ASUS A8N-E and random lockups

[Hadrobregmus]

I've got the strangest problem, I just built a new system using this board, everything goes fine when installing Windows, but when I get it installed, I start getting hard locks in Windows, mostly when I go to shut down, and specifically when the shut down menu comes up. It doesn't do it every time, like if I just start it up and immediately shut down, but if I open and close certain programs (painter, for instance) I can get it to do it every time. It'll hard lock sometimes when I go to the Control Panel, or when I change Windows settings (something as inconsequential as the "appearance" settings, not the resolution or anything.) I've RMA'd the board already, and I haven't installed the Nvidia IDE drivers or the firewall. I thought it might have been the memory, ran memtest for around 12 hours on it with no problems, I figure if it was the CPU I'd be having more random lockups, right?
I left all my BIOS settings at the defaults, and while this is potentially the cause of the issue, I don't know where to start looking.

Athlon 64 X2 4800 (Dual core)
2x 1024MB Corsair PC3200 DDR 400MHz
HIS Radeon X1900 XT IceQ3 512MB PCIe w/Dual Link (is this possibly the problem?)
Seagate 400GB Serial ATA HD 7200/16MB/SATA-3G

I honestly haven't built a high end system in at least five years ( I build workstations all the time), and am at my wit's end with this.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[BassBomb]

update all drivers (chipset/video), get the dual core patches from amd... sometimes CNQ fails on some asus boarsd so try disabling/uninstalling that

 

[Hadrobregmus]

Thanks, I'll try that. I've got updated video drivers, and SP2 is installed. I'll disable CNQ and see if that helps.

 

[Hadrobregmus]

Sorry about double posting, but I ran Prime95 (one instance on each core) for 14 hours yesterday, and it gave me no errors. This should indicate that the CPU is good, correct? I was under the impression that it should halt or crash if the system was even a little bit unstable. My system is definately unstable, yet it shut down fine after running a stress test. I have absolutely no idea where to start looking for a problem anymore. I guess I'll try reinstalling Windows again, maybe from an IDE drive instead of SATA.

 

[Rhezuss]

I had the same problem with an A8V and finnaly I found it was the video card that was defect.

Try another card and test your comp.

 

[Muzzy]

I had a freeze and random reboot with my AsRock and E6400. Turn out it was my Kingmax DDR400 Dual channel memory. Piece of crap.