PC Problem - Put a smile back on the child!

[Hiks]

Hey,

I built a PC for a relative for christmas and its being a bit of a humbug.

First off the spec...

Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU

Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 (Socket 775) PCI-Express/AGP DDR2 Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Duo E2180 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.00GHz (800FSB)

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775)

Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache

OcUK ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/DVI (PCI-Express)

Basically ive had it back twice, First time was after 1 day of use he complained that it was blue screening after half an hour on a game, did this 4 times although the day before he was on it all day and it was fine.

I thought the hard drive was noisey so thought it was on its way out and replaced that for a new one, reformatted and sent it back.

Exact same thing, Absolutely fine for 2 days under heavy play, 3rd day blue screening after half an hour of a game.

what am i missing here? or what should i be looking to trouble shoot?

just the fine for 2 days and then "pop" is kinda blowing me off a bit, Any help appreciated.

 

[Rastalovich]

It`s a pretty ambiguous problem there m8.

What OS u got installed on there - and any idea what the bsod is saying ?

 

[Hiks]

sorry i should of added that, Its XP Pro.

No idea what its saying yet, Its being dropped off today/tomorrow so until then i'm not sure.

I'm edging towards the board as i dont like asrock and i dont like boards that do both DDR and DDR2 or PCIE and AGP, but it was the only one that fit in the budget.

Has anyone got any experience of this board and it doing the same thing? this guy here seems to have the exact same problem running an x800 in the AGP slot so that kinda narrows it down.

 

[realitybytes]

Kind of shooting in the dark, post the error message then will be able to narrow it down hopefully.

Running fine and then going off after heavy stress could be heat or power related (just a stab in the dark though) list can go on as I am sure you are aware.

Asrock not my board of choice although I have built systems with them for others never had any issues with them but then they were only used for popcap games and homework! I wouldnt immidiately think it is the board causing the problem could easily be a driver issue or any number of things.

 

[barginbin]

As above its a shot in the dark but i would guess the fault is in the PSU or the computer is over heating. Thats what i would check first.

 

[Pat123]

ide make sure ALL the latest drivers are installed, for every chipset and sound drivers etc. Then move onto checking each component.

 

[SBB]

Try installing omega drivers, ATI stock drivers were pretty bad with the X1950 for me.

www.omegadrivers.net

 

[Luigi]

theres a site called dna drivers i think that does its own ati drivers, suppost to be good n stable..

 

[Ham]

Ive used the board, and had a few stability issues with it until i updated the bios.

Did some odd things on POST after restarts too but the flash fixed that too.

For the price its pretty good for stock users tbh.

 

[cybermaniac]

as usual get the BSOD error - nothing else you can do for now tbh.

also.

you've done the usual ram test, HDD full scan test (seagate does a good job of that regardless on the HDD), updated the game to latest patch, checked event manager for the BSOD etc etc etc.

you might be getting static after a few days so check your mounting on the mobo, run a benchmark to stress the CPU and RAM (make sure that the system is NOT set to restart on system failure (aka BSOD)).

anything else gimme a shout on msn - modem7@hotmail.com

 

[Toxcity]

Ive used the board, and had a few stability issues with it until i updated the bios.

Did some odd things on POST after restarts too but the flash fixed that too.

For the price its pretty good for stock users tbh.

Im with Ham, I have the very same board.. and I had to update the bios as well just to get it stable.

 

[Hiks]

Cheers for the help so far, i'm gonna be picking it up tomorrow so i now have a few things to try with what people have suggested so thats all i wanted.

Will let you know how it goes, i'll run some tests and then update the bios and see where we are up to, will then try different drivers and what not, its just making it hard with it being a bit random it seems fine to me goes back and within a day or two its playing up.

i rerember those screens ham, very weird indeed.

cybermaniac thanks for the offer i'll see how it goes and add you if i need too.

 

[jiffz]

I built a 939 system for a mate and he got BSOD's all the time. Checked EVERYTHING, stress tested everything, diff PSU etc. Turns out the BIOS needed updating and it fixed everything, so I'd advise a BIOS flash 1st as well