Yup, it's a problem on my com. Probably hardware. As a newbie to this forum, I hope I'm posting at the right spot.

I got my com last month, a self-assembled one.

When I'm playing games heavily involving 3D rendering my system will hang halfway, and I am forced to restart it. It usually occurs about 1 hour into the game. Very occasionally, the system also locks up while I'm in Windows XP.

When I restart the com, it sometimes produces the beeping which indicates my RAM was not detected (3-5 sec beep?). After restarting a few times, the BIOS will successfully appear and my com will boot up. But as it is booting up I've noticed the following message:

"Primary IDE no 80 conductor cable installed"

Additionally, I have 2 CD drives on my com. One is a CD ROM drive while the other is a DVD writer. Before my com hangs, it cannot detect the DVD writer when in Windows XP (the BIOS detects it however). But after the hang and system reboot, the DVD writer is detected

So I suspect it's either:
1. My 3D card.
2. My RAM.
3. My motherboard(I hope not).
4. DVD writer

or a combination of the above 4 that's causing the problems on my com. Please help me with this problem. Yup, and thanks for yer time and help

Oh, and here are my com specs:
P4 3.2 Ghz with Hyper Threading
GeForce 5700 LE 256MB
2x Kingston 512 MB 266 RAM
Motherboard is 865 motherboard
Samsung 16x DVD writer

Anything essential I missed out? Thanks.

What type HD do you have? Do you use an UDMA66 or better IDE drive? Are you overclocking your memory?

im using a maxtor 120GB, 7200rpm, 8mb cache HDD. No, i don't think I am on UDMA 66. No overclocking. Thanks. Speaking of that, my cpu has ample cooling.

OK, the 120gb HDD is probably ATA100 or 133 which also require 80 conductor flat or round cables. Now, you assembled this your self so its possible to put the 80c cable on the CD/DVD drives by accident since they are both 40pin sockets. The reason I point this out is anything faster than ATA33 requires the 80 conductors to get rid of the noice on the wires, otherwise there may be data corruption or noise interference on the cable. The 80c cable usually has a blue connector and dark grey(gray) flat ribbon where as the 40c is a light grey and grey connector. If you did (which I believe you would have) connect the cables correctly the 80c are fragile and do not take bending very well.

Now as far as the memory, Remove one stick and boot. If you do not get any beeps do this for about 2 to 3 times to make sure its not random. Next your replace the current stick with the one you took out and repeat. If you do not get the problem with the memory beeps its possible the memory is just a bit out of tolerance for your timing between the two.

Ok, it turns out that the IDE cables were connected wrongly, and I've tested my memory, which seems to be ok.

But the problem's still persisting. So what's next? Please advise. Thanks.

It could be the graphics card its self. If your playing a high intensive game, (i.e. Doom 3) with a low end graphics card, then the card can cause the game to freeze if its in too high a resolution for it. What game are you trying to play????

I have to admit, my 1st thoughts were to the hard drive and the memory. My only concern on those points is still the memory. You say you have -
Quote - kkh:
"2x Kingston 512 MB 266 RAM"

Now does the 266 indicate the speed of the FSB of the RAM????
IF it does then I believe that might be the problem (although I ahve to admit I know more about AMD and Apple Mac systems, than Intel. AphJN know's a lot more on that area), as I'm sure the P4 needs a 800mhz FSB.

Another thing could be the BIOS, as you say it keep forgetting things. MAke sure the BIOS is upto date and can handle the AGP speeds of the graphic card (also make sure the BIOS is set to the right memory size and apature speed for your card).#


Regards
_____
Meck

Ok, what is the make of the MB. I just looked at some of my resources and not every 865 MB supported DDR266 ram (533FSB)

If I'm not wrong the MB chipset is under Intel or something. And the RAM is DDR266.

Plus I checked the specs on the 3D card. Although it has 256MB memory, it has a rather weak GPU.