do you have spare RAM you can swap in to test with?

What kind of programs do you have running in background?

Have you checked for spyware, viruses and trojans?

Have you cleaned out the Windows Temp folder in Local Settings?

Go to the hard drive manufacturer's website and download the hard drive diagnostic utility and test your hard drive.

:) Cricket

[gneo]

ATW,

About 2 months ago i was in the same situation with unexplained lockups, nothing in the event viewer logs or cooling problems. After extensive testing, i found that my RAM has gone "rogue" and only after replacing both sticks was my system stable once again. I suggest that you have your RAM tested to see if it is the problem. Good luck mate.

Gneo