Hardware fault... any ideas

[Red Plague]

OK, long story short...

Am building a machine for a friend, with the following hardware-

AMD 2500 Barton XP (New)
Asus A7N8X-X Mobo (n-force) (New)
2 x 512 Mb Paired TwinMOS PC3200 RAM (New)
400 watt power supply
Standard CDROM
Radeon 9800 Graphics
120 Gb Western Digital HD

Machine lights up and was able to set the bios settings to get correct CPU settings. Booted of CDROM (Win XP SP2) and the blue start-up screen runs (press f6 for RAID drivers etc... u know the one).

As soon as it gets to "Starting Windows...." on the startup screen blue screen, the machine either crashes or reboots. It usually says "Hardware Fault - Please conact vendor etc.."

I have tried diffrent RAM in the machine and get the same problem. Its really starting to annoy me... any ideas anyone?

CPU temp is below 50 degrees. I think its the mobo but it runs ok till u try and install windows....


Any ideas?

[Major HangOver]

Try another CPU, if not try all the bits in a known working system systematically till u find the problem part, Had a problem like tihs a couple of weeks ago and it turned out that the cpu was heating up 2 degrees over its norm when under load, bios read ok coz it wasnt doing anything at that point.

Oh and hope you are well m8, cya soon i hope :D

[JonnyThunder]

Yeah, agreed. CPU, mobo or memory. But if it turns out to not be any of these things, start looking for combinations. I usually strip everything out and leave in essentials, but it looks like it's already close to that (unless u missed something out of your spec).

[mhyv]

don had the same problem m8! he brought his pc over and it kept rebootingat the same point! the chances are if it gets past start up its not a prob with memory, mobo and to a lesser degree the processor! the way i got round the problem without reformating and starting again was to hook his hd up to my machinse (as a slave) run disk clean up and defragged. if you get bad sectors on the hd that windows can still place info into when you run setup this can cause that effect!! by defragging and cleanup it moves the effected files to another sector thus allowing the machine to use those files for start up !!

worked on dons anyhow! give it a try!! was the hd old or brand new??
if not reformat and get your os to check the hd for abnormalities!!!

[mhyv]

oh and another thing! dont know if xp does this as i dont use it, its PAP PAP PAP!!! but when you put the hd on as a slave on 2000pro (being a new drive to the system) it will check for corrupt files and ammend them too!!!

[JonnyThunder]

If you're gonna slave a system drive (which contains Window system files on it), then beware. Cos windows makes changes to the registry on first boot. You may find that if you do this, you wont be able to boot from the disk when u put it back in the machine (changes device / boot information in the config part of the registry hive)

Just a friendly FYI!

:)

[mhyv]

well seems to be running fine on dons machine of love!! it never change any of the registry files, but i take your word for it m8!!

still think the problem lies in the os/hd...

[Wraith]

I normally just have the following in for a first build..

1. Mobo (doh)
2. One stick of memory (and a 'dummy' to make a pair if necessary).
3. Video card.
4. CPU and >always< a CPU Fan (I know Zeons don't? need them)

That's it.. it wont boot - it just proves that the twitchy* things are working (BIOS, PSU, CPU* and Memory*)....


You have Disk drives in etc so - I suggest that you Boot from a recovery disk - then run scandisk.... I think you have the option to do a full on block read/write/read check- do it to check for bad blocks... it will attempt to recover any damaged ones and then mark them as bad...

[Red Plague]

SORTED.

Put a 2100xp in and it worked fine, decided to try the 2500 barton again after and it worked... this is after I tried everything else... bloody typical.

PS - I recommended this guy he bought the setup mentionned above from www.tekheads.co.uk.

I havnt checked the prices lately but the 2500 was more expensive than the 2600, this is because the 2500 can be overclocked better.

The setup above is now running stable as a 3200 xp....

[Darkie]

Originally posted by Red Plague
I havnt checked the prices lately but the 2500 was more expensive than the 2600, this is because the 2500 can be overclocked better.


The reason the 2500 is more expencive is because it's the 'barton' core, meaning it has twice the level of L2 chache. (512)

The 2600 is the 'thoroughbred' B core meaning 256 L2 cache.

and your right about the 2500 being a better overclocker.

[Red Plague]

LOL, was going to write that but could be arsed, I have the 2800 barton core, but after previous balls-ups I dont want to overclock.

PS - thanks for all the help kids...