This is my first post. I've been lurking for a few weeks because posting on forums can be lost-time on this box. As explained below, but first my specs. On a side note however, I find its extremly respectable that these forums have RSS. Great work!! I put this in the General Hardware category cos I dont really know where else it should fit as the area of problem is not yet defined. --- --- --- --- --- --- Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional // OS Service Pack Service Pack 3 Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 (IE 6.0 SP1) DirectX: 4.09.00.0900 (DirectX 9.0) Motherboard: CPU Type: Intel Celeron 4A, 2400 MHz (24 x 100) Motherboard Name: PCChips M925 (2 PCI, 1 AGP, 1 CNR, 2 SDR DIMM, 2 DDR DIMM, Audio, Video) Motherboard Chipset: VIA VT8751 Apollo P4M266 System Memory: 512 MB (PC133 SDRAM) BIOS Type: AMI (01/13/03) Display: Video Adapter: RADEON 9200 SERIES (128 MB) Monitor: NEC MultiSync 95 [19" CRT] (1611989TA) Multimedia: Audio Adapter VIA AC'97 Enhanced Audio Controller Network: Network Adapter VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter (full system report) --- --- --- --- --- --- A few days after December 25th, but before New Years 2005 -- a rather significant power surge after a large snowing went through my house. Shocking a computer I had put together nearly five years ago. To make a long story short on the prelude. My (then) box was toast. This could not come at a more critical time. I was at a 'milestone' of research in my over longing journey to know more and more about CSS and PHP while authoring my website. A new box was essential and I did NOT have the time to put another box together. I had due dates I had predetermined for myself and image on Flickr to upload. So out of impatience I purchased a computer from a guy who runs a business out of his home, and runs adverts in the local newspaper. Querying the Better Business Bureau and getting positive results for his company I decided I would purchase a 2.4 GHz machine from him. Upon getting the box home, at first glance, everything was fine. Spend three days back-to-back setting up the machine to my liking, installing the applications that were essential to my daily computing habits, and tweaked the layout to make it feel like it was the box that I had before the power surge. Then it all came crashing down. After uploading about 75 images to Flickr, I went to the Organizr to put my images in their appropriate Groups, and Sets. This is when the first error happened. "A script in this movie is causing Macromedia Flash Player 7 to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive. Do you want to abort this script?" Google query after Google query led me to believe that this happens on systems with poor system memory or lack-of-good video processing. But his made no sense to me. My laptop with nearly half the system resources as this box \\IOTA (the boxes name). I had run across a fix for Mozilla Firefox which would allow you to set the timeout for Flash elements on web pages. After setting that to a lower number I reattempted to go to the Flickr Organizr. Again the error dialog came up asking me if I wanted to abort the script. I clicked NO (which is what the Flickr support people suggested doing) and immediately after I did so, the box froze. I was irate and could not believe a 2.4 GhZ machine would puke on going to a Flash-content site. But bigger problems have come along before. I eventually decided that I would just go to the Organizr on that box, and that would solve the problem. Unfortunately that was not the case. At random the machine was just freeze. Sometimes just booting the computer will make it freeze (stay on the "loading Windows" screen), sometimes opening Firefox would make it freeze, and sometimes it just sitting idle would make it freeze. I can recall on more than one occasion going to take a shower and coming back to a frozen box. The person who sold me the PC does not answer his phone and has ignored two snail-mail letters. I have begun an arsenal of attack on his company through the Better Business Bureau and Starbucks Community Bulletin Boards throughout South-Eastern Wisconsin. Between myself and my online contacts, I would figure that this is just some simple hardware problem that could be quickly addressed and brought to a solution. A good contact of mine suggested that maybe having the RAM in the other provided slot might solute things. I did that and nothing seemed to improve. Then we concluded that more RAM inside the machine would improve things. So I went to purchase another 256MB of SDRAM and installed it. Nothing! It would boot up and everything but freeze at random, as its "seemingly normality". So we then figured that maybe its cos the manufacturers of the RAM are not identical. And while I've heard its not PROTOCOL to have RAM sticks matching in identity, it SHOULD be protocol while building a machine. So I pulled out the original RAM that came with the machine (a solo 512 PC133 stick) and a solo 256 PC133 stick (cross compatible