I need help with my computer crashing.
I've an AMD Athalon XP w/504MB RAM running Win98 Second Edition.
Exactly 504 MB of RAM? Normally you'd have memory that is some power
of two: 256 MB, 512 MB, etc.
Has the computer _ever_ run normally in the past? That is, is this
something that has just started, or has the computer had the problem
since you bought/assembled it?
The computer often crashes (no mouse response, no cntrl-alt-del) after
startup finished. Even pressing the reset button sometimes does not
work and I have to shut all power off. Subsequent restart crashes so
early that my monitor sometimes has "no signal" display, or it never
makes it through the Scandisk. Repeated power-off/power-on gets
eventually gets me through startup and working ok, but it may take up
to 6 attempts in 20 minutes or more.
You have a hardware problem.
I've reinstalled windows, replaced the hard drive, re-seated the
memory, but problem continues. I get the feeling that the computer may
be crashing until it "warms up."
Maybe. Failing components may be particularly sensitive to
temperature. However, even if you can get them to work after a
"warm-up," they are going to completely fail soon, so you'll have to
replace hardware either way.
Make sure all the fans on your PC are running. If they aren't,
replace any fans that aren't working. Fans are cheap and if it's only
this, you may be able to fix your PC for a very low price by just
replacing the faulty fan. Note that if your PC components have
dramatically overheated, they may have been permanently damaged or
made fragile by the experience, so there's a chance that your PC may
still fail early later in time, but at least you'll get more life out
of it than you would if you just junked it all immediately.
I can only guess that maybe there's something tempermental with
the motherboard? I'm at wits end and I think my only solution
is to can the entire box and buy a new one.
That's about the only thing one can do after eliminating obvious
problems. If you have only one stick of memory, replacing it can help
isolate the problem. If you have more than one stick, boot with one
stick removed, alternating among the sticks, and see if it works okay
with a particular stick removed--if so, that stick is causing your
problem. If you have only one stick, you can replace it and see if
the problem goes away; if so, problem solved, if not, money wasted on
memory.
If it's not memory, try disconnecting other things to see if the
system boots successfully: disk drives, CD drives, etc. If the
motherboard has on-board video and you are using a separate video
card, remove the separate card and see if it boots without it. If you
have only a separate card, you'll have to replace it with a different
one to eliminate it as a possible cause of the problem (an expensive
experiment unless you have another card handy).
If you have another suitable power supply handy you can try swapping
the PSU. If not, then there again you have an expensive experiment to
contemplate.
Finally, there's the CPU. If you have a compatible CPU handy, you can
swap it in in place of the existing CPU (not always an easy task,
especially if you must remove fans and heatsinks, but it sometimes is
practical), and see if the problem goes away. But here again, unless
you have individual PC components on hand to allow you to swap things
in and out, this is a very expensive test to perform (you'd have to go
out and buy another CPU just to try it). Worse yet, in the case of
the CPU, many designs of CPUs and motherboards are conceived to make
it easy to install the CPU, but little thought is given to removing
it, and the mere act of swapping CPUs may cause other problems or
encourage an already-enfeebled motherboard to give up the ghost.
In summary, if you have a lot of compatible PC components handy, you
can try swapping things in and out to try to isolate the problem area.
If you don't have components handy, you can try disconnecting
non-essential components to see if that helps. Unfortunately, with
today's modular hardware, you can't isolate or fix specific problems
on the motherboard, so any MB component failure requires a new
motherboard, generally speaking.
In many cases, it all remains a mystery, and the only real solution is
to buy or assemble a new PC. That's what I've generally done. This
is the flip side to the advantage of having boards and components that
you can just snap together to build a machine. There may be some very
hardy souls who can take a soldering iron to an ailing motherboard and
actually replace a handful of discrete components or ICs to make the
board work again (after somehow isolating the part that's failing),
but personally I think that doing so rapidly becomes counterproductive
if it's not your full-time business (or a part-time hobby passion)
already.
