I have been getting freezes and lockups, most of them have occured when playing Counterstrike, a game that requires heavy graphics. From what I've read, the problem seems to be due to compatability issues between WinXP and the AMD Athlon processors. I have tried downloading patches, I've updated all drives, done all Windows updates, I've even taken the shell off my tower thinking that maybe my CPU is getting too hot. I need some suggestions because I'm clueless. After a freeze (after playing maybe 15 minutes) I restart and it seems to freeze or lockup even quicker, and today it got to the point where it locked up and I couldn't even restart by pushing the button on the tower, I had to turn off the power supply. I need help!

When it freezes, have you gone into the bios to see what the cpu and system temperatures are by using the system/pc health? What are the temps after your computer has been on for a half hour? Is this a new problem or on-going? Have you checked all the fans, including the power supply? How old is the power supply and what is its power output?

There are no compatibility issues between XP and AMD. Your problem is probably mechanical in nature, not software. Capt above has some good suggestions; if your CPU temperature is 65C or above, you have cooling probs and any processor will lock up when you approach the neighborhood of 70. Meltdown is at 85-90. The problem you are experiencing is very typical of bad memory. I suggest the first thing is to get a stick of RAM that you know is good and swap it out with your existing. Even if its a lower clock and amount, if you can boot and play without crashes you have your answer. RAM that has bad addresses will corrupt more with constant use-I have experienced it myself on one of my units. That's why your problem is getting worse. You didn't exactly say, but I assume that normal programs used to run ok, just the games crashed your computer. That's because games stress-out the unit more that anything else you can run, especially the memory. This will get you started; post back with what you find out.

i am having the same problem!!!i just recently bought a ati radeon 7000 and when i play a game with which need heavy graphics it freezes so i got a program called mbm 5 it tells u the temperatures from your motherboard and one the of the sensors show temperatures above 70 degreees celcius and thats when i am only 10 SECS in to the game!so i opened my case up and put an extra fan and everything but it still over heats!!i cant play many of my games due to that...and i dont know what to do.

As for the CPU temp, I just installed Speedfan but I'm not quite sure how it works. I have 6 temp's and they are: 60, 47, 38, 34, -1, 118. All in degrees celcius. I just recently bought a new CPU fan because I broke my last one, but I bought basically a bottom of the market fan which may have been a mistake. If someone could either contact me through MSN(popnfresh48@hotmail.com), ICQ(102216057), or mIRC(Gamesnet.east,#-=LoT=-,I'm einstein) and help me with the the program, I'd appreciate it. I'm not sure which of those fans is the power supply fan, but the power supply is 1.5 years old, just like the computer. I had another person tell me the problem is probably the power supply. As for how long the problem has been going on for, I really only told you 5% of what's happened to me. This has been an ongoing problem with this system for a year now, and it's either affected it in different ways, or i've had a bunch of different problems. I've had freezes and constant blue screen/restarts at different times throughout the past year, and I'd reformat thinking i had a virus but the problem would come back. I tried changing RAM, ended up melting my mobo cuz of a stupid mistake, but I bought a new mobo and new RAM about a month ago. Problem persisted. Brought the computer in to Bestbyte, they "nuked" the harddrive, I payed $140, didn't fix it. Took it in again, they gave me a new harddrive for free (2 weeks ago) and it worked fine for about 10 days. Now in the past 4 days I've been getting these freezes during CounterStrike, and I believe I've had a couple that were not during CS. That's pretty much my problem in a nutshell. Thanks for your help people. As for the power supply output, I'll check that out now.

Ok my CPU temp is 53 after running programs for 30 minutes, but not CounterStrike. One of my other temps went from 60 to 70 in these 30 minutes, but I don't know what temp it is, maybe the power supply? I'm now going to play CS and keep alt+tabbing and checking the CPU temp. As for the voltage, in the BIOS it said my VCORE is 1.74v, if that helps any.

i am ALSO having the same problem. I have windows XP pro, and MSI K7T Turbo2 mobo, and a 1.3ghz T-Bird, and i just got them last week and installed XP. it ran fine at first, but then i my cs freezes 15 minutes into gameplay... really starting to piss me off. i've tried playing in other video modes, nothing. i've gotten every updated driver i can for my comp, nothing. i've closed out every program except cs.. still freezes. i've tried formatting completely and everything, still nothing. im out of solutions. please help me. also, i have 224SDRAM and 2 of the sticks are kind of old. im going to put a 128 stick out of my dad's comp after i post this and try that. my power supply read-out is fine. and my cpu runs at 45 degrees