what motherboard?

[wozelbeak]

hi all,
just getting peoples oppinion on what motherboard i could upgrade to.
i have a pentium 4 chip, 266mghz, 256 mb ram. i have a Abit sa7 motherboard at the moment with a nvidia geforce mx440 with agp8x graphics card. i have a dvd player, cd re-write, floppy drive, scanner printer, a D link router, and im on broadband. ho and i don't have a seperate sound card. A MIXED UP BUNCH OF STUFF I KNOW! i have been noticing my system crashing two or three times a day. i thought that it might have something to do with my inferior motherboard? i downloaded all drivers for all items without improvement. i re-formated still to no avail. do you think that the new mother board would make any difference?
woz

 

[skunx7101]

depends on what the prob is, it may not be the board

 

[DarkBlade1]

It may be the Motherboard, then again, it could be the Power supply. The powersupply is the most underrated problem in a PC.... What is the size for your PS? If you tell me, I can see if that is the problem. I still would get a new MOBO, and BTW, did u say P4 @266Mhz? That is not possible unless you like severely unclocked it... Do you mean 2.66Ghz? i hope so. Anyway, write back with Powersupply amount, and I can help you from there.

 

[quartz01]

yea, its probley the PSU as zen said.. unless something went broke in the mobo it wouldn't all the sudden go unstable. i mean, i have been using a FIC AZ31 (i know, i know) for 3 years and its doing fine

 

[skunx7101]

does it lock up, or just shutdown?
memory could cause this as well, I have a few utilities on my website that may be of use if you would like them.

 

[wozelbeak]

sorry, yes 266ghz.
power=115/230v 8A/4.5A 50-60HZ (HI-POD MPT 400)
Yes it locks out. sometimes it can go for hours.
it will usualy lock up about 1 min after i fire it up in the morning. then at random times during the day.
by the way, would you say that my mobo is usb 2.0 enabled.
my mobo is making me feel like i have a small mojo lol. i think i will upgrade.

 

[skunx7101]

I'm betting bad memory you should run a memory stress test. Let me know if you need one.

 

[wozelbeak]

how do i test the the memory?
woz

 

[skunx7101]

you'll need to make a bootable floppy of rst. first download winimage at winimage.com
next download rst from my website
http://scottscomputer.com/rst
Unzip the file, then open winimage and go to file, open, then choose the unzipped rst file. Then insert a floppy and choose format and create.
Boot to this floppy and run rst.
Scott.

 

[wozelbeak]

which winimage should idownload? 7.0 exe?
woz