Athlon 64 - Keeps restarting

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katarn85

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Hi,
I just went to a computer fair and bought a rather serious upgrade for my pc.
The previous specs were:
- Athlon XP 1800+ with compatible motherboard
- 102 GB HDD
- 512 MB DDR RAM
- DVD-ROM
- DVD+/-RW


I bought an Athlon 64 3000+ and a socket 754 motherboard (ASUS K8N), and another stick of RAM (256 MB).

Now, for some reason, it gets to the options screen for starting windows XP on the old hard disk and when i click "start windows normally" or any of the other options, it just restarts.

A friend of mine told me a would need to reformat, but when i put the CD in, it gets to "Inspecting your current system configuration" then after a while restarts.

I cant work out what else to try, the power supply is 350W ATX so i dont think its overheating or anything, and it restarts at exactly the same point each time so i dont think its a memory problem (i've tried having just the new stick in, and just one of the old sticks to make sure).

Also, when i remove the hard disk completely it still restarts if i run the XP setup at exactly the same point.

I used an old windows 95 boot disk and that boots to the A:, but i cant read the hd (probably because its NTFS).

Any help would be great, i'm getting pretty annoyed with it atm.

Cheers,
D
 
, and another stick of RAM (256 MB).

um.. what do you mean by that? if it's an athlon xp 1800 with a 256 mb ram. i'm pretty sure thats a ddr 100. If you got another mem stick without knowing what it is, it's could been anything from ddr100-400. Man. if you're really putting in a ddr100 and a ddr400 ram , it won't really help ya .

what speed mem 256s did you buy. you sure you got the right type?
 
i'm pretty sure thats a ddr 100.
dude ddr 100 is old as hell.....an XP 1800+ would take a minimum of like PC2100 which is DDR266 so either we're not communicating on the same level or you are extremely out of date there geo.... But all in all we do still need to know what make and speed the 'new' ram stick you bought is. You gotta realize the new processors are power hungry so it could be that that little 350w power supply aint cuttin it especially if you have a small +12v rail...that would easily cause restarts especially with a heavy system so if your +12v rail only has a rating of 15a or lower I'd suggest you look into getting a new PSU....
 
Well the stick i got was:
"256MB PC3200 CL25" (does the cl25 mean anything?) - i cant actually find a brand name but the chips all have "M&S" on them if that helps.

As i said, i did actually try it without that stick in, using one of the old memory sticks instead which is:
"elixir 256MB DDR - 266MHz CL2.5"

As for the psu, it says in the mb guide that the minimum required is 300W so if i have a better cpu than they used to calculate that requrement then i guess it could be the cause of the problem, i'll buy a new one tomorrow and see what happens.
 
well that's just the MOTHERBOARDS manufacturer saying it requires atleast 300w...that's not even counting the CPU, graphics card, hard drives, cd-rom, dvd-roms all that kind of stuff..but the way that CL25 is actually CL2.5 which means Cas Latency 2.5 ValueRam is usually at 3 so yours is pretty decent ram..thats what my 256 stick is actually...however...you are trying to mix two different speeds of RAM together which being socket 754 I don't know if that has something to do with it or what, but since one is PC3200 and the other is PC2100 you really need to get rid of that PC2100...try and sell it if you can for really cheap you'd be surprised what people will buy. That ram could be top of the line for someone who has a really old system looking for some cheap RAM. So yeah I would say that huge gap between PC2100 and PC3200 isn't good either.

Have you tried putting in JUST the 256mb stick? I would try that. That other memory is MUCH too slow especially with an AMD64 system man so just get rid of that alltogether and I'm sorry if throwing away 512mb stick of RAM seems like quite the Sacrifice, but in this instant it just won't due. Try out just that other piece of 256mb RAM and see what happens. Also there is a program called memtest86+ that you make as a bootable CD or Floppy that starts before windows to test the RAM, you should try each stick seperately to see if one or the other gets any errors. I can't stress enough though...it's pointless to leave in the PC2100....sell it off.....buy better......so unfortunately yes this means you're stuck with only 256mb but hey atleast you got PC3200 mines PC2700 at the moment :p

(Told you it'd be PC2100 geo :p)

M&S doesn't ring a bell and I can't think of what company that might be. The only thing I could find is a site called M&S Computer at www.mscomputer.com but I doubt that's the manufacturer of the RAM. Eitherway since it's not a well known brand then who really knows how good it is. So in the future you need to get a good brand like Corsair, Kingston, Geil, or OCZ are all good brands to consider.

