Really Tight Budget

[Livy]

what kind of error do you mean, and what os have you got,? it may just be time for a reformat

[Triadcool]

Nope I just reformated like last week. I have windows xp and one of the many stop errors I get is Machine_Check_exception 0X0000009c

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=329284

[Livy]

try that memory tester i posted, to eleiminate your ram.

try this http://www.memtest86.com/ its a bootable memory tester.

[abu_has_the_power]

Originally posted by bob_the_alien@1 November 2003 - 04:17
If I were you, I would not go with a Celeron.
Celeron's are not what we would call great chips, I would recommend going with a AMD Athlon XP, The chips run fairly decently and you can buy a 2500+ for about 80 bucks. And for Motherboards, I'd recommend, the Chaintech Mobo's, that are good motherboards, and the cheapest good ones run from 70 dollars and Up.

Check out Price Watch, You can find some good hardware deals there.

usually my vote would be towards p4, but in ur case, go with a amd athlon xp

[Triadcool]

ok im going to run the memory tester.

[lynx]

If there's a lot of heat inside your case, the first thing to look at is getting some decent cooling. You are going to need it if you get a faster processor anyway, so see if you can cool things down, it may solve your stop errors. It might be a good idea to get another case fan too, or at least check that the ones you have are working properly.

I suggest getting something rated for an XP3200+ or better, the early Athlons gave out a lot more heat/MHz than the latest Barton cores, so it won't actually be that far over the top for your current processor.

[Livy]

also maybe try running it with your case of, and in a cool room, to see if u still get the errors, and maybe disconnecting some unnecesary hardware, like 2nd cdrom etcs, and usb devices, and another problem, may be a overloaded psu

[Triadcool]

What is a overloaded psu?

[Livy]

Originally posted by Triadcool@1 November 2003 - 16:06
What is a overloaded psu?

the computer trying to take to much power than the power supply can cope with,

if u have alot of extra hardware and a small power supply, or cheap psu,
that was one of the things on the page you pointed to.

just try one at a time to eliminate what the cause could be. heat/power/cpu/ or whatever else it said on the microsoft site

[Triadcool]

Well I have a 330w poiwer supply and the hardware on my computer is as follows sound blaster card,modem,ethernet,video card,2 cd roms,hard drive.