with 100 and 133 MHz). Went to Milwaukee PC and purchased two PC133 512 sticks, totaling 1024 MB of RAM. Installed them and the same stuff happened. Except this time the computer seemed to crash "quicker", or would stay a lot less stable in a shorter amount of time, however you want to look at it. By this time and you can imagine being a geek yourself -- my head is spinning in a thousand directions. I took the System Report provided by Everest Home Edition and took it to the college I just graduated from (ITT Technical Institute) but all the troubleshooting tips given to my from prior Professors and mentors were things I have already tried. But a few new ideas were given to me also. More video power! When I purchased the system it came installed with onboard video, which to my understanding handles video processing on the motherboard and borrows time and space from your RAM when necessary. Now while that understanding might be incorrect its what I have come to know and please correct me if I am misunderstood. So I went to another computer retailer and purchased an ATI Raedon 128MB video card. I'm not much of a gamer, and code hasn't really been too system-intensive on my video processing so there has never been much of demand for a "multimedia" PC. Nevertheless the 128MB card is amazing and installation was a breeze. Installed it and everything was fine. There was no way to disable the onboard video as it 'detects' if you have another AGP card installed. But the same result -- RANDOM SYSTEM FREEZES! About two weeks later of loosing work in the middle of a project, and loosing nearly all the data on my USB 2.0 HDD -- the last and final attempt at a solution. My dear friend (call him kaos) suggested that maybe my PSU was choking, or 'burping' and loosing stability and as a results "freezing". So I once again went to the store and purchased a VERY nice Antec 400 W power supply. I wont even tell you what happened next because you already know it didn’t not solve a single problem on this box. I am at wits end with this problem and do not know where to go from here. My only feasible option I suppose would be to get another Motherboard (assuming that's the problem) and a case, and start with a whole new box (with the components I purchased while trying to fix \\IOTA). If there is anything, anyone from this great community would suggest doing I would appreciate any feedback. Its taken me nearly three weeks to type this little post up as the computer freezes all the time and any saved work -- lost. Even when you save every two seconds -- that doesn't seem to matter. Luckily there is NO SAVE on Microsoft OneNote, so its been my tool of choice for the entire year. Tomorrow it will be months of daily back-to-back dissections of this machine in hopes for a solution. I question my knowledge and education. I turn to the community. Thanks in advance.
Try only using one stick of ram and try it in both slots and see if that helps. Sounds like your motherboard may have a messed up ram slot or both. The other thing you might want to do is see if there is a bios update available for your board.
Thanks for the feedback! I downloaded a new BIOS for this machine and put it on a diskette. I was using an utility but I forget what it was called now, but it was basically an application to do the BIOS update for you. Something during that process didn't work. It gave me an error saying something along the lines of that I needed to upgrade my ROM BIOS first. I have been confused and thought a new mobo would be easier. I've heard that PC Chips is a horrible company anyways.
PC CHips motherboards are very good motherboard for lower end machines, that for machines using Semprons/Durons or Celerons - ie machines that are not going to be "pushed" at all. I've had one PCChips motherboard for 2 years now, and its a very good motherboard for a non gaming PC - media PC / mp3s / dvds / word / excel and net. However anything more and its not worth a penny sweet. They are very bad motherboards performance wise, i would go for something from: Asus/Abit/Gigabyte for your system.
Trying to (at least at first) get the PDF manual, but the site fails to have a working link. Shall find it with the PDF operator I hope.
That's one of the best Socket 478 motherboards. I have the basic i865PE (the value version of the i875P) the IS7-E, and it's very good. The IC7's just have the i875P instead and are geared a bit more toward the enthusiast. Basically, that's an excellent choice. The only other mobo you may want to look up would be Asus P4C800-E Deluxe. The only problem I can see is that, if I remember correctly, the i875P only officially supports 533MHz and 800MHz FSB Intel CPU's, limiting it to P4 B and C chips. You can get a Prescott-core CPU, but these weren't intended for Socket 478. You can get the i865PE version of that board (any IS7-series board) and that will work for sure with your Celeron.
I cannot thank you enough for that information. I suppose I could use my Celeron with it and then move to a better processor later.
