The file contains a load of hieroglyphics and some text about the processor type, MB manufacturer etc. Does this mean anything, there is to much to post.

Dan

Latest: The PC has just hung in MS Word 2003. There was a dark patch of screen, about a charcter high and a few cm's long, with scramblrd text in it.

A graphics card problem? I hate computers, grrrrrrrr.

Appreciate the help of fellow Scoobynetters though, what would I do without your support?! Answer: Build a new PC, but as this one would be fine if it worked, I don't want to go down that route.

Have you updated the agp and video card drivers yet?

Run the PC in safe mode for a while and see if you still get the problem...... by running the PC in safe mode it won't be using any drivers so if it still reboots it will be a hardware problem.

If possible ask your friend to try your video card in his PC and even try his in yours, if the problem moves with the card then you have found the problem :)

If it does it with another video card in your PC then it's your motherboard (which I would lay my money on).

The AGP and video drivers are updated, the only thing I still haven't managed to figure out is how to create a CD boot disk with memtest86 on it.

Help me please!!!

Dan

Anyone?

Sorry been busy over the last week. Do you have a floppy drive on your machine ?

I have now managed to get memtest86 onto a boot disk and ran it for 12 hours with no errors. Also ran another memory test that teported no problems.

Following this I decided to slow the AGP down from 8X to 4X, after reading of other peoples problems with random re-boots. The PC has not so far re-booted, why would this make a difference? Could it be a compatibility problem between the 9800 pro and the motherboard?

I really want to run the AGP at full speed, but will be happy in the short term if the problem is worked around with this change.

At least you may have found the problem, it is the usually the hardest part !!! I have read many times the 4x/8x issue and it may be just an issue you cannot resolve. Try downloading aquamark3 and run a benchmark test on 4x and then 8x and report the two results on GPU and CPU scores and you will have an idea if there is any real world difference in performance. You can update the bios again to the latest version but a small dip is speed for stability is far better.

Good luck

I ran some tests a while ago when Far Cry came out, and there is pratically no difference running at 4x compared to 8x.

Maybe 1fps at the most, but that could just be benchmarking error - you certainly wouldn't tell when playing the game.

So, leave it on 4x and don't worry about it! :)

Go to www.download.com and look for programs that stress test your PC - SiSoft Sandra is a very good one. It can do what is called a Burn In test - this pushes each component to see if any of them fail. With Sandra you can also do each test individually.

Try to do something that you know makes the PC crash - this is your "crash test" - then you start trying each component and then doing your "crash test" and eventually you will narrow it down.

The other thing to do is run the machine in safe mode and run a few progs and do something memory/hard drive intensive (photoshop is good for memory, copying very large files to anothe partition or drive is a good test too).

Also the strange bar with scrambled text may be some dodgy spyware search thing, it's supposed to be a hidden browser window but is usually badly written - I have seen it a lot on my PC Repair travels recently!

iirc...there is a program actually called Burn In Test professional there found it :)

Sandra 2005 can be seen here
Hope some of that helps!

Cheers guys, I will run the tests and report back.

I ran 3dmark03 at 4X then 8X AGP and the 4X setting gave me a higher score, 4023 against 3934, work that one out!!!

Still working and no reboots for 3 days now, the problem must be with the graphics card and 8X AGP setting.

Now running at 4X AGP, with little or no loss in performance and running perfectly.

Would still like to know why it doesn't run at 8X though!

You could try running 8x and disable fast writes which is a cause of many crashes.

you're not running windows then :lol1:

:)