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Computer freezing - help!

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by solja

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I recently built an AMD Athlon 700 system. I used an Abit KA7-100 motherboard, AMD 700 processor, 128MB DIMM, and a Maxtor 15GB Ultra DMA/66 HD, running Win 98 SE. Those are the original parts to the computer, all others (sound, video, net, modem, CD drives) have been removed or replaced, but the problem I'm having still occurs.
My problem is that, at varying intervals, my computer will freeze. When I say freeze, I mean complete lockup - CTRL-ALT-DEL has no effect. I have to power down the system and reboot to gain control back. Unfortunately, that's about all I have as far as specifics go. I have been unsuccessful in determining a cause, I'm just hoping someone else knows what's going on. As far as I can tell, a majority of the freezes occur when something's being written to the HD. That's the only constant I've noticed, and even that is up to speculation, as my computer will freeze while idle, on startup, or for seemingly no reason at all.
Any suggestions or solutions? Anyone elsehave this problem? Another problem I'm having, it may or may not be related to this, is extremely slow network speeds. I have TCP/IP and NetBEUI installed on a 3 computer network, and the transfer speed between my computer and any other is slow, to say the least. Most file transfers don't finish at all, because they get may 1/10th of the way and stop. Again, any suggestions? If anymore info is needed, please let me know. Thanks!

19 replies

by jackg3

Just a question: Did you use the IDE cable supplied with the hard drive, because these cables are made specific for the ultra dma hard drives.

by bill cassada

Check your memory settings in BIOS. Sometimes AUTO doesn't work and a speed mismatch will definitely hose you. Also check a setting that is called something like "system startup speed"-it should have FAST MED and SLOW options (or something similar). Try changing these. The hard drive settings must be set for Ultra DMA mode, too, or all kinds of things can happen. Generally make sure ALL BIOS settings are correct. Don't trust AUTO to get it right. You may also need to FLASH your BIOS. Check the website for a BIOS upgrade. Good Luck!

by solja

I think this worked! I went into the BIOS and sure enough, there were some AUTO settings for my hard drive. So I changed those and a couple of my RAM settings. It seems to have work. I did that on Friday and ran my computer over the weekend with no freezes. I rebooted several times to see if it would freeze after a reboot, and still no problems (knock on wood). It also fixed my network problem, so now network transfers no longer stop 1/10th of the way through. Thanks!

by markchen

It might be defective memory (RAM). Also check if Hard drive and CD-rom are on separet channel.

by solja

I think the RAM's fine. I had the processor, RAM, and board integrated and tested before shipment.
The hard drive's on my Primary IDE, my CD-ROM and CD-R are both on the Secondary. No probs there.

by lucard

Yes, you should first check the memory settings, but your problem may be power related. The Athlon CPU and the motherboards that support it use a lot of power so you should have 300W power supply. I've seen this problem occure many times and this was the remedy.

by solja

I have a full tower with a 300W supply. I have 1 hard drive, 2 CD drives, 1 floppy, and 2 fans. I don't think the power is a problem.

by kwflick

I have run into this on an old system of mine. The symptoms are identical to what I was experiencing. My machine would lock up when I would do a disk read or write. What I discovered for my motherbard was that my voltage regulators were going bad. I dont know what the requirements for a AMD chip are, but I suspect that your regulators may be going too high for your chip. What causes this you ask? Well the probable cause is heat. Does your machine have adequate cooling fans. To see if itis a heat problem, turn off your machine and let it cool down for about a 1/2 hour. Then take your case off and boot it back up. With the case off let your machine do it's thing. If your machine locks up again then use a volt meter to measure thevoltage across the output of the voltage reulators. You will have to measure this while your machine is running to see if it fluctuates. It should not fluctuate at all (+/- .01volts). If your machine does not lock up then it is most likely a heatproblem.

Hope this helps.

by solja

I thought this was the problem at first, too. Then I attached the thermometer that came with my motherboard and installed the temperature monitoring software. The temperature on the chip has never exceeded 95F and the temperature inside the case hasnever exceeded 85F. All motherboard voltages are checked by this software as well, and none are out of the ordinary. Thanks for the suggestion, though -

by cosloot

Two possible things
(1) Try setting an IRQ for the slot you have your NIC card in. Most Motherboards now you can set the PCI slot for a reserved IRQ. Take a look at your resources in the System and see what Windows assigned for your IRQ. Reboot and set the reserved IRQ for the slot you have the NIC card in bios in the advanced settings. You NIC card might be going out also also. The other thing is that system supports Ultra 66. If you are running an Ultra 66 compatible drive do you have more shielded IDE cable for that speed?

by solja

When this thing first started happening, I removed all peripherals from the system (NIC, modem, sound) and ran it stripped down for a while to see if it was one of those. It still froze, so I know either it's an OS problem or a motherboard prob. Answer 2 helped a bit in that I went into the BIOS and reviewed everything (which it feels like I've done a million times) and made a few changes related to the RAM timing and changed some "Auto" settings to manual. It seems to have worked, but I'm going to give it another couple days just to be sure.

by cosloot

One other thing, maybe, Did you try running the memory speed at 100 instead of 133?

by solja

The only memory settings I found were:
SDRAM 10ns, SDRAM 8ns, Normal, Medium, Fast, and Turbo. It's on SDRAM 10ns, which is what my DIMM is.

by frock222

I have built several similar systems and used the same motherboard.I was informed that the pc-100 Dimms sometimes have problems on this board as they were built for the pc-133 Dimms. Try replacing the Dimm with a 128mb pc-133 Dimm

by solja

I think I got the prob fixed with Answer 2 - Thanks, though. If I keep having problems, this'll be my next move. (I should upgrade to PC-133 anyway:)

by shawnyong

The AMD chipset have a history of overheating, the computer will hang it the CPU overheat. Try to get better heatsink and an extra fan to cool down the tempreture. It solve my problem when i'm using AMD 600 processor.

by solja

I have a great heatsink/fan on the processor and 4 other system fans inside my tower. I also have temperature monitoring hardward/software installed and haven't had any temp. problems. Thanks -

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