Need help with diagnosis: Bad memory or bad motherboard

[AlexK]

Recently I had a problem with Win2K locking up and then afterwards when I went into BIOS it even locked up in there. I was browsing BIOS menus one second and the next it was frozen. I am thinking the new replacement Mobo is also bad, but my friend mentioned possibly bad memory since he says BIOS loads a bit of itself into system memory. I believe that once I determine what could have caused a lock up at a BIOS level will also help me cure system problems over all. Thanks in adavance for any input as I am toatly stuck on this and I am so p-off that I am just about ready to shoot up my replacemnt mobo and send it back to Abit as a present.

Here is a quick background over view of my problems:
A few weeks ago I started experiencing hand ups in Win2K and Win98. Sometimes Win98 would crash upon load up. So I swapped out all the components with old spares, including a new 300 power supply, except for memory everythign was repalced and it was still having problems. So I figured it was a mobo and had it replaced under warranty. Now when I got the mobo back I reformated the drives and did a clean install of everything. And I am still getting occasional lock ups but not as often as before. Sometimes the File Explorer will crash right after I load it, some times it will work fine. What's also bugging me is that when I power on the system, all the fans kick in, the PSU works but the boot up will not happend. The BIOS does not start up, but the HDD & Reset LED how ever light up and remains lit. I have to physicaly disco and reconnect the power cord and then on a second attempt the system will start to boot. I can't figure out if the replacement mobo is bad or if my new memory (5 weeks old) is bad.

Some system specs for you:
AMD 1Ghz T-bird
Abit KT7 board
Kingston PC133 256mb DIMM
SB Live! 5.1
ATI Radeon 64mb VIVO
Western Digital 30Gig
Maxtor 40Gig
HP8100 CDRW
Creative 12x DVD

[mc2phat]

The KT7 powering on but sending no video was a known bug, and happens from time to time on my KT7A. Sometimes I have to clear the CMOS to get it started again. Your best option is to borrow some RAM, swap it out,a nd see what happens. glc talked me into the Epox 8KTA-3 for KT133A mobos, I have since stopped using the Abits.
also check your BIOS revision on your board, see if there are any later ones available on ABit's site.

HTH

[highrisemech]

just to add a little something. When you did a clean install did you run fdisk?

[AlexK]

I did an f-disk and repartiotioned both drives, then installed everything.