After noticing that my rather archaic Shuttle SB51G was being outrun by everyone else I know, it seemed as if the time was right to upgrade. An AMD 3700+ (San Diego) with 2x512MB Corsair PC3200 seemed nice, all slotted into an Abit AV8 motherboard (Only just bought an AGP graphics card you see). So, it was with great expectations that I feverishly built the machine. The Gods themselves hammered away from the skies as thunder and lightning spit from the clouds, all for the birth of this behemoth. Finally, everything was in place and I pressed the power on button. Despite the hideous BIOS logo screen, I checked the BIOS settings, and continued to load windows... the windows XP loading screen... and then BLUE SCREEN. Safe mode allowed me to try and install all the drivers, but still the blue screen haunted me. The BIOS is the latest version (2.4) and I have tried relaxing memory timings, disabling on board devices (sound etc), fresh windows install, all to no avail. Does anyone have any ideas? They would be most appreciated, thank you!
I have reinstalled windows, yes. It does seem to be a very strange problem. It even Blue Screens when installing windows. So I am assuming it is something to do with the motherboard. My first assumption would be a RAM problem, as it seems my house is cursed with them (Unless the memory is from Crucial, I knew I should have gone with them...). Perhaps a voltage problem?
If you're using a generic supply, bin it immediately and go for a nice name-brand one such as Tagan or Antec. No-name power supplies can cause all sorts of annoying problems which you wouldn't think were related to the PSU. Also download memtest and use it to check your RAM for errors.
I keep hammering away at my brother to get a new power supply. As for myself, it is an Enermax Noisetaker 485W which I trust is fairly reliable. There have been some people on other forums who have said that the AV8 has problems with the ATI X series cards, and I do have an X700 Pro, but after attempting to use an older 8500 with no luck, I am somewhat glad this is not the problem. I ran memtest and it reported one error for the first run, but subsequent runs ran with 0 errors. It is always when it comes to the Windows Load boot screen thing, the one with that moving blue bar before vomiting blue all over the screen and some decorative white text (which provides no useful information whatsoever, other than to "Check you have the latest BIOS" etc). It is very odd since before I wiped windows away I could use "Safe Mode" fine. Would this suggest that nothing is faulty, but rather some settings in the BIOS need to be changed?
