Computer Help Needed!!!
I just built this screaming new system
AMD 64 3700+
ATI Radeon 850
Asus A8N SLI Deluxe NVIDIA Socket 939 Motherboard
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3400832AS 400g HD
Kingston 1gig 400MHZ 3200 dual channel RAM
Plextor / 6x DVD+R DL / 16x8x16x DVD+RW / 16x4x16x DVD-RW / 48x24x48x CD-RW / DVD Burner
Basic CD-ROM Drive
Antec Case with 500 Watt power supply
I was able to get a perfect Windows XP Pro install complete with Service pack 2, but the computer randomly shuts down.
Theres NO bluescreen of death. Its just like it powers down or something. The longest it has stayed on before shutting down was 4 hours.
Most of the time its within about an hour.
All the drivers are updated except for the bios on my motherboard.
Its driving me NUTS. 
Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 
Im not in India...but Ill give it a stab
Hrmmmmmm
You dont mention if you get the "Windows found a problem...would you like to report blah blah"...so Im assuming you do not get one. Sometimes those ARE helpful in that they may tell you there is a driver problem somewhere. My initial guess is that you have a video driver problem....but Im at a loss with how to help you ferret it out. Have you tried setting different resolutions on the vid display? Different refresh rates? Searching the support forumsof the hardware OEM's for similar problems?
How about heat? Whats your CPU temp? Whats your vid card temp? Both at "rest" and under load. Along those same lines.....whats the RPM of the CPU fan? I cant think of a condition that would shut a computer down faster than a sub rpm CPU fan.
Along the lines of "its always the simple stuff"" ....have you tried re-seating all the cables and connectors that make up the spaghetti between mobo and peripherals?
Every once in a while I have the same problem....it seems it always triggered by some sound event....some sort of interupt collision I suppose...but damned if Ive been able to casually find what the problem is.
Sorry I cant be of more help.
Oh....and BTW
Hey Mel what you are
Hey Mel what you are describing sounds like power supply. since it's new. How many case fans are you running too etc. It's almost like you don't have enough power in the supply to run everything at once.
Hop on msn or yahoo and we can chat about it in more detail.
Re: Hey Mel what you are
Hey Mel what you are describing sounds like power supply. since it's new. How many case fans are you running too etc. It's almost like you don't have enough power in the supply to run everything at once.
Hop on msn or yahoo and we can chat about it in more detail.
I would definitely agree with the advice already given. it is probably one of the following, although I did think of a few other things:
- heat: you may need more case fans, or you may need a better heat sink / fan for the CPU. or, you may need to re-orient the computer so that it has access to better airflow.
- power supply: the supply could be faulty. for that rig, 500W is probably fine unless there is something wrong with the supply.
- try re-seating the memory. physically unplug it from the board and re-install it.
- re-seat the video card.
- try a different power cable to the wall, or just jiggle the one you have while the system is running.
- if all of the above fails, take that BIOS update.
- power settings: it could be that the computer is entering a power-save mode after some inactivity, or that your power switch on the front panel is faulty. although, i'd expect your computer to resume where it left off after this, Windows is notoriously screwy when it comes to resuming after hiibernate. so if it isn't resuming where it left off, it's probably not this.
I think you mentioned that you got this solved already, but maybe someone else will come along and find this useful