hari_kp
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Horrific System Crashes
I have an AMD k6-2 450 Mhz system ,with 32 MB ram and 8.4gb HDD. It all started a few days ago when the system suddenly crashed and when restarted it went to scanreg and repaired. Then again after a few hours it crashed and the crash was VMM page fault at ...! I checked for signs of any trouble and nothing. NO changed files, no registry errors. nothing. Then the crashed became too frequent and the CD started openig up automatically. i reinstalled windows. same errors. used SFC, but nothing. Then the system after crashing, it gave me a warning, INVALID command interpreter. I restarted and it booted fine. I reinstalled again and reformatted. But again, same problem. I removed RAM and reinserted. NO change. I checked RAM with NU 2000 and RamExam by qualitas. I checked my HDD with scandisk and NDD with NU 2000. No errors absolutely. Even did a complete surface scan. Nothing. Still continues. Checked for a virus, using NAV 2000 virus defs dated 17/03/2000. Nothing. I tried everything I knew. But nothing again. My system doesn't show any errors anywhere, in device manager, troubleshooters etc, or with Norton Diags. I solved many problems in various mesage boards, but I find mine the toughest. The BIOS shows no problems. The motherboard has an Evaluation ROM as it says. Does that make any difference? It says not for sale. The MB is a month old. VIA apollo board. THe HDD and RAM are 1 month old. No errors whatsoever with any utility. But the system crashes are very frequent. Please help.
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ASKER
Edited text of question.
There is a known issue with the AMD K6-2 chip (350 & higher) check this site out to see if it applaies to you:
http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/k623d/win95_update_k6.html
http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/k623d/win95_update_k6.html
Have you updated the BIOS ?
ASKER
Yes, I did, the BIOS is new And so is the MB, just a month old. And BTW everthing works fine in Safe mode. AND I never experienced any crashes in Safe mode. Something that i am unable to find out. Can heating be a problem? I found the processor hot, but the normal temp only. One thing that surprises me is, why no errors are reported at all. Heating, is what I think. Any other solutions.
To test whether it's a heat problem, try running it with the case open and a good table fan running on the innards, or try using one of the software cooling programs like cpuidle, waterfall, or Rain. You could also try underclocking the cpu to see if that helps. Only other things I can think of are a bad power supply, bad motherboard (as has been mentioned) or bad memory. I don't really trust any memory checker to find all memory problems
The next step is to see what is running in the backgroun that could be causing problems. since it works in safe mode, we are definitely talking about a software problem or a S/W-HW interaction.
Download the Startup COP a free pcmag utility from
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/content/18/08/ut1808.001.html
Run it and it sill show you everything that is listed in all the possible startup
places, and allow you to disable things one at a time until te problem is eliminated.
Great util !!
I hope this helps.
Download the Startup COP a free pcmag utility from
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/content/18/08/ut1808.001.html
Run it and it sill show you everything that is listed in all the possible startup
places, and allow you to disable things one at a time until te problem is eliminated.
Great util !!
I hope this helps.
It may be a power supply prob with the volts not being rock steady
ASKER
Thank You guys, for advising me. I found out the problem. i removed everything and when keeping them together, I found that the processor fan, the heat sink and HDD are touching each other. And a certain amount of heat also was getting transferred to the HDD, (The cabinet has a faulty layout). Now, I set them properly. The HDD sat in a freezer for 30 mins and now is as good as new. (freezer?, yes, magnetic fields are best active at lower temperatures) Thank You Once again.
Heat does it and touching parts kill. ya.
Glad your up and running.
Glenn
Glad your up and running.
Glenn
There is not much you can do except return it to the place you bought it and get a motherboard that is NOT for evaluation only !!
I hope this helps.