Just got my PC, its sort of "freezing"

[jdmhotness]

So I just got my PC peiced together, well I ordered most the parts and had a friend put it together for me

its a 2.6GHZ amd, 1g ram, msi k7n2 delta2 mobo, 450w power unit, geforce 5200fx, old cd-rw and dvd player and western digital 80hd

im not to good with computers, but...everything seems to be running smoothly, installed windows xp yesterday, but like every now and then the screen will sort of flash and freeze for a second.

also, i play starwars galaxies online and it does the same thing, just freeze for about 2-4 seconds then go back to normal, im running a dsl connection, but since its doing this sometimes not online i dont think that has much to do with it?

i also download'd the nvidia new driver package from there site

it seems to do this under a load, or when im doing something not just when im sitting here doing something simple like type.

ideas? or things to check out?

 

[Trotter]

Sounds like your CPU is maxing out. Have you tried getting rid of all of your autostarts?

Click START, RUN, type "MSCONFIG", click STARTUP tab, uncheck everything except your anti-virus and firewall (and stuff you really need, like broadband driver, mouse driver, stuff like that), APPLY, OK, choose the option to reboot. When the desktop comes up, you'll get a gray box (system configuration utility), just check the 'do not show or run' box then OK.

You system should go through the complete boot a little quicker, and all of the background crap should be gone.

 

[jolancer]

no way... even at full load a computer doesnt freeze, it still works but just slowly.

perhaps your pagingfiles ar disabled. i never had a freezing problem but i have disabled pagingfiles for variouse testing reasons and windwos does work slower with it disabled. just go here to check --->

/start/settings/control pannel/system/advanced/performance settings/advanced/virtual memory/change

wile your in there you may as well change it to an even min/max level if its already not, to avoid fragmentations... set it to.... 1024 min/ 1024 max (make shur you click the "set" button after you done otherwise it wont apply)
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also, if your using your old harddrive, but you didnt reformat... that could prolly cause some problems as well because all your old drivers are still on it. Especially if you install a new motherboard, you should reformat your drive, if its not already.

 

[jdmhotness]

I just loaded windows xp on here, so iv only got 5 things listed on my startup programs

I changed the numbers you told me about, they were set something like 1533 to 3548 or something around there, didnt write them down, but now they are both 1024, hopefully that will help...can you explain to me what that is in idiot non-computer guy terms?

also, another guy from my school was setting up the bios, and set the video card to use 256mb of my ram i believe, should this be okay since i have 1gig, or not enough for it? anything else i should set with the bios? and how exactly do i get into the screen to change things for better performance, or should i just leave this alone?

thanks guys

 

[jolancer]

Yes, you should check the bios. you motherboard book tells you witch button to hold down durring startup in order to reach the Bios screen.

Or even at the post screen it may tell you. when mine boots up... the post screen that looks like DOS and detects a list of items also has this showing at the top....

DEL->SETUP

indicating to hold down 'delete' key to enter Bios setup.

if you dont have a clue witch button it is cause it isnt shown anywere, holding down random keys will not harm it.... if need be just restart each time and try 'Delete' 'F2' or 'F1' . I think those are most common.
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Once your in bios, i think almost all bios's nowadays also has an option on the front page called "Load optimal Defaults". Witch you should use, and if anything is set rong it will fix. pritty much thats simply all you have to do.

Especially if you had other ppl messing around in your bios.

and no, the Video apature size in the bios should not be set to 256mb. Though it will not harm anything to set it that high, it wont performa optimally. "Load optimal Defaults" will reset this anyway.
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and in your first post i just noticed you said its a 2.6ghz AMD. Right know im thinking that you assumed it was 2.6GHZ because you arnt familiar with AMD's. Do you mean a AMD Athlon 2600+ ??? (a 2600+ prolly runs at about 1.8GHZ) because AMD's only run at around 2GHZ. if you actually are running at 2.6GHZ that means someone who was messing in your bios overclocked your CPU. witch would most likely be the cause of your computer freezing. "Load Optimal Defaults" will also reset this to normal.

check this by going into /start/control pannel/system/general (and see what GHZ it shows

or go to /start/run/ 'type' [dxdiag] 'enter' (see what GHZ it shows for the proccessor

or you can download CPU-Z, witch will tell you even more about yoru hardware, and its freeware.... http://www.cpuid.org/cpuz.php
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the pagingfiles that you changed earlyer to 1024, is the amoun of Harddrive space designated to be used like RAM, once the RAM runs out of space.... but its also used constantly for normal system stuff that isnt important enough to go into ram, leaving more RAM free for important programs, or resourcess.

2 gigs of Virtual memory is most common and more then enough for normal people.
Virtual mem = RAM + Pagingfiles
so if you have 512ram, set paging to 1536min/max. if you have 2GB's of ram, leave pagin at 512min/max... because the system always needs some paging files.

 

[Nubius]

Do you mean 2600+ XP? The only 2.6GHz AMD is the FX-55 which is currently about $850+

 

[jolancer]

Aaah... i just had another thought.

if others were doing stuff to your computer thy could have enabled the overclocking feature for your nvidia card.

and i remember a long time ago i messed around with that o/c feature on a little older Nvidia card just for the hell of it. and wat it did was caused the exact symptoms your describing ingames. you can check this just by going to....

/control pannel/display/settings/advanced/geforce (and see if there is a "Clock Frequencys" option in the that popout collume with all the tabs.

 

[diabloII]

"msi k7n2 delta2 mobo"

duh...

 

[Nubius]

it was more of a rhetorical question

 

[jdmhotness]

Okay, makes sense about the overclocking...im doing to go try the reset on it...the computer has shut down twice under load playing starwars galaxies...

let me try it here and ill get back to you guys, thanksssss

edit*

okay, i just went in and hit F7, which was "optimized option"

I did it on the main screen, then the video card one, which the guy set to 256mb and after i hit f7 it went to 64mb, is this okay?

Then I was in another screen and his f7 and it changed my AGP setting to PCI...well my card is AGP so I set it back to AGP, is this okay?

hopefully it cures this, im gonna go test it out now