I'll answer all questions in my response to SoarPics, David.Thanks for your help.[table][tr][td valign=top]http://www.avsim.com/other/usaribbon.gif[/td][td valign=center]Bob "FlyBert" StilesAVSIM Moderator[/b][/td][/tr][/table]"Don't stall on me, I have to soar!"~Richard Harvey, 1/21/2003

My motherboard is a Soyo K7V Dragon Plus (VIA KT266A chipset). Other than the VIA 4-in-1 pack of drivers, I have no idea of any other motherboard drivers.I believe my 512MB of RAM is a single stick.The driver for the Gainward GeForce4 Ti4200 is NVIDIA 5.2.1.6. An older version of the driver had a couple of round "gauges" for setting overclock, but this driver has me at a loss to even figure out if it is overclocked. Out of "high performance", "performance", and "quality", it's set to "performance. Anisotropic and antialiasing are set to "application controlled". I have resolution set to 1024*768, refresh 75MHz. If further info is needed I can fish it out.The driver for my Voyetra Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card is 5.12.1.461. I had trouble with full hardware sound acceleration locking up MS TrainSim some time back, so that was set to probably a middle position.The system temps are basically at idle, with something fairly simple running, like Solitaire. I suppose being an AVSIMmer, everyone will assume I use FS9, but (I hesitate to admit here) I currently do no flightsimming at all. Hey, I'm the moderator of Racing Fools, and it's not aircraft we race! :-) I just had another lockup a few minutes ago, so since the system was warm and I could enter BIOS and check the temps, I did that and verified that SmartGuardian is not lying to me.Regarding that lockup, it occured during the game of Bookworm, and as usually happens, it locked during a screen animation, not "at rest". And sometimes... but not so much recently... the system will unlock itself after a short period of time, like a minute. It didn't unlock just now, I had to shut down and reboot, and the thing took forever to put all the Desktop shortcuts back on the screen.The amount of apps running doesn't seem to have any bearing on the lockups. It will lock just as easily with only like Bookworm running as with a bunch of stuff on the Task Bar.The system never locks while on the Desktop, or in Paint Shop Pro, WORD, Pretty Good Solitaire or Kyodai Mahjongg (both of which have screen animation), or anything but Bookworm, DVD-watching, or full-screen games like Rally Trophy, which is loaded with animation, of course. And it will fail to lock for sometimes weeks on end, quite unpredictable.If any further information is needed I'd be happy to provide it. I figured Win2K Pro would be bulletproof, but most folks seem to think it's hardware, not software. There we go. All... new... hardware. :-hah Heck, I'm about ready to graduate to WinXP anyway. :-)Thanks all for the help! http://www.handykult.de/plaudersmilies.de/...y/xyxthumbs.gif[table][tr][td valign=top]http://www.avsim.com/other/usaribbon.gif[/td][td valign=center]Bob "FlyBert" StilesAVSIM Moderator[/b][/td][/tr][/table]"Don't stall on me, I have to soar!"~Richard Harvey, 1/21/2003

