Debug a Crashy Athlon 1200/266?

[Guest]

Here's one for ya guys:
Got a brand-spanking-new Athlon 1200/266bus upgrade for my system and everything runs fine until I use it.

System is:
Inwin full-tower case
AGI "Athlon-approved" 300W power supply
Gigabyte GA-7DX rev3.0 motherboard, F1 BIOS
Athlon 1200/266Mhz FSB
Cooler Master DP5-6H11 fan
128MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM
Hercules 3D Prophet DDR-DVI
D-Link DFE-503TX+ ethernet
Adaptec PCI SCSI-2 - model unknown
Maxtor 80GB ATA100 drive
Mitsumi 3.5 floppy
Toshiba 12x DVD, IDE
Smart & Friendly 12x4x32 CD-RW on SCSI, ID=6
HP 6250Cxi scanner on SCSI, ID=2
Windows 98 SE (2222 A) with IE 5.5 and all critical updates
Latest drivers for all hardware

I have the distributed.net client running as a service on this machine, so the CPU is at 100% all the time. Gigabyte's SIV reports CPU temp at 63-67degC. I can leave the machine at the network login all night and not have any problems, but as soon as I start using it interactively, it will crash (usually bluescreen, sometimes IPF) within 10 minutes. Most of the crashes are page faults and invalid instructions (05/06/0E) and every one seems to be different. Will post the addresses and modules if anyone would find them useful.

Have tried formatting the hard drive and reinstalling everything to no avail. Also tried installing Win2K Pro but get STOP 0x0000000A (IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL) during file copy.

One final note: The processor, motherboard, HSF, and memory replaced the following:
Athlon 950/200FSB
Asus A7V motherboard
128MB of generic PC133 SDRAM
ThermalTake Super Orb cooler
- and that system, with all other hardware identical, has been running just fine the last 4 months.

Sorry for the rambling. Your thoughts are appreciated.

 

[Jitterbug]

63-67 may be a bit warm. Did you try to slow things down in the BIOS to see what happens?
It is hard to be one of the first kids on the block with new things...like DDR. Find the bugs for the rest of us before we buy them.

 

[Guest]

I have the board underclocked to 100/200FSB right now and things are more stable. SIV reports 52-53 degrees with the case open. This leads me to believe that something is flaky at the higher speed, probly the memory.

Re: the higher temp at 1200 - any recommendations from others on a good HSF?

 

[Guest]

don't know if this helps, but anyway: i couldn't get my 1,2ghz athlon to work stable at 1200. tried almost everything (voltage rising, different cooler etc.) no chance. so i run it at 1150 at 1,775 volt (instead of the usual 1200/1,75). so at least it run stable (but i can't remember using so much curse-words since ages ("selling a product that doesn't run stable at the speed they sold it, RAAAAHHHHHH "*&%*ç***ç%%!!!!"). what i found out later: even if the voltage (in SoftMenu3) was set to 1,775 the pc-health monitor showed a voltage of 1,87 (!!!). after setting the voltage to 1,7 (pc-health monitor shows 1,78) i'm running it at stable 1325mhz. so could be, that you may have a voltage-problem too. (and if not, checking just costs 2 minutes, so it's worth a try.)