Re: [ProgSoc] Crashing PC

[Steve Evans <steve@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au>]

On Tue, 10 Mar 1998, Christian Kent wrote:

> 
> Okay I'm getting to the end of my tether, the limit of my experience ...
> one of the PCs I have has Win95 on it and ever since its motherboard
> upgrade it's been flaky as all hell, giving blue screens or simply
> resetting after a few hours' use.  Things like CrashGuard don't help, and
> I'm currently milling over using NT ... but ...
> 
> I ran Norton's NDIAG and it passed the comprehensive memory test as well
> as the complete diagnostic suite (except COM2 intermittently fails the
> last 2 items).  However running NDIAG sometimes brings up a "Divide
> Overflow Error", usually after running/quitting it three times.  I don't
> know if the message comes from COMMAND.COM itself;  but it even happens
> under Safe Mode Command Prompt Only.
> 
> The only thing which stabilises this junk box is turning off the Internal
> CPU Cache, but that's not satisfactory.  Maybe the RAM timing BIOS
> settings can help?  I don't know what they all are, but factory settings
> and a few others I've tried make no difference.  (Funny though that the
> Norton tests still pass 100%!)  External CPU cache, A20, and system/video
> shadowing seem to make no difference either.
> 
> I've tried touching the CPU itself and it doesn't run hot at all.  Any
> ideas?  Is NT going to be a waste of time?  (No my father will =not= learn
> Linux!)
> 

Check your memory dude.. especially for EDO/NON-EDO combinations.. i had
the exact symptoms you're talking about with my pc about a year ago..
memory tests still came up OK, computer would crash/blue screen after a
while of using it (ie when the lower half of my memory filled).. it seemed
to me for ages that it was an overheating problem, but after swaping out
various bits of hardware, it ended up being the memory.. 

if all your memory chips are the same.. try swapping all of them for some
other known working ones and see how it goes.. 

good luck

steve..

--

Steve Evans           Personal mail : steve@nospam.progsoc..uts.edu.au
Integrated Research   Work mail     : Steve_Evans@nospam.ir.com.au
                      Uni mail      : sjevans@nospam.socs.uts.edu.au
                      WWW           : http://www.progsoc.uts.edu.au/~steve/

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