Unstable Software

[FissionChips]

Hey team!

I need some input in regards to two computer I have just bilt.
here are some specs.

Both are upgrade with the following:

Ecs K7S5A MoBo Ver.3
AMD XP 1700 Cpu (not clocked)
40 gig Barracuda 7200 Drive
Radeon 7200 32 mb ddr graphic card
194 Mb pc100 Ram

Here are some notes: I chose this modo because these are two upgrades and the owners had 64 mb of ram in there old computers. The K7S5A has both pc100 AND 184 Pin ram slots. I added a further 128 mb to bring up the 194mb. Both the ram chips in the computer are pc100 and compatible with each other.

Problem:

One computer flys! no problems at all and is operating on the Windows XP OS (upgraded from windows 98 SE)

The other computer, I can not get a clean load of windows 98SE without a couple of attempts failing. Then once the platform is loaded is seems to work fine until you try and load other windows based programs onto it...ie office etc

Case 1. you can open and create a document and print it. Then if you close the application and then reopen it you are unable to open the same document and the printer drops out. the computer claims it cannot find .DDL extensions. Reinstalling does not help...you can not ope a document more that once!

Case 2. It drops out system files like third period french! it seems you can use an appication once and that it. After that the computer claims to be missing this and that......WTF?

Case 3. this second computer even with a clean install of 98 SE will not upgrade to XP.

What I have done:

Reformatted C: 3 times and tried a clean install of the OS each time, had problems, but managed get a clean install once. Still no go.

I have tried using exactly the same OS CDs as with the other computer, no go.

I have switched out the C: to a spare I had in the workshop, reformatted it and attempted the install, still it failed with the same problems

I have to be honest, I have never come across this problem before, I can not see how it could be software....maybe something to do with the MoBo or cpu?? at this stage I do no have a clue.

Rember these computer are identical to each other and I have checked that both Bios and jumpers and setting are the same. The second computer just wont run software.

Any help would be awsome team as I have no clue at this stage what is wrong with the second pc........help!!

FC

[Hearie]

If both machines are identical and BIOS and Jumper settings the same I would have to say faulty hardware. Now to find the culprit! If they are identical will be easy but time consuming, just swap parts starting with the MO-BO. G'Luck

Bryan

[omega31]

You may want to test the memory in the troublesome system.
http://www.memtest86.com/

[Koen]

Sounds EXACTLY like the troubles I had a while ago...as Omega says : memtest !

[Imperion1]

Swap the memory from both systems and see what happens.
Also, try the 128mb by itself. It does sound like one of the sticks of ram is bad.