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"What's happening?"

My PC runs fine when doing everyday tasks such as web browsing, word processng, images, etc. However, rarely the program (such as PSP) crashes, but this has happened only three times in about 500 launches. It occurs when I just select a button - any button - such as the picture tubes or whatever.

Next up, a use a database program called 4D - the thing is, it too crashes after lauching, but only when it is the first program loaded straight after Windows.

Onto games. When loading games, there are times when nothing happens - yes, I have double clicked on the icon, and there is a small amount of disk activity - all it takes here is another double click and it sometimes work. It's a problem as such, but it is getting on my nerves.

Finally, onto the games (we're talking full screen ones)themselves - sometimes, I can load the game, and it plays fine up to a certain point - and then the game just freezes, with a reset the only option. Other times, the game freezes, but the sound makes a continual high pitched noise as well, piercing my eardrums in addition to p***ing me off.

So, can anyone suggest what's happening here? I'm beginning to think it has a conscience and wants me only to do serious stuff like programming.

Have you tried everything from installing chipset drivers except the IDE drivers if you do have a nforce or nforce 2 motherboard?
Also install Direct X 8.1 as your card will be sluggish with Direct x 9 and might cause some problems.
Also make sure you install latest sound card drivers video drivers and monitor drivers.
Someone could go look about to see if the motherboard has any problems at all, but it may be that the AGP slot is faulty as you can do everything else but not play any games but try doing the above first and if you must bios flash.. just hope it goes smoothly.

Yeah, I thought about that - the RAM and graphics card worked perfectly on my old PC, while the PSU I just upgraded. I can only think of conflicts between the mobo and other hardware.

Perhaps, but it could be many things wrong but it should really work without it unless its a motherboard that comes with a poor Bios version, so if a bios flash doesnt work it could be, bad ram, graphics card or a poor PSU.

By the way, I don't have a floppy drive, so I need to create a bootable CD, copy all the necessary files (flash utility and BIOS) onto the HD, boot from the CD and flash bios from HD according to the instructions. Just one thing:

Can I boot from the XP recovery console instead and flash from there?

All I got was a single executable file.

§niper wrote:
> Where did u get this pc from...
> cos most motherboards should be able to work without flashing the
> bios... i see no need for it unless you overclock to be honest it
> could be bad hardware.


Upgrading the BIOS to the latest version is one of the first things you should do if you have a hardware conflict. That's what BIOS updates are there for, to iron out bugs like this.

Where did u get this pc from...
cos most motherboards should be able to work without flashing the bios... i see no need for it unless you overclock to be honest it could be bad hardware.

The file you downloaded should be a zip archive - extract the files onto a floppy disk, put the disk in, and try hammering ALT+F2 on startup. Hopefully your motherboard should automagically detect and install the BIOS upgrade, but I wouldn't count on it, mine always c***s it up :O/

If it doesn't work, you're looking at getting a boot disk (www.bootdisk.com) and doing it manually. Reboot onto the floppy, then run awdflash (there are more precise instructions in the zip archive).

Cripes, how exactly do you update the BIOS driver? I've downloaded the 269K file and run it, but nothing happens. I figured it's not as simple as that, so what do I do?

Thanks for the links miserableman, I'm checking them out now.