Hi everyone, it's like i have a similar problem with mcaiyik2.

My computer randomly crashes anytime i'm working on it, be it playing a game, or just surfing the web.
The crash message is "MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION" and something like
your computer had to restart to prevent permanent damage. Windows error
reporting said it was an error reported by my CPU, so i'm here to look for answers and desperate help.
The full specs of my computer is:

ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe MB (nVidia chipset)
AMD Athlon 3200+
512MB DDR400 RAM (Crucial)
MAXTOR 80GB Sata Drive (Win XP pro)
MAXTOR 120GB IDE Drive
Asus DVD-RW
Benq DVD-Rom
ASUS 128MB ATi 9600XT
Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS
EZCool 450Watts PSU
Asus WiFi-b Card

Trying to troubleshoot the problem, i took out all the components except the 2 HDD, the Benq DVD, graphics
card and wi-fi card and then reinstalled windows on my SATA drive but it
still crashes with the same message. Please help don't know what i could be
doing wrong??

Any suggestions welcome

What you need to do, is to take the system down to the bare minimum. Cpu, memory[1 dimm], and graphics card. Try it that way. If it posts, add the drive with the OS. If it doesn't, try a different dimm, then try a different gpu. Once you get it to post and boot, add 1 piece of hardware at a time until the error. That is where the problem is.

Also, before you start, make sure all your bios settings are at default. This will include things like vcore, vdimm, vagp, memory timings at default.

-------------------------
955BE/MA790GP-UD4H/HAF932/Corsair H5O/Sapphire 6850/2x2gig Ocz reaper dd2-8500/Corsair Tx650

Asrock 939dualie/5400Brisbane/6gig AData ddr2-800/4850/Antec basiq500/HSF from 955BE

I agree with 45 Auto, I believe that error specifies some type of hardware problem.

QUOTE (desteven @ Oct 3 2004, 01:45 PM) I agree with 45 Auto, I believe that error specifies some type of hardware problem.
Yes MCE's are hardware related...Heat or power supply are the 2 biggest of these.

MD

-------------------------
The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.

Physics? Ha! This is clearly magic and devilry at work. Prepare firewood! We have witches to burn!


MODERATOR

QUOTE (wole04 @ Oct 3 2004, 12:56 PM)"Hi everyone, it's like i have a similar problem with mcaiyik2.

My computer randomly crashes anytime i'm working on it, be it playing a game, or just surfing the web.
The crash message is "MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION" and something like
your computer had to restart to prevent permanent damage. Windows error
reporting said it was an error reported by my CPU, so i'm here to look for answers and desperate help.
The full specs of my computer is:

ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe MB (nVidia chipset)
AMD Athlon 3200+
512MB DDR400 RAM (Crucial)"
I have the same problem.
The same ASUS motherboard and A XP 3200+ CPU, and 512MB dual DDR 400MHz memory.
The CPU Temperature is OK ~45 C. And the power PSU should be enough too - HEC 425W.
The PC brings up the BSoDs when at 400FSB/400DDR and can not complete the two 3DMark05 CPU tests - crashes immediately. But when the system is at 333FSB/333DDR everything runs stable.

I cannot understand now is it the motherboard which is supposed to support that CPU or I have a bad CPU (or the voltage settings or whatever..)..

Hi incubus,
May i just ask what the make of ur memory is. Is it one of the ones reccommended by ASUS for the motherboard? Check the website if u haven't seen the list of reccommended memory DIMMS (www.asus.com)

Think you are the third person with this problem so i know it's not that the motherboard is shorting out somewhere on the case or any other hardware compatibility. I mean i have stripped my PC down to the minimum and i'm still getting these error messages. I'm sure if we work together we can find a solution.
first of all, let me know what make ur memory is

Sadly I checked and saw that my memory is not on the "Tested and Working" list.
I have two 256MB PC3200 CL3 Kingston modules - KVR400X64C3A/256.
I will change them to Kingston KVR400X64C25/256 (in the ASUS TaW list) tomorrow or whenever the store will get them.
The problem, I suppose is that the memory really can't handle 400MHz and that leads to the crash. I previously had two 266MHz DDR modules and it was the same situation.
Thank God I'm not the only one with this.. So if you don't have your modules in ASUS TaW list then it probably is the memorys fault, not AMDs nor ASUS.

how are u gonna get these ordered.
I've seen a kingmax IGB PC3200 listed on overclock.co.uk but the thing is there's no dimm number. I would have just thot if it was the same make it would be fune but from what u said it seems to be more specific. I'm currently using Crucial PC3200 which is not even listed at all. So please if u know any online stores where to get those specific modules, that would be great. and hopefully one that would be able to ship to the UK

I probably won't be able to help you with online stores, because nobody's shipping anything to Latvia anyway (that's where I'm from). The store I bought my AthlonXP3200+ and memory modules has an online product list and I found the memory with "KVR400X64C25/256" ID string there. So I just e-mailed them 5 minutes ago. I hope they'll swap the modules fast, because I don't like to be working on a 3200+ that's downgraded to a 2500+.
I think if you'd Google a bit, you'd find a shop who sell the memory modules you need. The situation in UK should be better than in Latvia. Good luck to you.
I'll monitor this thread (e-mail notifications) for a while and will post my results with the new memory modules as soon I get and test them.

