Lockup, Freeze and Non Boot

[Zotzmein]

ABIT BX6 Rev. 2 Motherboard
Slot 1 Celeron 400 mhz (never overclocked)
Creative Banshee Video Card
64 Megs ram

I've stripped this system down to the bare minimum in an attempt to diagnose my problem. Physically removed CD-RW, DVD, sound card, Generic 128 meg ram chip, LS-120 drive, uninstalled all associated drivers and files.

Three recurring problems:
1. Screen Freeze, system locks up. Locks up during reboot.
2. Screen goes blank system locks up. Locks up during reboot.
3. System shuts down and then attempts to reboot, locks up.

It doesn’t matter if my attempts to reboot are warm or cold. Sometimes it will run for a couple of hours, sometimes it will occur on the initial boot up of the day.

My case’s cover is removed I have two internal case fans and a have duty fan on the Celeron. There is no card on PCI side of the AGP Banshee; I purposely left this slot empty to provide more room for ventilation. The 64 Meg chip is a “high quality” name brand and I feel confident that it’s working well.

Since I don’t have either a spare video card or CPU, I’ve run out of options. Is there a program available that could help diagnose this hardware dilemma?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Zotz Mein


[This message has been edited by Zotzmein (edited 10-30-1999).]

[scotter]

Sounds like a heat problem bad conection some where, unplug every thing blow it all off with compressed air and take the cpu out clean the heat sink and all the conections also look realy good at the mobo any corosion any where ? and put it back in start with just the basic's swap memery chips and check all your cables, all it takes is one conection to be a little lose when it gets hot it goes bad and you get a dead system till it cools off and makes contact again watch for what your system is doing when it dies ? hard drive running ? sounds playing ? running a lot of app's ? might not seam like it's the same thing but can still be the same kind of things that make it go boom /forum/smile.gif
good luck /forum/smile.gif

[Zotzmein]

I complete disassembled the system.

Inspected closely motherboard, CPU, fans, video card and memory chip for corrosion or some other insidious substances, negative.

Inspected contact edges of memory chip, video card and slot 1 Celeron, everything appears in near perfect condition.

Cleaned motherboard, CPU, video card, memory chip and fans (including power supply). Tested all fans to insure that they where running properly.

Reassembled base unit. Carefully installed CPU, video card and memory chip; made sure each slid easily into slot and where properly seated.

Ran system for a dozen hours, experienced three total crashes.

1. Locked up but rebooted. I believe this to be a combination of low windows resources, while surfing online for a couple of hours with IE 5.0 (the hemophiliac of browsers)
2. I experienced two of the lockups and non-reboots mentioned in my initial post. One occurred after being powered up for about thirty minutes the other crashed and locked during boot up after being off for about an hour.

Comment:

I’ve experienced on several occasions; installed and working PCI cards would suddenly not be recognized.

I could power down the system, count to ten, then power up and everything would be fine.

I currently have no PCI cards installed and the problem continues to occur in absence of physical cards in any of the PCI slot.

Questions:

If there was something wrong BIOS/CMOS or on the MOB with the PCI system, what would be the signs and could it manifest problems similar to mine?




[This message has been edited by Zotzmein (edited 10-31-1999).]

[MBrannon]

I had this same problem, on a different motherboard and setup though, but almost the same problem. Anyway, in the end, it seemed to be a bad IDE cable.

[deep_sky]

where does the system freeze up? do you ever get to the point where you hear the hard drive spin up to speed? if, not then your bios could be bad. have you tried setting the cmos jumper to clear and back to normal, and then re-entering the correct settings (if you can get into your bios)..i was having a different problem with my bios and when cleared it and set the correct settings, it seemed to behave better..try seeing if resetting the bios will help....


oh yeah..i hate to sound dumb, but make sure you really seat everything down. sometimes thigs seem like they are seated properly,but aren't. i really had to expend some force to reseat my cpu. i have heard of people who had to use a plastic hammer to get their memory seated.....but if everything is truly seated well, then try the bios thing /forum/wink.gif



[This message has been edited by deep_sky (edited 10-31-1999).]

[Zotzmein]

I failed to mention on a few occasions when the system went dead (blank screen - wouldn't reboot) it was followed with a long {{{beeeeeppp}}}.

Regards

Zotz Mein

[This message has been edited by Zotzmein (edited 10-31-1999).]

[deep_sky]

now that could be a hard-drive problem...when i was first installing windows, and the drive said it was formatted and it wasn't, i got this really long endless beep because windows had no drive to install to....hmmmm....

