Weird problem..........computer freezes

[shady]

Heh.......when computer freezes it is not "weird", but in my friends case it is weird. When ever he tries to install something or even use a computer, Windows freezes and nothing works, not even On/Off button......my guess it is the video card causing conflicts.....here is his computer hardware setup;

CPU - Slot 1 Pentium 2 MMX
MB - ASUS P2B
RAM - 64MB PC100
Video Card - SiS 6326 8MB AGP
and other hardware

Now I would update his BIOS but I don't know which flash util. to use for it, there are two of them, AFLASH for Plug-and-Play motherboards and FLASH for non plug and play motherboards, what kind of MB is P2B?......I don;t want to mess up his comp. cus it is gonna be a lot of headache and I know once BIOS is messed up, there is nothing you can do expet Flash ROM Writer or sending the MB back....now I know it is not RAM because I have tested my Mushkin there and it does the same thing..now what can I do to do this? Maybe you guys/gals can point me to the website that has update/bug fixes for ASUS P2B and Intel 440BX Chipset......thnx

[Spenser]

Ok Ill have a Idea.

Haved you tried reinstalling windows? I know a way to do it so you wont have to touch his hdd.

get another spare Hdd and Put it in his sys and temporaly take out his hdd, put in the spare hdd format it and install windows if everything works out fine and there no lockups you will have to format and reinstall on the other drive cause its most likley the installed windows now also check his cooling make sure he has good CPU cooling and air circulation. if your still having problems after that then i dunno.. Im trying to be as much help as i can.

-spenser



[This message has been edited by Spenser (edited 01-20-2001).]

[shady]

Yeah I have reinstalled windows........it went through it without a hitch...u see when the comp. starts up it acts all normal, when I double click on my computer it is normal....but when I try to perform an sime-advanced task like install something....a video driver for example.....it buggs out..and freezes...when I run setup.exe it gets to the point where I have to press "Next" and then bam..nothing

[Biff]

What version of windows?
Do you have a sound card?
Any other devices?
Have you gone into device mangler and looked for conflicts?
Look in the mb manual to see what slots are shared with what, if you dont have one look at mftrs web site.

[shady]

Ok Biff, thanx, I will start on this right now......I am planing to do everything u said...Windows98SE it is running....same pproblem with Windows98 and it wasn't always like that....only for 3 weeks already...I will nail down the problem....I have a lot of options....I'll post if I am successfull or not......thnx again

[shady]

I have fixed the problem!!!!!!!! However all advice that was given did not help ;( not like I am complaining or anything, I appreciate your guys help very much..

[driverdude]

......OK I'll bite
How did you fix it?

[wedor]

Well you could at least share the fix so it could maybe help someone in the future.

[DiDoH]

It could be the video card driver, I fixed a computer a week ago, the problem with it was that everytime windows was just about to finish its startup process the monitor would switch off automatically.

But if i left the monitor turned off until windows finished starting up everything would be ok.

I soone found out that the problem was with the video card drivers wich came on a cd they were damaged so i had to get new ones on the net and then it worked.

[shady]

yeah it was video card....... here what happened;

I took out nasty SiS6326 generic vid. card and put in my shiny GeForce2 GTS and everything woked without a hitch......I ran a torture test on the machine for couple of hours and it never froze!!! And here comes the funny part, when I put the old vid. card in it worked too!!!! I know what did the trick....while I have GeForce in there I have installed DirectX 7.0a.......so it might have fixed the problem.....i dunno

[socalgal]

Moved to Tech Support.