I have a Athlon 1700+ on a ABIT KG-7 board, with 512MB, 2 30GB hard drive(Maxtor), Soundblaster Audigy eX Platinum, TDK 24x12x40x CDRW, ATI RADEON 7500DDR (64MB), a 300W power supply, and running Win98SE. My computer keeps locking up on me at random times...No real set times such as high workload or anything...just randomly. It also has started to make a long continuous beep whenever when it locks up, but only recently. Do you think I might need a larger power supply? or could anyone think of anything else? This is driving me nuts...any ideas or questions, feel free to offer advice. Thanks

hello john, normally a continuous beep means one of three things...either your power supply is bad, it is not plugged into the motherboard correctly, or the keyboard is stuck. sorry this is so general.see if you can find a POST error number...normally if you find one that begins with a 3, like 301, you have a keyboard problem. don't know if this will help...

I would be inclined to suspect the power supply or an overheating problem with the processor fan. The beep is probably the motherboard alarm. Does your motherboard have a utility program that tells you the temperature settings and voltages and stuff ? Might be called Hardware Health or similar. This would be a good place to start to see what is going on when the beep sounds.

I think that checking the temp of your processor is a good idea. I’d also check the thermal connection between your CPU and it’s heat sink fan and, while you’re at it, the edges of the CPU core. What type of bios does your MOBO have? Sometimes, beep codes can be helpful (http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/sys/beep/index-i.htm) but if your CPU is chipped/cracked/damaged etc, a number of beep codes are possible. With both AMI and Award BIOS, one long beep can mean a memory problem. Checking to see that your memory is seated well and trying other sticks (if possible) is a good idea. I don’t think your power supply is inadequate.

A 300 watt PSU may or may not be adequate for your setup. AMD processors draw a lot of current from the 5v and 3.3v lines. Check the total wattage output for +5V and +3.3V as listed on the PSU label, for a XP you should have at least 130W (i.e. 5V x 5V-line-currrentA + 3.3V x 3.3V-line-currentA) plus another 50W for the AGP card and 25W per PCI card. For a list of PSUs approved by AMD go to http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_869_1039^1053,00.html As a simple rule of thumb, if your fan changes note (i.e. speed) depending on the precessor load then your PSU is either overloaded or on the limit. AMDs are also quite choosey about RAM and cheap generic RAM can give problems. Assuming that you have 2 sets of 256MB you could try removing one and putting it into different slots. RAM gets hot too and a different slot may have better cooling. Good luck