Hello, I've built my own computer twice, so i'm not new to the scene, so i'll try and keep this as informative as possible. The machine in question here is a Athlon XP 2400 run on a MSI KT4V-L with a 512 DDR 400 Ram. I have a MSI 128mb AGP Graphics processor and a wireless card plugged into the sockets. I run an 80gb Seagate hdd and a Memorex 52x cd burner. I use windows xp (currently without a service pack because i reformatted trying to cure my problem)

Now my whole problem started a long while ago and i've tried lots of things to fix it, but to no avail. Whenever i seem to be taxing the Hard drive (downloading large files, using bit torrent, installing large programs, etc...) my computer just freezes. I have replaced the hard drive and i still have the same issue. When it freezes, it doesn't give any error messages or anything, it just stays on the same frame and the hdd stops reading/writing, the cdrw drive doesn't read/write and it really sucks. I know there is probably one piece of hardware i need to replace, and it can't be the hard drive, so does anyone know whats up?

All help is greatly appreciated, as this has ****** me off for far too long. :banghead: :

Hi there jamsandwich.


This is gona take some trial and error , narrowing the prob down.
I presume that you already installed the latest mobo drivers and have you already checked for any hardware conflicts in the "device manager"?

Could it be a temperture issue? Have a look with this app:

MBM5

Or maybe memory?:

Memtest

There are no hardware conflicts in device manager, the only thing that seemed awry was the usb port had a question mark as its symbol. I ran motherboard monitor and my cpu is at 123 F and my case temp is 91, which is a little off because i have a real thermometor in my case and it reads 83 constant. The memtest ran without errors reported and the test seemed to run in a constant repetition, it would get to 100% then start over without a report, which i interpreted as no errors. The motherboard drivers (i guess chipset/vga/sound/bios??) i installed are the ones that come on the msi cd. If i need to get new ones, please let me know.

On this page there are the latest 4in1 drivers and also a driver + patch for youre usb ports:

Drivers.


Also go to youre device manager and look if youre primary and secondary IDE channels are set to "DMA" mode instead of "PIO"
(right click on them , select properties , advanced settings and look what the "transfer mode" is set too.)

PS, what are those temps in Celsius?

Installed the drivers, and the ide channels were set to "DMA, if available" already.

Those temps in celsius are 55 for cpu, and 31 for case.

It isn't windows , you already re-installed.
It isn't the HD , you replaced that.
The temp isn't really high ,but see if the temp goes up when you are doing something intensive.

Those would be the most likely causes.



I will think about it , and if come up with something else , i'll let you know.

Hello everyone.
One thing that was not mentioned in here...was the IDE cables...were they changed? Probably not - they're the last thing most people think about.
Was the hard drive set to master?
Was the Hard drive and CD drive on seperate channels?

unfortuantely these questions will go unanswered.

However. The problem lies with either the motherboard itself (a bios update might have helped) or the IDE cable connected to the hard drive.
I will mark as answered as i believe one of those 2 would have worked.