Black screen crashing in XP

[BernS]

Hi,

I'm running Windows XP and am experiencing fairly frequent crashing (as though the pc has been switched off at the wall and then back on again).

I'm running on ASUS A7N8X, with athlon XP 2100 running at 1733mhz (full details at end of message).

It first started happening when I was running a game - Championship Manager 4. The problem appeared to resolve itself when I upgraded the graphics drivers on the machine. I also made a point of killing off all other processes when it was running. The crashes did appear to happen when the CPU temperature increased. I've been using ASUS Probe to monitor temperatures.

However, since then, I've encountered similar problems without running the game. It often happens if I'm recording my CDs onto the PC using media player, but is also just happens with playback.

The CPU termperature appears to be at around the 52C mark at the moment, RAM at around 40C.

Using the ASUS probe history I've determined that the temp is usually at about 54C when it crashes, although it has been as low as 50C.

I'm not sure where to post this problem as I'm not sure whether it's hardware or software.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.
Bern.


Full system info:

OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 1 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Manufacturer ASUSTeK Computer INC.
System Model A7N8X
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 6 Stepping 2 AuthenticAMD ~1737 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies, LTD ASUS A7N8X ACPI BIOS Rev 1017 Beta 005 T0, 31/10/2002
SMBIOS Version 2.2
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\System32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United Kingdom
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920)"
Time Zone GMT Standard Time
Total Physical Memory 512.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 286.06 MB
Total Virtual Memory 1.72 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.29 GB
Page File Space 1.22 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

[BernS]

Incidently, since a recent crash the Asus Probe software has been failing to run properly, with the error "Access violation at address 3249AB45 in module 'cp3240mt.dll'. Read of address 00930000" (and a similar message for address 3247476F). I've tried uninstalling & reinstalling the software (and deleting the cp3240mt.dll in between) but the error still occurs...

[d[-_-]b]

i have the same hardware setup as you, and i had the same problem...what a coincidence . at first i thought it was my video card because of the black screen but that wasnt the case. how i fixed my problem was swap the rap from my other computer. worked fine after that. try it to see if it'll work.

[BernS]

swap the rap? Do you mean ram?