Bend your mind over these problems

[GMAGDNA]

Win XP Pro
ASUS A7V333 mobo
512 RAM
AMD Athlon XP 1700+


A few weeks I began having major BSOD's for IRQL_ mostly but there were some others and they usually originated in win32k.sys. It was happening two and three times a day. I thought it was perhaps an overheating PC or a video driver or a power supply problem. So I shut the machine down and just for grins started reseating everything. I even pulled the heatsink and fan and reseated them. So I plug it all back together and hit the power button and I have no video. I check the monitor and it's good. I swap the video card, one AGP for another, but no joy. So I go and buy a PCI video card but still no joy. So I swap the mobo and reconnect everything and it all works. That was about two weeks ago.

Today I am online building a web page and the screen freezes. So I reboot. I think maybe the processor is overheating so I open the ASUS utility and it is about 57 degrees C. Not exactly scorching for the processor. So I go back to work and before too long I get a BSOD for the IRQL_. So I hit the reset switch and reboot but no video. I hit the reset again and still no video. I shut down and leave the PC off for a few minutes and reboot and it boots. After a little while of being back online the system shuts down. I reset with no video.

Anyway, to make a long story short the system intermittently has no video on reboot but after a bit of rebooting it comes up. Twice in the last three hours the system has shutdown/ reset spontaneously.

It sounds like a power supply given all the problems but is it possible it is the processor? It is not too old, has never been OC'ed and has never gotten exceptionally hot, as far as I know.

Any suggestions? I suppose swapping the power supply woul dbe the easiest check but as I said it has taken two weeks for the system to start acting this way again after the mobo swap. It originally ran for about a week after the last hardware/ software install before having fits. There was no hardware/ software install immediately preceeding the problems this time.

Thanks in advance, I gotta before the system resets. . . : )

I forgot to mention, after some of the reboots the disk check usually finds problems in the way of files with the first allocation unit not valid and they are usually in the Temp Internet directory (mostly web pages). I am usually surfing when the problems occur but I don't think the cause is in the connection or hardware because of the video problems I mentioned and it has happened offline.