System keeps rebooting

[Spacelord]

Hello! This is my second post about this problem but i'll make this one more detailed.

System specs: 420watt psu by kyoto(i think that's the name), AMD 2500 barton cpu with stock fan on ASUS a7n8x-x mobo, 2 hard drives one by maxtor(slave) and brand new one by Western Digital(master). PINE dvd-rw and plextor cd-rw drives. 2 dimms of 512mb by azenram and elixir i think. ATI Radeon 9700 TX 128mb.

A few days ago i DLed and installed Bet on Soldier when playing the system would freeze and the VPU recover would unfreeze it. I couldn't play at all it kept freezing so i decided i would upgrade my drivers from 5.6 to 5.8 and see if it's playable then. After installing the new drivers my system kept hard rebooting after a few mins. It didn't matter if i played, surfed the web or do nothing, it rebooted and windows giving me a "the system has recovered from a serious error" msg after each reboots.

So i tried reverting back to 5.6 and it kept hard rebooting. I did use ATI uninstall software. So i went into safe mode to see if it was driver related crashes but it still rebooted in safe mode.

Then i changed the cpu fan, put on a thermal take volcano 9 on it. Still rebooted.

I borrowed my friend's radeon 9800xt card and installed it, it kept rebooting.

Then i bought a brand new PSU, 400watt by Dynex cuz i figured my current PSU was cheap,i bought it for like 12 bucks on eBay... But it kept hard rebooting even with this PSU.

Then i thought it might be the RAM, i removed one stick and booted the pc. Reboot. Fine! remove that stick and put in the next one, reboot again. Ok so my RAM sticks are fine.

Finally, i tried to format. Booted from cd and then the screen went black like 3 times fast and finally got the blue screen saying there's a problem with my hardware.

That's it, i sent my pc to the local computer specialised store because i couldn't fix my own computer myself. What you guys think the problem could be?

I love computers but damn does it suck so bad when their broke lol

 

[slvr_phoenix]

One could look for bad caps on the mobo as a start.

I'm also not convinced that your new PSU is any better than your old one.

Nor am I convinced that you actually managed to purge your video drivers.

Did you ever try putting your graphics to a standard VGA driver?

Did you ever try checking your PSU's voltages?

Did you test out the system with the absolute minimum hardware installed?

Did you ever clean all of the dust out of your system?

Have you tried running the box with the side open and a house fan blowing on it?

Did you ever try nudging up the voltage on your RAM?

Did you ever try running memtest?

Have you tried disabling AGP fast writes?

Have you updated your mobo's drivers?

Have you flashed your BIOS to the latest version?

Did you make any offerings of coins, caffeine, or shiny things to the computer gods?
<pre><font color=orange> ∩_∩
Ω Ω
(=¥=)</font color=orange> - Cedrik says that you should try whacking your PC a good one<font color=orange>
_Ū˘Ū_</font color=orange>   to show it who's boss if it ever gets uppity like that.</pre><p> یί∫υєг ρђœŋίχ
<font color=red><i>Deal with the Devil. He buys in bulk.</i></font color=red>
@ 197K of 200K!

 

[Spacelord]

One could look for bad caps on the mobo as a start.

Uh?

I'm also not convinced that your new PSU is any better than your old one.

Well old one was 12 bucks and the new one costed me over 100.

Nor am I convinced that you actually managed to purge your video drivers.

I used ati uninstall in safe mode.

Did you ever try putting your graphics to a standard VGA driver?

Yep, default windows vga drivers and it rebooted anyway.

Did you ever try checking your PSU's voltages?

I know nothing about it but why would my PSU not be good enough all of a sudden?

Did you test out the system with the absolute minimum hardware installed?

Nope, i admit i didn't try unplugging some hardware.

Did you ever clean all of the dust out of your system?

Yes i often use cans of compressed air to blow it off. Like once a month.

Have you tried running the box with the side open and a house fan blowing on it?

Nope, only house fan i got is too big and on a stand.

Did you ever try nudging up the voltage on your RAM?

Nope.

Did you ever try running memtest?

I wish i could have done that but my pc rebooted faster when an application was running. I had like 3-4 mins till reboot on the web and it was an instant reboot when loading a game.

Have you tried disabling AGP fast writes?

Yes cuz i heard radeon 9600s had problems with fast writes.

Have you updated your mobo's drivers?

No, i used windows's. Never installed any drivers by nvidia.

Have you flashed your BIOS to the latest version?

Nope, they're defaults.

Did you make any offerings of coins, caffeine, or shiny things to the computer gods?

Hehe nope ... *cry*

 

[endyen]

Have you updated your mobo's drivers?

No, i used windows's. Never installed any drivers by nvidia

Well there you go.
Windows agp drivers will screw up an Amd system every time.

 

[Spacelord]

Then when not on windows the system would work. And why would iwindows's agp drivers stop working all of a sudden anyway?

 

[endyen]

What os are you running other than xp?
The xp sp2 drivers have been a known issue for Amd systems ever since they came out. Prior to sp2, xp would run graphics in pci mode until the agp drivers were loaded.
BTW if you want to get rid of old graphics drivers, your best bet is to get drivercleaner from driverheaven.
The original problem required a patch. Rather than using the patch, you upgraded your graphics drivers, to one with an updated file that conflicts with xp's agp driver.