"I suppose being an AVSIMmer, everyone will assume I use FS9, but (I hesitate to admit here) I currently do no flightsimming at all."Well, then we can't help you!! :-) :-) That was the fun part, Bob. :-( First and foremost, I believe heat can't be ruled out. Though your system temps seem alright, there may be something going on with your video card, or memory, or chipset. I recommend that you first remove the left side cover and place a small house fan nearby to blow fresh air into the case. This is the easiest first trouble shooting tactic to try. Once your fan is placed go into your favorite apps and games. Put the system under as much load as you can... and watch what happens. If you still the have the same crashes then you know to continue trouble shooting. But if after 2-3 days of hard use with the house fan feeding the components fresh air you don't get any crashes we can then start narrowing down the hardware that's causing the problem.After testing with the house fan and still having crashes I would first check your BIOS. The following are some suggested settings, though you may not have all of them in your BIOS (or have a slightly different designation for some). If any of the items listed is not in your BIOS then simply ignore it. The settings listed are safe, and offer a stable and clean configuration:Fast Gate A20 Option : EnabledVideo BIOS shadowing : DisabledVideo BIOS cacheable : Disabledxxxxxx - xxxxxx shadow : All DisabledIDE prefetch mode : EnabledInit Display First : AGPAssign IRQ for VGA : EnabledPCI/VGA palette snoop : DisabledPNP O/S installed : YES or AUTO Video ram cacheable : DisabledSystem bios cacheable : DisabledFast Writes : DisabledAGP Transfer rate : DefaultAGP Bus Turbo Mode: AGP Turbo DISABLED Primary Frame Buffer: VGA Frame Buffer DISABLED AGP Aperture Size: AGP Aperture DEFAULT or 128MBResource Control - AUTOAGP Bus Mastering - ENABLEDDisable any manual configuration of PCI by setting these options to AUTOOnward and upward... if you do get crashes with the house fan you should next install the latest VIA drivers: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=705Before changing video drivers I recommend that you clean away the previous set. It's been some time since I used NFR, but you can get it here: http://download.guru3d.com/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=582. I prefer using DriverCleaner: http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/ (Don't be concerned that it's from a "Radeon" site... DriverCleaner does a great job of scouring your system of nVidia drivers, too.) Make sure you follow the ReadMe instructions thoroughly (I have them printed out so that I can easliy refer to them).With regard to your video card I learned early on that with nVidia drivers the latest may not always be the greatest. For my GF2 card the 12.41's were great, my GF3 card did spendidly with the 23.11's, and my GF4 4600 performed best with the 30.82's. You might give the latter a try on your 4200: http://download.guru3d.com/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=441 They offer great stability, IQ, and performance.The latest drivers for your soundcard are listed in my sig. Get them here: http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/kb_ftp/585ftp.asp Go for the "sc 4193.exe" dated 6-27-03.For temp monitoring you simply can't go wrong with Motherboard Monitor (MBM). Though it can be a bit daunting to set up (because it can do SOOO many things for you), it's well worth the time and effort to have on your system. I have it running in my sys tray as I write this, and I run it alot except when I'm gaming (NOTHING but the essentials run on my system then). Almost a million downloads at Majorgeeks of this great tool says it all. http://www.majorgeeks.com/download311.htmlAnother possibilty to look at is your PSU. Here again MBM can be invaluable. If your PSU isn't consistantly delivering the required voltages on all rails then I would be highly suspicious of it.A word about the IRQ sharing... if Device Manager shows that all is well, then you probably can't do much more. Your only option is to change OS and/or motherboard. I don't believe your problems are ready for those options yet.Phew!!! Well, that should keep you busy for a while. Keep in mind, Bob, that heat can be a very real problem here. The house fan test will probably tell you as much about the problem as all other efforts combined. To be frank, your crashes seem to me to be heat related.And, no... I'm not quite willing to make a wager on that :-) . We are, afterall, talking about computers here. (-: Good luck. We'll be watching for you progress here.Greg

Greg,Thanks loads for all the advice. You've provided quite a list of chores there, and I will go through them piece by piece. I'll have to create a place for a fan to sit next to the open case side, but it's doable. For starters, since hardware sound acceleration did cause grief in the past, I've dropped that from "standard" (I think it was) to "basic". Standard was only one notch under "full".My next step will be to inspect the BIOS settings and compare them to those you listed. I probably have "Crash every couple of weeks" enabled. :-)I do wonder seriously about my video card, however. At some websites (never off-line), the entire browser "vibrates"... everything is slightly fuzzy. But if I like drop the Favorites list, it stops. Some time ago, when that happened it was because something dropped my refresh rate to 60Hz. Putting it back to 72Hz got things back to normal. But something is apparently deteriorating, as even at 75Hz now it still does it. My monitor is a Sony Multiscan 200ES, and while refresh problems could be it, I'm suspicious of the card and considering replacing it. If the monitor was faulty, I'd think it would be a problem regardless of what I was doing. Of course, I'd think that would apply to the card, too.What's the best card these days for like around $200?Anything I do, like use a fan, will take a long time to determine results, as this system can go for weeks without a lockup. But I'm going to stay on top of it, and will report in here with any reults.Thanks once again for all the help![table][tr][td valign=top]http://www.avsim.com/other/usaribbon.gif[/td][td valign=center]Bob "FlyBert" StilesAVSIM Moderator[/b][/td][/tr][/table]"Don't stall on me, I have to soar!"~Richard Harvey, 1/21/2003

