Is it my CPU or Mobo?

[Wingster]

I was moving this KT133 (athlon tbird 1.2ghz) into a new case.

boot it up.. checked CPU temp in BIOs..

78C.. oh great.. the heatsink is pretty hot, but not burning not.. This is when the case is wide open. Okay, then I put a 80mm sitting on the side of the heatsink blowing from the side AND a REAL fan blowing directly into the case..

Temp reading.. 68C..

Anyways, the motherboard POSTed fine and detected 1 cdrom and 1 ide hard drive. Ran into the win98 bootdisk with universal cdrom drivers, etc. Couldn't find the cdrom. Fdisk doesn't work because it doesn't recognize any physical drives!! wtf!

I tried reflashing the BIOs (already up to the latest version 2 yrs ago) and the system hungs as it is reading the bin.. (not even writing yet).. I can almost conclude it's a motherboard issue..but could the CPU do such thing as well? Or am I missing a key element somewhere?

 

[Georgeisdead]

If it were the CPU or motherboard, you'd never get to the DOS prompt. If I had to guess, I would say it's fdisk. Can't tell you how many times that thing has given me trouble.

 

[Wingster]

I can't boot off my cdrom either.. It tried to boot.. reads the CD for 1 second.. then it hangs..

 

[SuperPickle]

These temps seem pretty high, even if read on an Asus or Abit board. If indeed those temps are read in ºC, then I'd venture to guess therein lies your problem. Perhaps you might try taking off the heatsink, applying fresh thermal paste, and reseating it.

 

[compudog]

IMHO, way too hot! 172 degrees F is too hot! Resolve the issue with your HSF and your other problems should go away. YMMV.

 

[Wingster]

I think it was the seating problem. Reduced to 52C and it installed WinXP fine. However, my computer locks up 95% of the time when the taskbar icon loads. The remaining 5% i get lucky and can browse around windows. It will lock up when i open windows media player. Do you think I have already damaged my CPU? or is the motherboard thats acting up?