I have had random crashes on this computer for the last month or so, just started, It has been running great untill now. It used to crash during a the game Sacred. I have not tried it yet with Doom3 or Far Cry, just don't feel like digging out the disks.

This was my spare, swapped out the video card, ram, and made it my main rig. Here are the system specs:
Abit NF7-s w/thermalright heatsink and tornado fan, so cooling is good under 44c load.
AMD 2500 o/c to 2.3 or so
Thermalright Purepower 420 watt PSU
2x512 OCZ 3500 RAM
ATI 9800 Pro flashed to XT (was a suspect, but crashes still happened underclocked to pro speeds.)
Maxter 80G hard drive ( I think Maxtor is the devil now)

My first suspect was the RAM, got the correct timming from OCZ still random lock ups. I even get ocasional shutdowns at stock speed. I have tested the PSU, lost my notes, but everything was good according to my A+ textbook.

I downloaded some Linux ISO files mistakenly on partition c: . When I tried to transfer them to partition d:, it shut down on me twice. There is only on hard drive on this computer, so I am guessing yet another Maxter is going bad on me. I keep up with my spyware, anti-virus, and the occasional defrag.

Now I have a crash I can reproduce, large (1G or so) file transfers shut down this computer. Looks like either the drive controller on the mobo is messed up, or Maxter drive #6 has failed me this year! ( Go Maxtor!) And this one is the one they sent me to replace a dead one!

I do not have a hard drive to replace/test it yet. Any and all advice is welcomed!

Thanks for your time!

One more thing to add, I tried to run Maxtors drive diagnostic stuff, but it requires a floppy drive, and i do not have one.

Are you using the nvidia ide driver or the windows driver. There have been lot's of problems with the nvidia driver with certain drives.

Quote: Originally Posted by AntiM Are you using the nvidia ide driver or the windows driver. There have been lot's of problems with the nvidia driver with certain drives.

From System, Device manager I see this for the hard drive

MS
date 7/1/2001
Driver version 5.1.2535.0

So I think I am using the windows drivers. And this is not a sarcastic reply, I appreciate your time in trying to help me! Info is a good thing.

Thanks

E

I just downloaded the NVidea drivers and that seems to have solved my problem. I also got new sound drivers, I did this on my other computer (same mobo) and it resolved a lot of issues. I forgot I had not done it on this one.

So far, no crashes today after changing drivers, so maybe I do not need a new hard drive. I ran P95 2.5 hours, no warnings, no errors. Also was succesfull in moving some large files between partitions on my drive (previously this was almost a 90% chance of a system crash.)


I can't seem to crash this system now! I ran P95, folding, and moved a 4.9gig file from partition c: to d:, while web surfing! Thanks a lot for putting the idea of driver problems into my head! Even though the opposite worked out to be the fix (I hope), you got me thinking on the right path!

Thanks AntiM!