Thanks for the replies, Brickdust. I've been out of town this past weekend, so I'm a bit late in seeing them. Just to further update (and perhaps give some definitive troubleshooting ammunition): After not being on my computer since Friday, I returned home just now and booted up. I was somewhat surprised when WindowsXP promptly "discovered" practically every piece of hardware in my machine (HDDs, optical drives, etc) except for my sound card and video card. It then re-installed all the drivers and prompted for a reboot. Also, as a side note, I picked up a 160GB HDD from Best Buy (had them on sale for $50, couldn't resist). Just for the heck of it, I tried to load a clean copy of WindowsXP Pro on the drive. The PC locked up before it could even finish formatting the HDD. Just another thing to think about.
I seem to remember reading a lot of people moaning about MSI putting next to no thermal paste on the (I think) northbridge chip. I have an MSI board myself and am getting lock ups in games - same kind of thing you're getting. Display turns off, repeating sound, sometimes monitor won't come back on after restart. But only in games. I've been fiddling with memory sticks and BIOS settings for months to no avail, and my GPU and CPU temps are fine. So I'm thinking it's something else. If there's any way you can monitor northbridge temps that would probably be a good idea. But I am no expert, I could be totally wrong.
FYI for everyone, I've decided to go ahead and upgrade my motherboard. NewEgg.com had a great 4th of July deal so I picked up a much better quality Asus board (also got a good price on another 2GB of DDR PC3200 2x1GB). The motherboard arrives tomorrow, so I'm going to test the northbridge theory tonight by applying some more thermal paste and I'll let you know so maybe you can benefit from it.
To update those following this thread, I did monitor the temperature of the northbridge during the course of the day and, even under stress, the temperature did not exceed 29C, which doesn't seem high to me at all. The southbridge has no active or passive cooling, however the temperature there did not exceed 27C under stress. This did prompt me to check around the internet for the typical symptoms of a northbridge problem and they seem to match up perfectly with my problem. According to what I've read, it's most likely that I have a short in the northbridge. Since this is apparently commonly caused by power spikes, I've purchased a UPS, which I know I should've had anyway because I live in a beach area where the grid is unstable at best. I'm installing my new motherboard tonight. I'll let you all know whether or not the problem persists. If it does, I'm going to give up custom built PCs forever and go buy a Dell, dude
New motherboard is installed and running great. Thanks to all those who helped. I took the motherboard to a buddy of mine who works in a nearby shop. Turns out it really was the northbridge, seems to have been fried a bit, probably by a power surge as expected. I've learned a lot through the course of this, especially regarding the BIOS and a few other tricks for running at top performance. You guys have been great. Thanks!
Hey, just new to the forums after reading this post. im having nearly the same problem tho it crashes whilst plaing a taxing game like bf2 my system is as follows -AMD 64 3200+ skt 939 -Abit AV8 K8T800 Pro chip-set -160gb WD Serial Sata HDD -1 GB dual channel geil HP ram -Albatron 6600GT AGP vid -Antec truepower2 psu 400w -Thermaltake venius 12 CPU HS/F the comp is in the shop getting [bold]"fixed"[/bold] atm tho it has been there for a while. i have a good case thermaltake shark and cooling is not a problem. i have tried different psu with varying 12V rail amp ratings to no avail. any help would be tops.
Sorry if this has already been suggested, but if you can replace the motherboard. I had similar problems with my pc and it was the motherboard. Some places will let you return it as well if its not the problem.
Yeah i hope the tech's at my local replace it or try out another. its only a new comp and everything is under warnety. i didnt build it my self.
