That sounds pretty weird. If it can boot at all, I would say it's supported enough. Now as far as the failure to fully operate, I would inspect to make sure the processor isn't cracked, and then next I would look at your power supply.

Yeah, I was afraid of it getting cracked, because the heat sink is very heavy and requires unmounting the motherboard to install. I think at 430 watts the PSU should be sufficient, and it was working fine with an XP 1800.

I'm also getting other errors, like all the characters on screen being messed up or the screen being drawn way off-center. Sigh. It's gonna be a pain to take everything apart to check for a cracked core. I looked at it under a magnifying glass before putting it, so it should have been fine then.

Hater Depot wrote:

Yeah, I was afraid of it getting cracked, because the heat sink is very heavy and requires unmounting the motherboard to install. I think at 430 watts the PSU should be sufficient, and it was working fine with an XP 1800.

Tell me two things:

1. Does your motherboard use the 4-pin, ATX12V connector, or just the 20-pin.

2. If it is only the 20-pin, check the rated amps of the 5V power rail, as listed for the supply. If it is anything less than 30a, I'll bet that's your problem.

Just the 20-pin, but the PSU supplies 42 amps on the 5V rail.

I just took the CPU out and the core seems fine, no visible cracks under the magnifying glass. But weirdly, unless my eyes are playing tricks on me, it's now a pinkish color whereas it was blueish before I popped it in. 😕

Try flashing the motherboard's BIOS to the latest version.

It's the latest BIOS.

Could this be caused by bad capacitors? The last time I looked at them a few months they were all fine, but I just checked them all now and two seem to be bulging a little and have some orange gunk on top.

The last time I looked at them a few months they were all fine, but I just checked them all now and two seem to be bulging a little and have some orange gunk on top.

That's most likely your problem, then. If you're not getting clean power to the CPU or RAM, you're going to have all sorts of random stability issues.

If you've never done it before, it'd be a good chance to try your hand at replacing the capacitors.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

The last time I looked at them a few months they were all fine, but I just checked them all now and two seem to be bulging a little and have some orange gunk on top.

That's most likely your problem, then. If you're not getting clean power to the CPU or RAM, you're going to have all sorts of random stability issues.

If you've never done it before, it'd be a good chance to try your hand at replacing the capacitors.

Yeah, that's practically a smoking gun. Look closer and see that you don't have goo running across the contacts of other components on the board.

Supposedly after the system has been "on" for while, the electrolytic (goo) inside regains some it's intend properties, and your system may function properly. I have observed this my self, as my Kt133a system would always need to lockup and be warm booted once to few times after a cold cycle of more than a few moments.

Beware of the goo... it's only going to get worse.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to replace those caps.

Here's the odd thing though... I'm currently using the same system, with the 2200 chip, but using a lighter heatsink-fan. No stability issues at all. So although the caps are worrying, I'm thinking the problem was thermal. Either the tower heatsink was improperly seated or there was not enough thermal grease. I guess I'll see how it goes for a couple days, then replace the caps and try the tower again.