About 6 months ago, I started having problems with one of my computers, a PIII 850 mounted on an MSI 6309 motherboard. Without any warning, the computer would instantly restart.
My first thought was that it was overheating, but the thermal control in the BIOS was disabled. So I figured it must be a software problem, and I formated and reinstalled Win ME. The problem kept becoming more frequent, until finally, it would happen as soon as all of the desktop items showed up after startup, and if I didn't do a forced shutdown, it would just sit there and restart over and over. Even in Safe mode, it would do the same thing.
I updated and relaoded the BIOS, but that didn't make any difference. It would work fine in DOS, but not in the windows environment. So I tried loading Win 95, and that solved the problem, but many of my periferials weren't compatable. Next I tried Win 98, but it had the same problem as ME. Naturally, XP did the same.
I determined that it must be a problem with hardware, and my first guess was the memory. It had 2 banks of 64, which I took out, and tired one at a time, but that had no effect at all. So I figured it must be the MoBo. I found the same MoBo on ebay and replaced mine with this one which was said to be perfectly functional. The problem persisted.
Next it occured to me that it could be the power supply, so I purchased a new power supply, and that still didn't have any effect. Changing the hard disk also had no effect. So I was back to the memory, and I purchased another memory bank and put it in, but still the same problem.
The only 2 pieces of this computer that I haven't changed are the video card and the CPU. I'm starting to get frustrated. :grind: Any ideas?:grind:
My first thought was that it was overheating, but the thermal control in the BIOS was disabled. So I figured it must be a software problem, and I formated and reinstalled Win ME. The problem kept becoming more frequent, until finally, it would happen as soon as all of the desktop items showed up after startup, and if I didn't do a forced shutdown, it would just sit there and restart over and over. Even in Safe mode, it would do the same thing.
I updated and relaoded the BIOS, but that didn't make any difference. It would work fine in DOS, but not in the windows environment. So I tried loading Win 95, and that solved the problem, but many of my periferials weren't compatable. Next I tried Win 98, but it had the same problem as ME. Naturally, XP did the same.
I determined that it must be a problem with hardware, and my first guess was the memory. It had 2 banks of 64, which I took out, and tired one at a time, but that had no effect at all. So I figured it must be the MoBo. I found the same MoBo on ebay and replaced mine with this one which was said to be perfectly functional. The problem persisted.
Next it occured to me that it could be the power supply, so I purchased a new power supply, and that still didn't have any effect. Changing the hard disk also had no effect. So I was back to the memory, and I purchased another memory bank and put it in, but still the same problem.
The only 2 pieces of this computer that I haven't changed are the video card and the CPU. I'm starting to get frustrated. :grind: Any ideas?:grind:
