A7N8X Deluxe/Duron/WinXP problem
- From: Darren Garrison <cynapse@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 19:13:33 -0500
Long explaination-- skip to the last paragraph if you want just the question and
not the details.
So, some time Wednesday afternoon, my computer locks down. The screen freezes,
the mouse pointer doesn't move. A ctrl-alt-delete does nothing. A soft reset
does nothing. I have to physically switch off the power supply. I switch it
back on, and it doesn't boot. I get power to the lights on the computer, the
drives spin up, but nothing else, not even any error beeps. I go into
trouble-shooting mode. First I take the memory out, one stick at a time, to see
if there is any change. Then I switch the video card out with an older one.
Then I pull the battery from the CMOS for a while. Nothing changes anything.
So I pull out the CPU, restart, and finally get an error message. The talking
BIOS starts repeating "warning CPU not present". So the CPU was dead. It had
been running at full speed for 3 years straight-- I was running the
"folding@home" distributed computing program during my spare clock cycles so it
never had the chance to use the system idle process, so I suppose I shouldn't be
too suprised that it eventually wore out.
Anyway, I hadn't been doing any type of research as to upgrading my system any
time soon, so I don't know much about what motherboards are out there now, what
memory it needs, etc. And I didn't have access to the web to go shopping for it
anyway. So I go out checking the local computer repair shops for a replacement
of my current CPU. I had to go to FOUR shops before I found one with anything
that would fit my motherboard. My Athlon was an Athlon XP 2600+, running at
2.06 GB. All this shop had was a used 650 Mhz Athlon and a used 1 Ghz Duron.
So I ended up paying $40 for that used 1 Ghz Duron. I knew that my CPU was 3
years old, but I was still suprised that NOBODY had them any more-- after all,
it isn't like I'm running a 486 or something.
So I take the much slower CPU home, install it, and start my system and WinXP
locks up while trying to boot. After several tries, I decide that I have to
reinstall. But the XP disc that I thought was bootable wasn't. So I find a CD
that is bootable, boot to DOS, and the XP isn't one that can be installed from
DOS (I thought that it was a full, fresh-install version). So then I have to
install Windows ME just so I can have a Windows to use to install XP from. But
then, to make a long story somewhat shorter, after many tries I find that both
Windows XP and Windows 2000 lock the computer during the installation. For some
damn reason, Windows ME is the only Windows version that I can run now. Since
the only change is the Duron processor, I can only figure that there is
something about the processor that WinXP/Win2k don't like. Anyway, it took from
Thursday afternoon until late Friday night to get Windows ME up and running
enough for me to simply be able to check my e-mail and access the WWW. I still
don't have most of the functions set back up. Now I have to decide what my next
step is-- a new Athlon XP 2600+ CPU shows up as $131 at pricewatch.com, which is
actually MORE expensive than the cheapest Athlon 64. I'm sure that price is up
from what it once was-- I paid barely twice that-- $270-something, 3 years ago.
I was going to wait a while yet before doing a hardware upgrade because I was
satisfied enough with my current speed, but now, I suppose I'll have to look
into what motherboard to get, what memory I'll need, etc.
My system has an Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard, a pair of Corsair 512MB DDR333
PC2700 CAS 2 DIMMs, and DID have an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ CPU. I now have all the
same hardware but instead of the Athlon I have a 1 Ghz Duron CPU. No OS other
than WindowsME (out of WinME, Win2k, and WinXP) will boot on the computer now
when XP worked fine before. When I tried rebooting the first few times after
installing the new CPU, the computer would freeze (requiring a hard reboot)
directly after showing "loading Mup.sys". After trying to reinstall both XP and
Win2k a few times, they would always freeze up (requiring a hard reboot) after
the system finished copying files, rebooted the system, and said across the
bottom "now starting (whichever version was starting). Can anyone think of any
reason that XP/2k would have problems with a Duron while WinME would not? Can
anyone think of any short-term solutions to this problem, as it could be months
before I buy a new motherboard/cpu/memory combo?
.
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