I just built a new computer myself and loaded windows xp on it. After having it a couple of days it began to become very unstable cause it to lock up. It began to run bad enough that i reformated the hard drive and reinstalled xp again. Now it locks up during boot up everytime... Starting to beleive that i might have something setup wrong in the BIOS. Is there any thing that causes this that i might be able to fix.

XP1800+
abit kg7-raid motherboard
256mb of ram
64 mb geforce 2 mx 400 video
512 pci sound card
maxtor 20G 7200 hard drive

Thanks Wesley

video card or PSU
Ive had problems with that card
do you have an amd ok'd PSU?

Do you Mean Power supply? If so how could that have anything to do with it? The video card i can see. I have heard nothing but bad things about that card. I hate i bought it now..

the cpu neeeeds alot of power it matters a lot. what kind of ram do you have ddr or pc133?

using DDR ram... I have been reading some articles and i do think that i am little under power. I am using a 300watt psu.

I'm using 400w with no problems.
make sure its amd certified for that cpu when selecting a new one.

Yeah i will do that!!! I am going try to exchange the one i got!!! I just bought this one.. had people tell me that all i needed was a 300W...guess they were wrong..

Thanks for the help!! I would have never thought about the psu.. wesley

Had about the same thing happen to me, The computer shop told me 300w would be plenty!maybe if there was nothing but the board and a HD to power. But with the hot AMD Cpu's we need fans and they use watts! espicially the high rpm ones.

your problem is your geforce card not your power supply...
the geforce drivers have a problem with an infinate loop while running windows XP professional or home edition.
Your solution is to go into your bios. usually hold delete or F2 when you power up and change your AGP from 4X to AGP 2X.
This will solve it I guarantee. You will not be able to get it to run stable in AGP 4X trust me, I have tried everthing!! Until nvidia and microsoft get the drivers squared away you will get BSOD's randomly in AGP 4X.
READ MY OTHER THREAD HERE;
http://computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/20692.html

you are fighting a loosing battle trying to get it to work in AGP 4x...
POWER USER

I went in to my bios and look and it was already set to AGP 2x. Thanks for the Info but i have already gone down and tried everything that i know about my video. Video is what i thought it was from the start but not real sure now. I am going to put in a new psu and try it and if that does not work i am going to buy a new card.

I almost have the exact same computer:

2000+ AMD
KG7R MoBo
Asus GeForce 3
512 DDR
300 watt PSU

The Power supply probably isn't your problem, go to www.abit-usa.com look for the latest BIOS update, and afterwards, clear your CMOS. Then when starting up the computer again, try setting your CPU speed manually. If you still have a problem, try taking out a stick of RAM, then start taking out the PCI cards one by one and test it every time.

Brian

I have had no problems with stability on my dual athlon system. I am using a 300Watt Gem Power Supply and have never had any stability problems with that configuration. My system is a follows.
Dual AMD Athlon 1600+ MP's
512 Megs Crucial registered DDR With ECC
40 GIG WD 7200RPM HDD
60 GIG WD 7200RPM HDD
64meg DDR GEForce 2 GTS
Soundblaster Live
8X Yamaha CD-Writer (It's old, but still works great)
12X Creative Labs DVD
100BT Fibre Optic AMD Ethernet Card

I had the same problem, random hard locks during boot, while in windows, while doing anything really... I saw this Paul's KG7/KR7 FAQ...

http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kg7kr7/instabilities.htm

A few KG7-RAID owners have reported that Athlon XP processors on the KG7 motherboard are unstable when using a FSB of 133, but stable if the BIOS settings are changed to "underclock" the FSB to 100. This can be resolved by increasing the CPU slew rate (Control CPU P/N value) in Advanced Chipset Features to the faster setting (6 or 7). Downgrading to BIOS 5E also resolves this issue. Some also need to reduce the DDR Vcc voltage to 2.52v.
The KG7-RAID runs the memory at 2.65v by default. Is your memory rated at 2.5v? If so, try lowering the DDR Vcc voltage. If this doesn't help, try increasing DDR Vcc voltage to 2.7v or 2.75v in SoftMenuIII!
Load the latest AMD AGP drivers - see drivers section

try that and see how it goes...

Heya,
I've had very similar problems with my pc.
AMD 1.33ghz
512 Sdr 133
Radeon 8500LE 128Ddr
SB PCI 512
k7s5a socket-a
300w PS
40GB 5400 seagate HD
24x12x40 CD-r
16X DVD
XP home
Everytime I enter Half-life: Counter-Strike, GTA3, MOHAA, or any other high quality game I get a squaeky sound loop and scrambled video.
HELP!!!!!

System:
Abit KG7-R
AMD XP 1800+
Crucial 1GB 256MBx4 DDR PC2100 ECC registered
Gainward Geforce 3
Creative SB Live Audigy

Experiencing same instability with XP pro when running memory with ECC disable, blue screen at boot up, systray apps reporting error in all of them, file corruption. Contacted Crucial level 2 tech supp. they presume that no more than 1 dimm is defective and to test w/ simmtester.com ram diag. utility, after many hours of testing each dimm I found no errors with all 4 them. But after using Check only or any other ECC settings the system is stable even running the ram @ CL2 instead @ CL2.5 and also throttle the ram voltage @ 2.52v.
The weird thing I used to run these ram w/ ECC disable for 8 month till 07-12-02.
Any comment on that ?.