Yep, Bob, this isn't something that can always be done quickly. Once you have the left side off the computer you might keep an eye on the video card fan. It might be slowly dying, and would be easy to replace.About the best video card for under $200.00... here's a post I recently made in the "other" hardware forum:"The best bang for the buck today is the 9800 Pro 128Mb. Many vendors (including ATI) are selling them with R360 cores, which means the card can be easily flashed to a 128 Mb XT BIOS. The advantages are that the card will boot at XT speeds, and do so with D3D Pixel Shaders enabled. Sapphire is currently shipping some cards that are even built on the XT PWA, which means when flashed to an XT 128 Mb BIOS the card will have temp monitoring and Overdrive enabled (the latter is pretty much useless, but it's there).Can't beat the performance for $200.00US."Your neighbors over at Newegg have this: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc....-102-268&depa=0This is the closest any of us will come to stealing legally!Good luck,Greg

Greg,It looks like you were right, high temps could not be ruled out.The first thing I did was lower the hardware sound acceleration another notch, but that didn't solve anything. Then I did as you advised and took off the side cover and placed a 6" table fan blowing into it.There hasn't been a hard lock since. :-)For some reason I still get a temporary lock-up... "hesitation" I'll call it... in the game of Bookworm. But it always unlocks itself after 30 seconds or so. And any other problems I've had (not many) are cured by going into the Task Manager and killing the offender.A couple of days ago I stopped using the fan, and so far it's behaving itself. If it does start acting up again I shall turn the fan back on. I continue to wonder if the videocard fan is even turning, as I can't see into the open case when it is on due to it facing a wall, and because of my disability I can't stand and stretch over there to look. But at some point I'll have the thing out here where my keyboard normally sits, and I'll power it up and check all fans.I had no idea it had been so long since this was all discussed here. I had to dig into this forum 13 pages to find this. So I guess I've been using the fan for at least 2-3 months with success. I do believe that has proven something. :-)Much thanks for your and everyone else's help here! http://www.handykult.de/plaudersmilies.de/...y/xyxthumbs.gif[table][tr][td valign=top]http://www.avsim.com/other/usaribbon.gif[/td][td valign=center]Bob "FlyBert" StilesAVSIM Moderator[/b][/td][/tr][/table]"Don't stall on me, I have to soar!"~Richard Harvey, 1/21/2003

Hi Bob,Indeed, it's been quite a while since our original postings on this.Two things come to mind... CPU cooling and video card cooling. When you do get your computer case out where you can better see what's happening the first thing I recommend is the make sure the video card fan is working. Next, keep in mind that dust (very fine and nasty dust) can easily build up between the fins of your CPU heatsink. This will eventually cause overheating. It may be a pain to remove the CPU cooler fan, but well worth the time to make sure it's not packed with dust... like this:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/98550.jpgGood luck and keep us posted,Greg

I have an 3.06 533fsb P4 HT Overclocked at 3.38 with no overheating problems at all. Temps on cpu are around 35C to 50C,156F is thermonuclar melt down for this cpu. But I have the newest Gigabyte 360 degree fan and heatsink. I know that AMD is built for the overclocking the cpu. You most likely get better temps with AMD than the P4 cpu in stock speeds and overclocking speeds. But with the presscot cpu would do not want to overclock this one it already comes out of the box HOTTer then the Northwood. But thats my opinion.