I have been having the following problem for weeks, and I am in desperate need of help. I am very dependent on my computer, and it has not been working for a good time. I need as much or as little help as anyone can offer. Here is the background of my problem:

Originally, I had an AMD Athlon T-Bird 1 Ghz processor, with 256 MB of RAM, a Soyo Motherboard (with a VIA chipset), and an ATA/100 60GB Maxtor HD with Windows 2000 Professional Edition. I had been using the heatsink that came with my computer, and with summer coming up (and my new involvement with Folding@Home, a distributed computing project), I decided it would be good to purchase a new heatsink and fan for my computer. I went to crazypc.com and bought a Thermalright SK-6 all-copper heatsink, and a Delta 8000 RPM fan (due to the high speed of the fan, I connected it through a 4-pin power cable, rather than my motherboard). When the components arrived, installed them, and my computer worked normally. I was disappointed that the difference in cooling was little, until I realized that I had installed the fan upside down, and it was forcing air up rather than down into the heatsink. So I flipped the fan around, and restarted the computer. As I had removed my Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 (USB) joystick to work on the machine, the computer asked me to reinstall its drivers (even though they had been installed already). I had to reinstall them multiple times till the joystick worked. I then opened up Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 Pro, flew for a little while, and then my monitor went black, and the computer began to reboot. I didn't think much of it, until this also occurred again, this time while I was using Internet Explorer. I came to realize that my computer restarted every time I attempted a processor-intensive activity, most notably running Folding@Home (see http://folding.stanford.edu), as this was constantly using my computer's idle space. Sometimes the computer would simply restart, other times I would receive a blue screen of death with the words "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL." Soon, I was unable to boot my computer. I fiddled around in BIOS a little, changing random settings, until my computer booted again. However, I still had the original problem (except I wasn't getting blue screens anymore). I figured that maybe I had done something to the motherboard, or was too rough with the processor when changing the fan, so I decided to go and spend $300 for a new Shuttle AK35GT Motherboard, an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ processor, and 256 MB of PC2100 RAM. This, I felt, would eliminate the problem, from wherever it was occurring. I reassembled the new system, and, low and behold, had the same problem (the only parts that remained from the old system were the power supply, the fan, the 10/100 NIC, the CD-RW, HD, and LS-120 drive, and the video card (a Creative 3D Annihilator GeForce 2 with 64 MB of RAM). I had heard the AMD processors need a large power supply in order to be stable, and so I figured that maybe the 8000 RPM fan was sucking too much power (even though it wasn’t connected to the motherboard). So I disconnected the 8000 RPM fan and replaced it with a 6000 (still using the same heatsink). I powered on the computer. Now, the computer would go though normal startup, freeze at the point that Windows begins to boot. I tried using my Windows 2000 CD to repair/reformat the drive, however after setup begins and loads the drivers that it normally does, a message is displayed saying “Starting Windows 2000 Professional Edition,” at which point the computer freezes. If I put in the CD-ROM, and opt not to boot from CD, I go as far as the Windows 2000 logo screen at which point I receive another blue screen of death with the message KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT HANDELED, with a reference to hal.dll. I tried loading Red Hat Linux on the computer in place of Windows, and the computer restarts as soon as I begin setup.

Now I am stuck – my computer will not boot, and even if I could get my computer to boot, my original problem would not be solved. I need help, I have spent so much money trying to fix the problem and have gotten nowhere. Here are my personal theories about what could be causing the problem: 1) The Power Supply (300W) is not supplying enough power to power the processor, and it crashes due to this. 2) There is a conflict between my video card and the chipset (VIA KT333) on my motherboard.

Any suggestions? Am I heading in the right direction? Do I need to replace something else? Does anyone have any other theories? How can I get my system to accept the Windows and/or Linux CD? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you very much in advance for assisting me with this relentless problem.

I would do more hardware troubleshooting.

Sometimes there are issues with different pieces of hardware, for no apparent reason.

You have to eliminate the possibilities one hardware component at a time. I would remove everything, re-seat it all, and try some different combinations. Try using some different parts from another computer. Try a different PSU. Im sure you have a buddy that has stuff laying around. You might want to flash your BIOS to ensure that its not corrupted.

CHECK EVERYTHING. I've had to go primitive on my computers ass to fix it. Good luck

My theory: There might be something up with your harddrive. I had a harddrive get corrupted once, and the corruption happened in a block that Win98 was installed into. I knew that the HD was corrupt by the process of random guess, combined with some scandisk, so I formatted. I reinstalled Win98, and it did a magic trick. It actually managed to reinstall itself into the bad sector of the hard drive. I had to format again, this time I ran Norton Disk Doctor off of a boot disk, it marked the bad sector, and now the harddrive works fine, along with the rest of the comp.

Another theory: You mentioned HAL.dll. If there is a problem with that, your in a fix. HAL.dll is the "Hardware Allocation Layer." I am not too sure about what it does beyond what I can figure from its name. I got a message with HAL.dll about 3 days after upgrade to XP, had to reformat. Of course, did not know about the repair option, so don't know if that would fix it. This is before I even knew about bootable CD's though, so I just reformatted and though "please work."

I doubt there is a conflict with your video card and mobo. When troubleshooting, take everything out except harddrive, CPU, one stick of RAM, and video card. I might have missed some other things to leave in there, so use common sense. Also, when in BIOS, there should be an option that says "PnP aware OS" or "Plug and Play aware OS" or something like that. Make sure that is disabled, because if it is on, it can cause a lot of problems on a VIA chipset. After I flashed my BIOS, that was set enabled, my comp would crash if I tried to do anything after boot that involved CPU usage, such as change display properties. You need to have the VIA mobo drivers installed though. If your comp won't even boot so that you can get into BIOS, go primitive. Do that and still can't access BIOS, and you might be in trouble then.

Thanks. I have done some research on the "HAL" or Hardware Abstraction Layer, and initally belived that the problem was being caused by an IRQ conflict. However, this does not explain why the conflict only occured when I was trying to do something processor intensive. Besides, I don't recieve any blue screens when the computer restarts under such circumstances. My idea was this: the processor generates more heat when it is doing computations, so it must need more energy. Due to the fact I have the faster fan in the computer, there is not enough energy availible for the processor to operate at high sppeds and it restarts itself (one of my questions then is, does the processor need more energy when it needs to do complex computations?). How large a power supply is adequate for my processor with the equipment I listed? I will try swapping video cards and removing the Ethernet Card - hopefully that will do something (though it's unlikely it will solve my original problem). On the hard drive idea...I could reformat my HD with a boot disk, but then I am in an even greater mess if the system will still not accept the Windows 2000 CD or Linux. I personally belive there is not an error with the HD, as that explains the Windows problem, but not the original (computer retstarting only when it is running at full capacity), nor is the Linux CD-ROM issue explained. On the note of a hardware conflict, I personally don't feel this is likely, due to the fact that it only occurs when the processor is at high capacity. Then I am left with the power supply issue, I guess? Has anyone every heard of such an issue occuring between an AMD Athlon and a power supply? What are the symptoms of an Athlon becoming "unstable" due to an adequate lack of power? Is there still a chance it is a hardware conflict? Is it worth the risk to try and reformat, dispite the evidence? Any comments, assistance, or help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Well, I was right...I do need a new power supply. I brought my processor down to a 100 Mhz Bus and and it works fine. Move it back up to 133 and it won't even boot. Everything is working fine now, I even have the processor thing resolved. As for the error message, I rid myself of that by telling the BIOS to recheck the hardware configuation. Thanks for everyone's help.