Having lot's of lockups with new tbird system

[Sacotool]

I put together a Tbird 850 on an Epox 8KTA3 motherboard, with a new Maxtor 30gig 7200rpm drive, and a Creative labs 52x CDROM. First I was having problems with the board shorting out on the case, so I put tape over all the screw holes and I have the board resting on the taped screw holes and that seemed to eliminate the grounding problem. (Before I did this, the computer would periodically go blank on me).

Well now I've got Win98se loaded on, and I've been having tons of lockups ever since. It often freezes while booting up in the logo splash screen. Sometimes while I'm just surfing on the 'net the screen goes blank, but the machine stays on. A few minutes ago, it froze up so I rebooted, and everytime it would start to load windows the machine would then reboot on it's own, it did this 3 times. I'm thinking that my powersupply might be under-rated for this T-bird. The powersupply is the one that comes with an Enlight 7237, it is 250 watts. The voltages on the rails are: +5V +12V -5v -12v +3.3v +5VSB I'm not sure what those numbers mean, does anyone know? I unplugged the CDROM since it's not essential right now and it booted ok. All I have installed right now are a Voodoo3 2000 AGP, ISA nic and hard drive. Thanks for any help on this!

 

[Mikewarrior2]

what's your Case-cooling / cpu cooling like?


Mike

 

[Sacotool]

I've got an Alpha PAL6035 on the cpu, and the Enlight comes with a case fan mounted on the front, plus the chipset has a fan over it.

 

[Blackberry Junkie]

You possibly need to upgrade your power suppy to 300 Watts or higher. It might help to stop the lock up problems that you are having right now.

 

[Wiggo100]

Have a read of this
http://www.pcscoop.com/software/oses/WINfiles/index.asp
the problem my be the vpowerd.vxd files aren't being found.

 

[Homer]

The problem may still be your mobo grounding. Sounds like you are not using the stand-off posts, but I can't see how your cards, USB/serial/printer ports would line up if you weren't. If you are using them, and only have metal ones where they line up with holes rimmed with silver, there should be no improper grounding. If, on the other hand, you have no grounding at the points it's intended to be grounded, you may also cause an instability problem.

If all the above is properly taken care of, the problem may be an inadequate power supply.

 

[hoov]

I,m useing the same enlight case & power supply with a 900MHz Tbird FIC-AZ11E mobo WD 30gig 7200rpm HD cdrom & cdrw and have not had any problems with power.

 

[Sacotool]

Thanks for the input everyone, I really appreciate it. I'm thinking that board is still being shorted out somehow against the chassis. I tried using plastic chassis screws and it hasn't really helped. The board has built in risers, (metal things that come up about a half inch which the screws go into). I was thinking of taking the motherboard out and running it on my desk on top of the foam pad that it came packaged with. I'll see if it boots and runs this way, then I'll know the problem has something to do with the case. Anyone forsee any tragic results from trying this?

edit- It's been hanging at random times, about half the time when I try and boot up it freezes on the Windows splash screen, sometimes when I'm just surfing on the net the screen will go blank, but the machine never shuts down or anything like that. It's never run for more than 10-15 mins without locking up.

 

[formulav8]

I have the same board and it doesn't have any build in "risers". You have to have the screw studs on the case. If you don't it will short. The case should have came with some studs.

 

[Sacotool]

Are these studs metal? There are 3 of them on the board, I'm pretty sure they were there when I bought it, this was over a year ago. Everything lines up too. I had my old Abit BX6r2 in the case and it never shorted out, that's why I'm puzzled why it's doing it with this new Epox.

 

[gemini131]

Most of the time with an athlon and especially with a thunderbird you're gonna NEED a 300 watt power supply. See if that fixes ur problem

 

[Ethernet]

<<<I put together a Tbird 850 on an Epox 8KTA3 motherboard, with a new Maxtor 30gig 7200rpm>>>

I just put together this exact same system but on a 8kta+ board and I also have a friggin ton of lockups in win98, but in windows 2000 it's rock solid, never crashes - never!

 

[Sacotool]

Another thing worth mentioning I guess is that it was hanging even during the Win98se installation. Somehow I made it through the install, but not without having to reboot it a few times.