Duron & gigabyte problems

[Guest]

I recently built a new system for my neighbor. During and after the windows installation, it randomly goes into power saving mode. After it has been on for a while, it will not come out of this mode. You have to turn it off, wait about ten minutes, and turn it back on. I have disabled all power saving features in the bios, but it still does this. The only thing I can think of is that it could be overheating, or maybe the power supply isn't strong enough. Any ideas?

CPU: AMD Duron 700 & fan
Alaska mid-tower case w/ 250w power supply
MotherBoard: Giga-byte GA-7ZX-1
RAM: 128 Megs of PC133
SMC network card
Creative Labs DVD decoder card & dvd rom (5X)
WD 30gig 7200 rpm hd
Built in sound
TNT2 Vanta 16 meg video card

I have looked at the bios utility to check the cpu temp, and it is never above 46 C when I look at it.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Bubba]

What power saving mode, do you mean the monitor or the hard disks? The power saving features in windows can be accessed in the display properties where you change the screen saver. If it is the monitor not coming back on then it could be because of your video drivers. Detonator 3 video drivers have a bug where this happens, it is corrected in version 6.49. Do you have WinMe? Did you install the drivers yourself or are you using the Windows drivers?
If it is because the hard drives are not coming back on then I don't know.
I have my monitor turn off after 15min but I tell Windows to never turn off my hard drives.

 

[Guest]

I know the monitor goes off, I think the hard drive goes off. It did it while installing windows, it does it occasionally while booting up (while loading windows, screen turns off, you hit a key and it comes back on and windows continues to load). I loaded win98, and used the drivers from the cd that came w/ the card. I didn't think it was a driver issue because it did it while installing windows (driver wasn't installed yet).

 

[Guest]

Check the windows power save and then have a look at the power managment section in the bios

M

one of the first UK T-Bird users....

 

[Guest]

done that...everything is disabled 🙁

would overheating of the processor, or maybe even video card cause it to go into pwr saving mode for some strang reason? how about a weak power supply (is a 250w, should I get a 300w one?)?

Thanks

 

[Guest]

Back to the start I recomend you take out everything execpt the Vid card(put an old one in if you have one) then see if that helps , then if it works put things back in one at a time until you find the guilty party, if it doesn't work you have eliminated all that hardware from the list.
you can try the PSU as this can have some strange effects, but I have several Athlons and 2 of them run fine with a 250w PSU..

Also what version of windows are you using?

M

one of the first UK T-Bird users....

 

[Guest]

I'm using win98, but since it happened before windows was even installed, I don't think this is a software problem at all. I'll give that a try. Thanks

 

[morc]

Have you had a look into the BIOS, because there you can set some (basicly the same) power saving features what you can set in Windows and as you said it was doing this even before Windows I would say that you may have your BIOS set to maximum power saving (some BIOSes have such global settings).

Regards,

Morc

 

[Bubba]

Since it is happening during boot up, it is not windows or windows' power saving features. It has to be a hardware problem, a heating problem, or a resource conflict problem.
My personal opinion is that you don't have a large enough powersupply. You have a newer AMD chip and a lot of devices (cards, hard drive). Go down to a store like Best Buy and pick up a 300W powersupply. I think Best Buy only has the Antec brand which is on the AMD recommended list so its ok. Put it in and see if the same things still happen. If they continue to happen, just return the powersupply, if all goes well and things are stable, just keep the powersupply.
This would be my first course of action especially replacing a powersupply is very easy, 4 screws and a couple of plugs, nothing to it.

 

[Guest]

This is probably what I'll end up doing. I'm going to take out the network card & decoder card first just to make sure that they are not causing the problem though. The only thing that doesn't make sense (if it's the power supply) is that it comes back up without rebooting after hitting a key. I have done everything I know though...power saving is disabled in the bios, and the processor/video card don't feel that hot while running.

Thanks for the advice

 

[Bubba]

Just keep us posted as to what happens so we can solve similar problems faster in the future.

 

[Guest]

Turns out that it was the video card. It was a new card (TNT2 Vanta), but no good. Replaced it with my card (Voodoo 3) and it is working great. We're taking the defective card back today and getting a different brand.

Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions.