Help With Computer Crashing

[mike_w]

I've been having a problem with my PC recently. Firstly, when playing a game (morrowind), it froze, then the PC restarted without even a blue screen. Then, when I went into things like Nero, the computer frooze when checking the IDE. I noticed that, although both my CD drives were empty, one still said it had the MOrrowind CD in it. So I did the following:

1. Took off one of my two CD drives - still had problems
2. Reconnected the CD drive and took the other one off - still had problems
3. Took both CD drives off (both on secondary IDE cable) - no problems
4. Used a different IDE cable for the secondary IDE cable - had problems
5. Put one of the CD drives on the primary IDE cable with the hard drive - no problems

From this, I think it is either Windows that has gone wrong (haven't installed anything recently) or the motherboard. Any suggestions?

[mike_w]

Forgot to post my system specs - not sure whether it'll make any difference though:

Motherboard: Abit NF7-S
CPU: AMD Athlon 1800+ overclocked to 1.9ghz
Graphics card: Geforce 2 MX400 (I know, its crap)
Sound: Onboard
Hard Drive: 80gb Seagate
CD drives: a normal 52x (not branded) and a CD-RW (I think its an Artec)

[Nox]

'froze and restarted' did it resart almost right away? i'm going to assume you're using win xp unless you tell me differently (same applies for win2k anyway)

head to control panel, double click on system, then head to advanced tab. under startup/recovery there is a settings box. take the taick out of 'automatically restart' now you will get a blue screen when it crashes... which means you may get some info as to whats caused it.

what cables are you using for the cdroms? 40 or 80 'strand', and how old are the cdroms? also how old is the motherboard?

Nox

[Nox]

ah thanks. ok, also stop overclocking your cpu and see if it does it.

Nox

[mike_w]

I'm using Windows 2000.

The first time it happened it froze for quite a bit, then restarted. The other times, it doesn't restart, just freezes.

Got the motherboard a couple of weeks before Christmas, and the CD drives are fairly old - one and two years old.

Bear in mind that by using the current setup (HD and CD on primary IDE) is working perfectly fine.

[Nox]

ok one and two years should be fine, i was thinking of really old ones, like 5+years ideally you need to get it to blue screen then hopfully get a message from the top of it telling you whats happened. have you got the latest motherboard drivers installed? though it does sound like somethings a bit funny with IDE2...

Nox

[mike_w]

The motherboard drivers are the ones that came with it.

BTW, thanks for the help Nox.

[SilentDeath]

check what modes the optical drives are in.. if one is using udma33 while the other is using pio, that might be causing it..
look through the drive/ide controler propertys in device manager and you should find the dma status somewhere..
is it a problem havign one of the cd drives with the hdd?
do you really need 2 cd drives (52x is faster, imo though, anything past 32x could shatter a cd due to high rpm. cdrw are usually poo at reading protected cd's though and are usualyl slower...)
or you could get an sata converter (recommend get an abit seriell ver2 - if your mobo is a rev2 the one that came with it should be a v2, as none of the others work with optical drives) and have one drive on the sata and the other 2 on the ide.

[mike_w]

check what modes the optical drives are in.. if one is using udma33 while the other is using pio, that might be causing it..
look through the drive/ide controler propertys in device manager and you should find the dma status somewhere..

Even when I had just one CD drive on the secondary IDE cable I still had problems.

At the moment the PC is working fine with the HD and CD drive on the primary IDE.

[Nox]

i don't think it will help much, but get the latest chipset drivers for your nforce mobo (www.nvidia.com) and the latest bios from abit - think its 23. around 17 i think they solved a problem with ide and sata but i think it was differentto yours. you can also delete ide 2 from device manager and reboot letting it reinstall ide2 on next reboot.

still try and get it to blue screen - same procedure on win2k as for win xp

Nox

[Mozzer]

Weak PSU?

[acidrainy]

Try going to "Advanced Chipset Options" in your bios and disable CPU Disconnect if its enabled. This setting is known to cause lockups on some PC's

[Anders]

Have a look in the Event Viewer to see if that has any nuggets of information. Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer.

[Ravens Nest]

Forgot to post my system specs - not sure whether it'll make any difference though:

Motherboard: Abit NF7-S
CPU: AMD Athlon 1800+ overclocked to 1.9ghz
Graphics card: Geforce 2 MX400 (I know, its crap)
Sound: Onboard
Hard Drive: 80gb Seagate
CD drives: a normal 52x (not branded) and a CD-RW (I think its an Artec)

As already said by Nox, get the latest drivers for your Motherboard, the Nforce 2's mb's are notorious for bad IDE drivers.

The latest motherboard drivers are there best yet and i now use the nvidia IDE drivers instead of the standard MS and they run very well.

What you have to do is remove the old drivers from the control panel,
Best to do this in Safe mode.

Do not restart the pc

Run Driver cleaner

http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/

Get it to clean all your nforce drivers out.

Install the latest nforce motherboard drivers.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_udp_winxp_3.13

When it says do you want to install the SW IDE driver say "yes"
This will install Nvidia's fast (But super buggy) IDE driver

Now restart the pc

Try a few games, programs anything you know that causes it to blue screen.

If it does blue screen, then go into safe mode again.
Re-install the nforce motherboard drivers again
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_udp_winxp_3.13

And when it says do you want to install the SW IDE driver, this time say "NO"
it will then install the MS default IDE drivers.

Hope this helps