Problems setting up new system:
Details: Motherboard PCChips ECS M860 with Athlon 2800+ CPU (bundled from Misco)
80GB Maxtor HDD (IDE Secondary Master)
Lite-On DVD-Rom/ CD-RW (IDE primary master)
Lite On DVD-RW (IDE primary slave)
XFX GEForce MX4000 128MB Graphics Card
PCI Firewire Card
Windows XP Home (clean install)
300W PSU
1024MB DDR RAM
The motherboard is jumpered to ‘normal’. The BIOS shows everything operating correctly, and the BIOS hardware monitor shows the system temperature regularly at around 30C, CPU at around 49-51C. The AGP aperture is set to 64 as the graphics card will provide more than enough memory for normal applications.
When booting into windows the BIOS runs through its checks (Quick install off) and recognises everything and shows everything as OK. And then the trouble starts. Sometimes it boots correctly, other times it restarts during the boot process and everything keeps running but all I get is a blank screen. And can only turn off the computer by depressing the on button for 10 seconds.
When it does boot into windows it appears normal but then when I input some activity (i.e. open a IE or click on my computer etc, it crashes to the black screen with everything whirring away inside.
I have tried different drivers for the graphics card (the bundled driver, the Microsoft Windows XP driver and nvidia forceware. The problem has not, however, gone away.
I have even tried without any graphics driver and without the graphics card. That would have been my next option for running the PC but the M860 does not have onboard graphics. Without the card I could hear windows boot up correctly.
I clean installed XP onto the HDD (using full NFTS formatting first), and when the problems came I did a repair install to no avail and then another clean install., but the problems persist.
There were no random crashes installing XP.
I am at a loss to know what I have done wrong and any assistance or guidance would be more than welcome.