Try and stick with CS2.5 RAM as that is pretty good especially considering your system unless you want top performance then you get high performance ram with CS2 and I don't even want to go into the other timings required in the full extent of ram vs ram so you should read up on it :)
 
dude ddr 100 is old as hell.....an XP 1800+ would take a minimum of like PC2100

um. yeah.. about that. my old 2001 compaq xp 1800 is running on a stick of ddr100 128mb and ddr110 128 mb. So it could be that he has one of those.
 
um. yeah.. about that. my old 2001 compaq xp 1800 is running on a stick of ddr100 128mb and ddr110 128 mb. So it could be that he has one of those.

Well then you badly need to upgrade(not that you didn't know that)....if you look above...as he stated...he was using PC2100 which is exactly what I guessed he would be using....also yours is a 2001 Compaq machine...he never specified whether his was built by dell, compaq, company like those or self built....so that would also have something to do with it. Not only that but since you have a Compaq board, if he did infact build it himself then that compaq board would be complete crap compared to whatever was built for him and would more than likely support the higher rated RAM.

Considering in your specs you say 'I dunno mobo' I'm also going to assume that has something to do with it.....I assumed if he bought his own motherboard and that type of CPU he knows somewhat what he's doing and has built a computer and therefore I assumed his previous computer was no company built but rather built himself or by someone else that didn't work for Dell or compaq or anything.

So basically I'm saying the reason you have such old and crappy RAM in your machine is because it was bought through compaq...simple as that...if his was built by a company and sent to him like compaq then I guess compaq just sucks worse than whoever built his....other than that it more sounds like it was built by someone who knew what they were doing...got a newer motherboard that was made to support that 1800+ XP and even past that and therefore supported faster RAM.....

Besides geo...it wasn't a personal attack against you I was merely pointing out a fact that it was fairly unreasonable that he would have that old of RAM although it turned out you do.
 
Besides geo...it wasn't a personal attack against you I was merely pointing out a fact that it was fairly unreasonable that he would have that old of RAM although it turned out you do.

jeez. thx for being so nice. I didn't even know what a cpu was at 2001. so how the hell was i supposed to know what COMPAQ was?? i just bought a comp that my dad recommended and got that. All i needed that was to write essays at the speed of 2 words per minute.

okay sry. i kinda got high there :p
Hmm.. because i wasn't really fond of comps back at 2001, i'm not sure what was the highest speed mem in 2001. Okay, i'll admit , i wasn't really sure of what i was talking about when i was writing that post. But i had proof to back it up that it could've been a ddr100. Just because it was customized doesn't mean it would've been the "best" memory stick available. He could've just got one from like best buy or circuitcity at a rebate. He didn't give us any detail in his first post so i was making some suggestions. Can't hurt to help you know...:(

P.S. I only became fond of computers at hmm. lets see. July this year. Hey, it was a pretty fast improvement in the knowledge of computers with the fact that i made my own comp like 2 month after i learned what a PSU was. (PSU- Penn State University, i live at the campus of Penn State Unniversity)
 
jeez. thx for being so nice.
lol and that truly is me being nice :D I guess I'm just too honest I suppose... none to worry, back in 2001 I didn't know what I do now that's for damn sure. I'm pretty sure I was using a 133MHz Intel and that's about all I remember about it...not even sure how much RAM it had. My first AMD was a 750MHz Duron and I had no idea what that meant...I didn't know half as much as I did from back in July also coincidentally.. I was afraid to buy a new motherboard because I didn't know where to put the front panel connectors or how big of PSU I needed or about the rails in general on a PSU. I was deathly afraid of reseating a heatsink or messing with the processor. I didn't know how many molex connecters a PSU would have or how the fans had run through connectors...and now I'm overclocking :p I've learned more in the past 3 almost 4 months than I ever have on computers, now I've built many systems have gone through many motherboards, and have built an AMD64 system for someone across the country :D Man was I surprise when RAM had timings...I was confused as all hell lol
 
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