My setup is :
ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard
Pentium IV 3.00 GHz Prescott processor
2x 512 Mb RAM
Seagate Barracuda 160 Gb SATA Hard Drive
Plextor PX716A DVD burner (IDE)
ATI Radeon 9600 XT graphics adapter
(external 250 Gb Hard Drive through USB 2.0)
I have installed Windows XP slipstreamed with Service Pack 2. I have NO internet connection, so no other Windows updates outside SP2.
My problems :
1. System freezes unpredictably. How do you like that ? Sometimes it goes on for hours, sometimes not. No error message, just everything frozen, mouse doesn't move, hell even the keyboard's "Num lock" diod can't be switched off anymore. Ctrl Alt Del doesn't work, the only solution is a hard reset.
I have tried turning off graphic acceleration, I have tried disabling my built-in Audio device (played DM without sound for quite some time
![Sad :(](./images/smilies/icon_e_sad.gif)
Which brings me to problem number 2 :
2. After resetting, sometimes my HD would not be detected, so the computer would not boot at all ! It seems this happened most frequently when my USB external HD was connected when the freeze occurred (but maybe I'm just tripping here).
I MAY have solved this problem by flashing my mainboard's BIOS to the latest version, featuring a "Patch for SATA HDD detection error". With my updated BIOS, I did not encounter this error... until today.
3. Finally, something that could be very misleading : when I inserted an Audio CD in my optical drive, the system REBOOTED ! After reboot, the CD played fine in Win Media Player 10 (haven't even finished installing all my software so using this for now). The guilty CD was "Original Pirate Material" by The Streets (damn good by the way). I am not sure this is too great a problem, I have tried another Audio CD and it didn't cause any trouble. Miught be connected to some Audio CD protection, although I checked the CD cover and found no mention of any kind.
This is where I am : this morning I tried another Audio CD and it played fine. I tried a DVD, played fine but the system froze !
Upon resetting, the bootup was extremely slow. Having waited a minute or two and still stuck in front of a black screen with the little white dot blinking in the top left corner, I reset again.
Tried to enter BIOS setup, worked but was very slow.
Rebooted, then my HD was NOT DETECTED !!!!
What is going on ?
I tried to make a virus scan, but the system froze during the scan !!!!
What can I do ? Does this seem to be a RAM issue ? How do I know ?
Thank you for any help, I'm really on the brink of losing it...