strage cpu problem

[crockett]

well, I figured out the problem but wondering if anyone has ever had the same thing happen before...

I have a athlon 1.3 Tbird that runs once the OS is installed but it crashes when trying to install any OS... I have trouble shooted the heck out of it, tried every combo I can come up with, mobo's/ram/OS's/HDs everything and nomatter what if I use this cpu it crashes on install... but if I use another cpu to do the install then swap it back in, it runs..

pretty strange if you ask me.. I havn't done any benchmarks or anything to see how the cpu preforms, but it seems to run ok after the OS is installed. Anyone else ever have this happen?

[Martoch]

Question...how do you know that your cpu is crashing while installing Windows? What signs/symptoms are you getting that would indicate a cpu failure? I'm not saying you're wrong, but more detailed info on the crash might help...

Just a thought!
Mike

[howste]

One thing that happens during install that often causes crashes is the hardware detection. Just as another troubleshooting step, when you have it running (with an OS installed already) go to Add Hardware in the control panel and have it search for new hardware. If it crashes at this point at least you'll know what the OS is doing when the CPU goes haywire...

[crockett]

the reason I know it's the CPU, is because I've tried several OS's 98se/ME/NT4/Win2kpro/XPpro and mandrake... 2 diffrent mother boards, 2 diffrent sticks of ram, 3 diffrent hard drives... it only crashes on install using this cpu

[Music2LiveFor]

I'm gonna throw out a strange idea... but could be WAY off base. I have had lockup crashes on my system when reinstalling windows.... do you, by chance, have USB devices plugged in when you try to reinstall the OS? My cam ALWAYS crashed mine when left plugged in during an OS installation. It may not be your problem... but it may be? who knows

[piyopiyo13]

If you wanna check what happened during your hardware detection, you can check a file name "detlog.txt" that's created by Windows setup during this process. Not sure how you'd be able to view it though if your installation won't at least complete.

[samwichse]

It could be a chipped chip. Sometimes an Athlon can give some weird problems that don't seem to quite stack up. When it does, it usually turns out to be there's a tiny bit of it chipped off somewhere.

Have you inspected its face very carefully?

Sam