Freezing followed with Screen Shaking + Auto-rebooting. Can this be a motherboard problem?

Hinz — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 06:10:00 GMT

Hi guys, I would like to raise question about a problem with my desktop.

Overview:

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
PSU: Corsair 480W
MB: ASUS M4A785D-PRO
RAM: Kingston DDR2 800MHz 2GB

About a month ago I start to get some blue screens randomly.
I have forgotten what they said but I can remember some words there like "NOT EQUAL"
May be they were "IRQL LESS OR NOT EQUAL" but I am not sure. Also, I cannot guarantee all blue screens showed the same meesage....

Anyway, they did not occur very often.

This week, things start to get much worse.
Freezing. I noticed that the PC gets freezing (usually) and auto-rebooting(less often) in Windows 7(before or after an account is logged in). Let me explains more:

- Freezing: sudden, total holding of the screen. Caps-lock does not respond. Sometimes the screen even shake right after the freeze (just like what you see when your old TV set has its signal interfered by a phone call or an airplane). Such shaking keeps on until you forcefully shutdown your PC....Not all freezes have screen shaking but recently most of them do.

- Auto-rebotting: sudden shutdown of the whole computer (just like what the PC does after you hold on the power switch for 5 sec) and the PC boots again. Of course it may tells you that the PC fails last time and asks you if a check is needed or just do a normal boot

Scope:
In Windows, these errors happen.
In safe mode, these errors ARE ABSENT. The PC is okay!
If I boot with the Windows 7 CD and try to install Windows 7 again, the installation CAN freeze in the middle! (Luckily, it happened before the real formatting/overwritting started, so nothing incomplete has corrupted the existing Windows 7 in the harrdisk)

Testing:
I have detached the unwanted hardware: an extra Nvidia 8600GT graphic card, an extra RAM (leaving a 2GB one alone), the CD-ROM drive. Now the motherboard can only use the harddisk, the power supply, the RAM, the CPU, and its own onboard display. Same things happen.

I have changed the "motherboard + CPU" set to another set (ASUS P5SD2-VM + Pentium 4) using the same harddisk, RAM and power supply. It works! No error in Windows! I can even do various operations and use software. So I suspect the motherboard and the CPU are the culprits.

I used a tool called "FFT-z" to check the CPU in safe mode. No errors found.
I checked the Event Viewer in the Administrative Tools after the freezing happened and I saw "Kernel Power" error. Of course there are some other warnings, but the big crosses are "Kernel Power" errors. I am not sure if these are related to the errors I encountered. Can these be some hints?

Can anyone give me some hints or comments?
Any opinions are welcomed !
Thanks in advance!

Re: The ultimate tech support question

Marco C — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:44:52 GMT

If you're certain the CPU you have is not defective, your problem is that you called Intel for tech support. Asus is the company that should be helping you. What often happens is a motherboard has been sitting on a shelf somewhere when new processors are released, and the BIOS installed on said board doesn't support the new CPUs. If you can't get your hands on an older / supported CPU to update the BIOS yourself, Asus will be able to send you a new BIOS eeprom to replace the one that's already on your mobo.

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Freezing followed with Screen Shaking + Auto-rebooting. Can this be a motherboard problem?

Re: The ultimate tech support question