[MBrannon]

Again, I had that same problem with the blank screen, check your IDE cables

[scotter]

also check the power plugin's I know on mine the wires will pop back in the holders and somtimes wont make realy good contact when you plug them togather have to go around and push the wires back in the holders one by one to make sure there all sitted right mainly with the splitters for extra fans and such just another thought /forum/smile.gif

[Zotzmein]

Replaced the IDE cable with cable from working system. Still experiencing lockups with screen visible and lockups with blank screen

note: my system won’t reset on lockup with blank screen, it has to be totally turned off before rebooting.

I rechecked all power connections (especially those with splits coming off the fans) and confirmed all contacts; CPU, memory and AGP video card, seated well.

Will jump the CMOS and reset BIOS to factory settings in the morning.

I appreciate everyone’s input to date. Thanks for helping me work towards resolving my dilemma, fortunately I have more than one computer or I might be going crazy.

No, this ones a socket seven system, so I can’t borrow the CPU to test my other system.

I do have another hard drive that I will install into the system if the BIOS reset doesn’t workout.

I don’t believe the video card is bad, I’m leaning toward the CPU and or bad motherboard.

I have a system currently sitting underneath my desk that has a bad CPU (victim of an ambitious overclocker) and it experienced problems toward the end similar to this one, save for the occasional failure to recognize slotted PCI cards.

The logic behind the motherboard angle is a combination of guilt and paranoia. In the past I’ve used ASUS boards, this is my first ABIT. I know they make quality MOB, I guess I’m feeling a little ashamed for failing to remain loyal. Secondly this is my first jumperless board, I’m suspicious of anything "soft" oriented.

For me life is about knowledge, so I live and learn.

Regards

Zotz Mein

[scotter]

if it was the battery i should only happen on boot up and then you should only be gettin check som errors as your bios will have lost it's settings ( is your bios set to be catched ? ) if not that could be it . make sure in your bioes it is set to shadowed. if that aint it then it's one of 3 things bab memery a bad mobo or a bad cpu
take your memery down to the best computer shop around and have it checked they might beable to check your cpu also as for the mobo
?replace every thing on it or replace the board ?

[Zotzmein]

I’ll pull the memory and CPU and see if I can’t find someone to test them tomorrow. You won’t find a lot of what I would call “quality” computer shops in the Tulsa area.

Most of them seem to be fly by night cowboys selling substandard off brand garbage. If they are halfway knowledgeable, they’re arrogant sphincters that think everyone besides them, are sub moronic dolts.

Hopefully I can find one that has the right equipment and is halfway trustworthy.

Regards,

Zotz Mein

[Zotzmein]

I Jumped the CMOS and let it drain, resetting the BIOS to factory specifications. Booted the computer and entered into the BIOS menu, made the necessary adjustments for my CPU and hard drive

Completed boot up sequence into Windows 98, everything ran stable for about and hour. Powered down the system, ran an errand, thirty minutes later attempted to cold boot. System screen remained blank, both hard disk and floppy lights came on and remained on, system would not ctrl/alt/del, reset switch or power down switch. I had to totally shut down the computer from the rear switch.

Note: About two months ago, while computing, my system crashed, it went into reboot and gave me a CMOS Checksum error. I reset the BIOS with the correct information and never experienced the problem again.

I know the checksum error usually occurs when the lithium battery on the board is going bad but I’ve always thought it more nuisance than anything because you have to reset everything when you boot.

Could the above-discussed symptoms be associated with a fault battery?

I’ve only experienced this problem once and it postdates some of the crashes and failure to recognize installed PCI cards.

Regards,

Zotz Mein


[This message has been edited by Zotzmein (edited 11-01-1999).]

[This message has been edited by Zotzmein (edited 11-01-1999).]

[Zotzmein]

Okay ladies and gentlemen, I’ve tested the memory and it checks okay.

That brings me down to the CPU and or motherboard unless anyone else, after reviewing this post/series of threads, has any other suggestions as to what the culprit maybe.

The system has now gone completely DOA.

Regards to All,

Zotz Mein

[MBrannon]

Check to see if all the IDE jumpers are set to proper master/slave config.. one time i had accidently set the CD-ROM to cable select and got the same problem.

[Susan]

If you have access to an extra one, swap out your power supply.

[Zotzmein]

Tore system done to the bone, replaced CPU*, she is now twenty-four hours into her test run and working flawlessly.

The curious thing is that the Celeron tests out okay. Perhaps the fact that I tore everything down, even removing the motherboard from the case and meticulously reassembled the system fixed whatever problem occurred. I’m happy with the slight increase in CPU performance, so alls well that ends well.

I don’t mean any offense to those women who take exception to men who tend to name their toys/cars after women or refer to them in a female fashion. In case you’re wondering her name is Digee (rhymes with twiggy). /forum/smile.gif

Regards to All,

Zotz Mein

*Replaced Slot 1 Celeron with Pentium II 450 Mhz.

[pickel]

Zotz Mein: You really had me going there for a while!!!! /forum/biggrin.gif

the pickel