A while back I upgraded my PII to an AMD Athlone. The parts that changed were:
Intel BX m/b -> A-Bit K7 m/b
RAM (now have 12ns SDRAM)
case & power supply
My video card (Asus GeForce 2 V7700 Deluxe) and sound card (Sound Blaster Live! Gamer -the older version, not the later 5.1 card), as well as hard drives, etc. came over with me.
When using the PII, I was running Win2K without any problems. On upgrading, Win2K kept falling over – both stop errors and ccomplete freezes). Tried reinstalling ontop of current system – no luck. Tried a fresh install – fine until I started adding video & sound drivers.
Went back to WinME. Managed to get it up – limping, but useable.Same problem, though – PC keeps on freezing.
Obviously I’ve updated drivers, etc. A later BIOS update sorted out one problem – my LS 120 wasn’t being recognised by WinME as the A: drive. That has now been corrected.
Also, it seems that while the BIOS updates haven’t solved the problem they have made things more bearable. One of the updates mentioned that it should solve clashes with SB Live 5.1 cards.
I’m pretty convinced that this is the problem – if I disable sound, then everything else is fine – no crashes. As soon as sound is enabled, after 30 sec – 5 min, the PC freezes. However, if I have a game running in the background (i.e. controlling the sound output), then the system is less likely to freeze – I’ve used it like that for 4 to 6 hours running.
Of course trying to get help from either Creative or A-Bit (http://www.abit-usa.com/) is like pulling teeth – no response at all.
What I’m hoping someone will provide is confirmation whether this is or is not the problem (either from personal experience, hearsay, etc) and ideas of whatelse I can try.
