Dear All,

This problem started 2 months ago and I have narrowed it down to a motherboard problem. (I think !)

My environment is a Celeron 800 with 256 Meg
M/B is Gigabyte GA-6VEM with an Award Bios that I now have upgraded to the latest version
One chip labeled VIAVT8601T and another VIA VT82C868B

It started more than 2 months ago (no new hardware installed) and had been working correctly under Windows XP Pro (only OS installed then) for over a year. Then random freezes (keyboard and mouse dead) or BSOD.

Ran memtest for long periods. No problem detected.
Brought to a computer shop who ran some stress tests (with software) on motherboard no problem.

Reformatted both hard disks and reinstalled Windows XP on one and Mandrake 10 on the other.
I now have a dual boot system with Grub to boot in Windows XP or Mandrake 10
(If this may help: trying to install Mandrake 8.2 or 9 from CD (used without problems for other computers) would consistently result in a freeze during installation just after the panel selecting the security level (or right after) Mandrake 10 could be successfuly installed though.

Either Windows XP or Linux freeze at random times (generally within an hour).

I checked the board and system temperature are OK and not doing overclocking.
I also tried my video card from another computer in case the integrated video on motherboard might have been the problem.

Console mode in Linux will run for hours, the same is true for the Windows environment started in the so called DOS environment. (I give a couple of commands every hours to see if it is still live)

Since either OS freeze or restart when using Xwindow with Linux or when normal XP with graphic mode, there must be a specific motherboard component which causes the problem.

Since I am not very hardware orientated :-(( could someone suggest what I may do next?

Thanks a lot

Hi.

It could be a problem with your video card, or maybe your power supply. I'd try swapping them out (one at a time), and see if that makes any difference.

Dave

Sorry forgot to mention in my story that I did do both:

II tried a new power supply (lent from computer store) and problem persisted.

Video card: I did switch to use a card from another computer.

Thanks!

It's a long shot, but you might want to try a new mouse. I've had Windows (although not Linux) crash hard when my PS/2 mouse cable fell out and was reinserted, so it's possible, but not probable, that it's your mouse.

After that I'd say a new motherboard may well be in order. You might want to go into BIOS and put all the values to their 'safe' defaults and see if that makes any difference. Try dropping the AGP speed too.

Dave

Thanks Dave,

I was using a cordless keyboard and mouse and I reverted to a regular mouse and keyboard short time after I started having problems .

It is most likely the motherboard (or a component) (I did reset the Fail/safe settings when I ugraded the BIOS and problem did not disappear.

As for the AGP speed I am not sure where it can be changed in the BIOS settings and I am not familiar with the integrated video adapter. I do feel that it is in this area that the problem is (video) since the problem seems to lie with the more complex graphic output (compared to the console environment)

Thanks

Marc