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Originally Posted by Peverel
I have dreams like that I really do - but that said I can rebuild a base server in about 2 hours now lol
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oh, sure, the system doesn't take so long... but then there are all the apps !!!! (dear lord, reinstalling all the apps....)
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Originally Posted by ShortNCuddlyAm
Did you say what your video card is, and if it's the same make (and maybe even model) as in your previous PC?
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my video card is a Gigabyte ATI 4850HB 512Mo DVI-HDMi pci-e2.0. it's not the same as my last one (i don't remember what that was, but i know that it's not compatible with the new motherboard).
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Originally Posted by rjfarrell
Zelda,
I had the EXACT same problem about 3 years ago on a new HP. Spent countless hours with HP Support. They tried hard. But to no avail. They took it back and worked on it several times. They thought it was Ram. Replaced power supply. No improvement.
Then, I decided to upgrade to a MUCH larger power supply. The reason they had not put a larger one in was the case would not hold a power supply any larger than the 300w they had installed (Mini Tower case was too small). So. I bought a 650w power supply and installed it on the OUTSIDE of the case. I used a nice black gaffers tape. I NEVER had the shut down, reboot problem again. And it didnt look bad. lol.
Just a thought.
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Originally Posted by djgreedo
What is the wattage of your power supply? It sounds like you are running a pretty high powered PC. I've had similar problems when using cheap power supplies. Anything less than 500W is probably not good enough. Do you have one of those CPUs that requires an extra 4-pin power connector? Do you have a powerful video card that requires its own connection to the power supply?
Also, if the power supply is low quality it can cause fluctuations in the power going into your mainboard (which would probably be even worse since you indicated your house has old wiring). A not so easy way to test it would be to plug it in at someone else's house, but that's an extremely inconvenient way to test it. Maybe you could make an effort to turn off all unneeded electrical devices (and unplug them) and see if the computer still crashes with minimal load on your electrical supply.
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my power supply is an Antec NSK 6580 430W.
my motherboard is a Gigabyte EP45-DS3R FSB1600 Energy Save S775.
Proc : Intel E7300 Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz Box.
3 Go of G.Skill DDR2 800 PC2-6400 CL4-4-4-12
it might be the power supply, although if it is i'll be really annoyed because i had trouble with that on my last build and specifically asked for a good power supply for this one. but if it is, could that cause problems during the boot sequence ? i wouldn't think there was much of a drain the second it starts up (before it even gets into windows). if it is, i could get a stronger one, how hard is that to install myself ? i've installed things like internal hard drives or dvd players, but never anything like a motherboard or processor... is it just a question of a few screws / cables, or is it more complicated ?
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Although it seems almost certain to be a hardware/power issue, have you considered installing another OS (on a separate partition) to rule out software as the issue? It's time consuming, but might be worth a try. If it has the same problem on day 1 you can end the experiment right there. Windows 7 is available free at the moment (it will deactivate some time next year, so it's not totally free). Being based on Windows Vista it is inherently more stable than XP and will probably not suffer from driver problems.
You could try running with only 1 stick of RAM and see if that eliminates the problem. And switch the stick around if it still crashes. If all three (four?) sticks fail by themselves then you can almost rule out RAM as the problem since it is highly unlikely that all your RAM sticks will be faulty. But maybe the RAM socket is.
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i haven't thought of installing a separate os for the moment, i'm not sure i want to go through all that. especially since the problem is so intermittent and unpredictable that i could have to wait weeks for it to happen again, and meanwhile i might not be able to use my apps which i need for work (i haven't checked if they are compatible with windows 7, but i know there were some problems with vista, right ?).
i'm going to try to do some more hardware testing and see if i find anything. thank you, everybody for all the good information and help.