Comp Freezing on Boot

Hi folks

I wanted to see if anyone could confirm my suspisions.

I had a few friends over for a LAN party here in our house. We set up all the computers and I put my friends right beside mine on my brother's desk.

All of a sudden when we were playing BattleField 1942 for about 45 min my friends computer locked up. After that we were unable to get it to boot. I cracked it open and reseated the CPU. I was relieved when it started booting but that was the extent of what it would do.

The computer Reached just before the Windows load screen (Windows XP home) then it froze. After that, I tried rebooting and it stopped just after the PNP init and no more after that.

I was wondering if you guys had any initial ideas as to what might have happened.

Computer config is as follows

Windows XP home
ASUS A7N266-VM/AA bios 1004/AA
AMD Athlon 2100+
512mb PC2100
60GB Western digital HD
Lite-ON 48/28/48 Burner
Panasonic Floppy .... I think thats all
300w SPI P/S

Any input would be wonderful!

Rorius

 

I'd try to update the BIOS. Do you have the lastest version?

 

I will check,

but it was working fine consistantly before that event

 

most recent version is 1007, I'm not sure if thats the real problem though. and I don't want to be flashing the bios if something is damaged

Rorius

 

Update

I tried a AMD 950 chip ( I checked the asus compatibility chart for chips that work with the board and this came up), I know this chip works cause I pulled it from my other computer.

When I tried to boot up I got no post and the Beep code for CPU damage or overheating -- > repeating low and high pitch beeps



EDIT - > just put the 950 back into it's original machine and the original machine boots perfectly.

Anyone know if I can safely put a stick of PC2700 on a board that only accepts PC2100?

 

You can use the pc2700 stick but it will only run at pc2100 speed.

 

Do you know if the machine was overclocked.
If so it sounds like it has oveheated and fried the mobo.

 

Yes, and also, do you have any case fans? Can your PSU handle the Wattage your CPU and components need?

 

No the machine wasn't overclocked, Yes it had case fans but the configuration seems to be input from the front and back?

and it's a 300W P/S.

BTW, I needed to solve this fast so after checking the CPU and RAM in my other machines I came to the conclusion the MB was FUBAR. so I went and got a replacement. It seems to work fine now, I ran it for 3 hours and nothing went wrong. No high end content....it's not usual for this user to be playing something like Battlefield 1942 anyway. So I'll tweak it a bit more beyond fixing the MB and give it back eh.

Thanks for your help guys I appreciate the input. Normally I don't like to resort to replacing stuff but this one just wouldn't co-operate.

Rorius