For the past two to three months I have had a hell of a time with computer crashes while running flight simulator and other programs.I have an Asus P4G8X motherboard, 2.8Gz Pentium 4, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, Creative Audigy 2 Platinum, 1Gb RAM and 2 Serial ATA harddrives (Seagate Barracuda 120 Gig & 160 Gig). At first, I just had the 120 Gig drive, and I experienced no problems for the the first 5 or 6 months after I built the computer. After trying to install new chipset drivers from the Asus website, my registry was scrambled.I got a second drive while reinstalling all my software, but being new to Serial ATA, I did not create a RAID set in the BIOS, so Windows XP detected each drive separately, rather than one massive drive. After reinstalling Windows XP and flight simulator, all the problems started. In flight simulator, the computer would seize, the image would freeze on the screen and the sounds would vacilate between the sound of the jet engine and high pitched background noise, almost like radio static in an old AM set.Occasionally, while downloading files from here and from flightsim.com, through Netscape, the computer would also sieze and the screen would go black. I tried every thing I could think of to fix the problem, updating Windows XP, updating all the drivers, etc. No luck.Last weekend, I learned my error about the RAID setup in the BIOS, and created a stripped RAID set (losing all the data on both hard drives in the process). The computer ran beautifully, and FS was awesome.But last night, after installing Jeppseon simcharts, and my Lago terramesh, Venice, Bologna and Turin sceneries, the problem came back. Even netscape crashed once. I removed the modules that that the Logo sceneries deposited in FS2004, but it still crashed. I am completely stumped by this. Does anyone have any ideas about how I can fix this problem?ThanksMike Gutierrez

It's possible that your problems are hardware rather than software related. If the PC was running basically OK until you added the new hard drive(notwithstanding the registry problem) it may be that the PSU is struggling a bit to keep up with the increased demand . If the PSU is not perhaps powerful enough it can have the effect - at times of high demand - of allowing the +3.3V a +5V rails to drop a little and this can in some cases produce exactly the effect you are getting.Check the specs on your PSU - it needs really to have a TCO (total combined output) for 3.3 and 5V of 180W or more - if it is a good quality PSU these figures will be included on the label.Altho the HDD is on 12V a higher demand for 12V can cause a drop in the other lines if the PSU is unable to cope.The other possibilty is excess CPU heat- again this can produce similar effects tho I believe less likely with a Pentium ( AMDs seem more prone to this).Adding the extra HDD may have altered the air flow inside your case causing a build up of heat - the HDD itself will be producing more heat that needs to be got rid of.Download and install Motherboard Monitor 5 - free d/l here...http://www.downseek.com/download/21068.aspIt will give you continuous a readout of CPU/System/HDD temps and all voltages and also produce a text log so you can look back after a system crash or lockup and see exactly what was happening at that moment.Good luckDave

Though it does sound like the raid problem since it started working after you reset it all back up, I would definitely run a memtest on it. A simple google search of memtest should bring up some freeware. Ram problems can easily cause the problems you are talking about and that would be the first thing I would check. I'm sure you have installed all the drivers for the mobo and everything else.__Josh

Yes, please make sure that all of your drivers are up to date! Testing your memory is also a very good idea but sometimes these memory test programs miss something so even if your testing comes out ok I would shut off your computer, pull out the memory in the second slot, start your computer and and see of you can make it crash, shut down again and replace the memory module with the one you pulled out and test again. This is assuming that you have two sticks of memory, obviously with one stick this will not be possible. I find that this is the best way to make sure memory is not the culprit. On a few occasions memory checking software said that my memory was fine but by switching and testing the memory I found that there was an actual problem with one of the modules. Please also do as the others have said above, make sure your power supply is sufficient and verify that you are not getting an over heat situation due to restricted airflow or something. One thing I would also check into as I am not sure about this myself, but I once heard that in a RAID set up you are better off having two identical drives. I have always had identical drives when I have dealt with Raid set ups so I am not sure if this can be an issue or not. Good Luck!Philip Olsonhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg