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Troubleshooting FAQ Added on: Tue Nov 05 2002 |
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Overclocking: Overclocking involves pushing your system past its original specifications. Either by changing the multiplier of your processor, increasing the front side bus speed, or changing voltage and AGP/PCI dividers, overclocking can cause a variety of system issues. Before delving too deeply into troubleshooting, make sure you set your system to its specified speeds for maximum stability.
DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY
Sometimes the problem can easily be fixed, either through a simple driver change, plugin removal, or patch. Below you'll find some general troubleshooting steps to help any issues you may be having.
GENERAL TROUBLESHOOTING STEPS
*** Hardware:
Have you recently added a new piece of hardware? A video/sound/ethernet upgrade? Maybe a new CDROM?
The first thing to do is to remove the new device if problems suddenly occur. Sometimes a new piece of hardware can overpower the systems power supply, causing minute changes in voltage over time, causing processor speed to flucuate and causing all sorts of hidden errors. New PCI cards can cause interrupt problems which result in OS conflicts with some hardware. New ram can be incompatible with your older dimms and cause system instability at a variety of levels.
As always when installing or removing hardware, please make sure you're grounded by touching the metal part of your case.
*** General:
One of the mainstays of troubleshooting conflicts is to reduce the # of variables that could be causing them. When troubleshooting issues its very useful to remove everything from the computer except...1 Primary accelerator card, The cpu/heatsink/fan combo, 1 memory dimm, 1 Harddrive in IDE1 as a MASTER. Add components as you look for possible problems to help see if one particular component is causing an issue.
*** Troubleshooting RAM:
Ram errors can cause a variety of problems. Many of them are incredibly hard to track down, due to the randomness of when and where the memory errors occur. Ram problems can cause, installation problems, application problems, freezes, instability, BSOD's, poor performance, utterly random and inconsistent errors. To troubleshoot ram issues....
Remove all ram dimms except for the newest DIMM in BANK 0/1. (Dimm slot 0 or 1). See if the issue reoccurs. If it does, try each remaining dimm (only 1 in the system in bank 0/1 during troubleshooting) in Slot 0/1 and see if any particular dimm has the issue, or all of them. Through this process you should be able to eliminate bad dimms by a process of elimination.
If it seems as if no particular dimm is causing you problems. Give memtest a try to further diagnose possible ram problems: MemTest86
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