Here are the specs for my comp: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (not 90nm) Sapphire X800 Pro (refurbished)* ABIT AV8 motherboard Corsair XMS PC-3200 Dual Channel 512MBx2 Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Seagate Barracuda 80g SATA hdd *Despite being refurbished, it arrived in perfect condition (not one whit of dust) and has seemed to function just fine in HL2, Far Cry, and Doom 3. The Seagate HDD is from my last computer and does not appear to have any problems. I put this computer together (disabled RAID because it was causing the mobo to not see my single hdd), reformatted the hdd, and installed xp pro. Once I booted, I installed the ABIT drivers, Athlon 64 drivers, Audigy 2 drivers, and ATI Catalysts 4.12. I reboot, and everything works fine... for about 3 minutes. Then everything stops. Mouse and keyboard do not respond, nor does tapping the power button for a safe shutdown. I hit reset. Same thing happens. I check forums on my laptop and find out that AMD's athlon 64 drivers cause this freezing (yeah, I know, what in the hell!?) so I uninstall them. This seems to clear it up. However, I still encounter freezing every once in a while. It comes in several varieties which I will list here. 1) Locks up on the ABIT Engineered boot screen. Does not progress and keyboard unresponsive. 2) I press Del to go into BIOS, but keyboard stops responding 1-2 minutes later. Resetting CMOS fixes this, but it comes back every so often, and I am not sure why. Not a major problem at all. 3) Boots to XP, but freezes very soon thereafter. Happens during general use as well as gaming (seems more frequent and predictable during gaming, but I could be wrong). 4) Boots to XP, but freezes after a time (10-30 minutes) accompanied by a constant very loud beep from the motherboard. Happens during general use as well as gaming. 5) From powered off, I press power and the motherboard "sings" by alternating between high pitched beep and slightly lower pitched beep. Hurts my ears. Pressing reset causes it to boot up normally, but can still be followed by any of the above freezes. 6) From powered off, I press power and the pc turns on and beeps, but no picture appears. Very rare, has happened perhaps once or twice. I have tried reseating everything, resetting CMOS, removing optical drives and case lights (in case PSU is overwhelmed, though it shouldn't be at 420W). I am stumped and steamed. Any ideas? Thanks for your help guys. Ps. I hope this is the right forum for this post.
for starters I would try running with just 1 memory stick in, then if it still has problems try with the other one. memtest and any other ram sticks you have would be worth trying also
I just booted with one mem stick in and have not had any problems yet. I did just realize that I never installed SP1, and that may be behind a few of the problems I've had in XP, but probably not the reason for the booting/BIOS lockups. I am installing SP1 right now, but I will also get memtest and try a few games with just the one stick to see if it continues to work.
Spoke too soon. Was fine for a while (half the day at least) but now all the problems are back in full.
Figured out that it is the ram after all. I can't even use XP for more than, say, three minutes without it locking up. I put in my old stick of Crucial PC-2700 512MB and everything worked perfectly (ram 3dmark05 three times and no freezes). Getting help on Corsair forums, might have to take advantage of this free lifetime warranty. Thanks guys.
try flashing a new bios onto the motherboard, because i had a similar problem, where the computer would just freeze, then it would restart and make loud beeps. This occurred when i flashed the newest bios onto it. Changing the bios from the Abit bios, to a modified bios created by Tictac, solved all my problems . All you can do now is to pick and guess what you want to do. EDIT: I am using an Abit IS7 mobo
