Computer was crashing, tried repairing which made things worse :(

[Mongowian]

Hey everyone

I've got a problem that I've been trying to figure out for about 7-8 weeks now. My system specs are:

Athlon 3200XP
A7V880 Asus motherboard (latest bios - 1009)
2 x 512 ddr400 (corsair)
Alienware 500W PSU and case
Windows XP Home edition
Radeon X800

The whole system is brand new equipment and getting way past the ANNOYING stage having RMA'd a gfx card already and now awaiting the return of one of the 512 DDR400's I still have the same problem that started 8 weeks ago when I first bought the CPU (3200XP), the 2x memory sticks and the gfx card and since then I've been buying things in sequence to now ending up with a completely new system.

I have performed the harddrive test so it's not that, I have performed the memtest on the 512 ddr400 I'm left with, I have also performed a CPU test which it crashed on but it also crashed on the 512 so I think it's something else, not hardware! I tried to do a system repair but it crashed when I pressed F8 (to accept terms of windows XP) to the point that I needed to turn off/unplug PSU and restart PC.

I finally got so desperate that I thought I'd race the machine to shutting down and try and repair the system before it shut down but this was the final part it seems.... I tried rebooting after that and I'm guessing because it didn't finish it's repairing that it's screwed up the whole XP system and can no longer run!

Anyone have any ideas as I see similar things happening on the forums but none of the answers there help. I'm planning on taking it to a shop to be honest as my patience is practically non-existent now...

Please help

Oh yeah.. it's not overheating either. It runs very cool at mobo - 32 and CPU 37 with the gfx card not getting hot either and yes I have the latest drivers for that.

[s7p9a2m4]

It is bad hardware for sure. But 'what' is a good question. Asus and ram, have historically, been a problem. Make absolutely sure the ram is good.
Have you made sure the psu is performing properly? You should be able to check with a multimeter to see if voltage is correct.

Worst case scenerio is a bad cpu or motherboard but it sounds like you have already replaced them.

[Mongowian]

I am using the Asus Probe (always makes me laugh - Ah-hem) and the voltage is steady and the memory I've put on a memtest and lasted three cycles before I quitted out and sent the other memory back that crashed on the first cycle at 70% through the process.

What sort of problems are we talking then? I've used Asus forever and never had any issues Just compatibility issues or are we talking more so that they won't work at an ameoba sneezing on the other side of the world sort of issue?

Thanks for comments so far

[s7p9a2m4]

Asus has a reputation for being picky about ram. Whether this has changed in the last year, I do not know. One shop I deal with will not sell Asus. This does not mean Asus is a bad board but I do not think they live up to their reputation.
That is why, when I see "asus" in a post I automatically get suspicious.