Thanks a lot. would like to know the results before i spend £200 on memory.
I've tried most of the strings (dimm numbers) in google but didn't actually come out with any useful results.
i'm getting really frustrated with this constant crashing.
Can i just ask how u were able to clock down ur cpu and dimm to 333MHz

To clock down both FSB and memory go into BIOS. Choose the second menu from left and then the second from the top (if I remember correctly). There will be some disabled options because of the Auto and/or Optimal settings. If you change those to User defined or Menu then you can adjust the FSB to 166MHz (333MHz), to reduce any problems I then set the memory from SPD (or something) to 100% (which means - "same as FSB"). I didn't touch anything else, no timings and no voltages, even left the multiplier to 11.0X.

Thanks. changed the CPU to 166 but just left the memory at AUTO.
and actually i've been surfing the web for over 30mins now without it crashing, so it's looking good. Let me know about the memory please.
By the way, what's ur CPU idle temp?
mine is between 49oC to 52oC. Not sure if that's quite high.
I'm asking because when attaching the heat sink, i smeared some of the thermal pad, but i used it like that cause i didn't have another one.
Anyway i bought some thermal paste, so if ur's is a lot lower, maybe i'll apply the paste.
Thanks

I have run into the same problem, and have been working on it for a few months. I am using the Ram recommended by ASUS. When I ran Memtest-86 tonight i got 1186 memory errors. I would recommend you test you memory with memtest, even the best manufacturers can let a bad chip get by once in a while.


-------------------------
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Clawhammer 2Ghz (OC'd to 2.4Ghz)
ASUS K8V SE Deluxe
ASUS Radeon 9600 xt/tvd
1 GB RAM
Western Digital 120GB HD
Optorite 40/12/8 CD/DVD r/rw
Aerogate II Fan controller
I-Cute 0302 Black Case with clear side and top w/ fans
FSP Aurora 350W PSU (waiting for my Tagan 480W)
Too many fans
too many lights


Is it bad if your computer sounds like a 747 and looks like a runway?

QUOTE (Ec61975 @ Oct 4 2004, 09:57 PM) I have run into the same problem, and have been working on it for a few months. I am using the Ram recommended by ASUS. When I ran Memtest-86 tonight i got 1186 memory errors. I would recommend you test you memory with memtest, even the best manufacturers can let a bad chip get by once in a while.
Yes, I ran some Microsoft Memory Diagnostic software this night -passed extended tests. And left the Memtest-86 v3.1 running for the night.. After 5 hours of sleep I woke up and the test hasn't even completed Pass#1 (Pass#1 is at 99% and Test#12 is at 16%).. The PC is unresponsive to ESC or the C (configure/change test) key, even Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't work. No errors showing up, but the PC is totally unresponsive..

OK.. I'm starting to believe that this is something between the A7N8X-E Deluxe and Athlon XP 3200+. I tried to change memory voltage and timings, no use.. But when I set the FSB spread spectrum from Disabled to 0,5%(?) and set the voltage for the CPU from 1,650 (the default for 3200+) to 1,700 (actually really working as 1,760), I even got the 3DMark05 CPU tests to complete, once.. The second time the PC rebooted in the middle of the second test. So what's the real voltage for this CPU?

1.65

-------------------------

Ummmm ignore the ATI Radeon 9200se
I now have a BFG 6600GT OC
A Pioneer 109 DVD Burner was added even before that and now i have a gig of ddr400 (some cheap stuff)

Wole4, could you tell me whether you're using WinXP SP2..?

Hello People,

I recently had a problem with my PC rebooting for no apparent reason. The thread i posted can be found just below this one.

After having run memtest with the generic PC3200 Ram i had originally there were too many errors coming so many i stopped the test. After having been told by someone here (i think the starter of this topic) about the reccomended ram for the Asus E-Deleuxe motherboard i changed it to Samsung Ram.

The problem seens to have gone because i can now play games without it crashing or rebooting. Something which wasnt possible before.

But im not sure if it is the solution because i cant imagine why faulty ram would restart a machine. Causing the machine to crash to a window i could.

Anybody know and care to explain?

Kind Regards

Mr Khan

I'm not on SP2 at the moment. i tried installing it but it always crashes during installation
Now that i've gotton the comp to run stable by clocking it down, maybe i should install it but sp1 is running fine for now, although windows update is bugging me.


I also ran the mem test and it came up with 0 errors after running for almost 5hrs.
so i know my memory is not bad. but like i mentioned before, i think this particular asus motherboard is very 'picky' as to which memory u can use with it which is probably why ASUS had to specify some.

Anyway nice to see that some one has solved the problem by getting the new memory. think i'm gonna order Kingmax 1Gb from overclock.co.uk as soon as it becomes available

@mcaiyik2
Sorry didn't answer ur question.
Bad memory can definately make a computer unstable because anything you run on ur computer is stored in ur memory, until u exit. And if the memory is bad ur the speed timings are wrong, the CPU wouldn't be able to communicate properly with the memory and this would lead to a crash or BSOD.
That i guess is the simplest explanation