27-11-2012, 07:07 AM
Hi,
This is a fairly mature AMD Athlon-based motherboard with an Award-based BIOS.
When dealing with stuff like this, the basic stuff needs to be ruled out.
Firstly, before all the operating system stuff:
Go to the Event Log (under Control Panel) and look if there are any warning or errors being logged in the System Event log - if so, let me know.
Have you got any extra cards plugged into the computer that are not essential? Like a DAB radio or TV card etc? If so, take them out for the moment. We need to remove variables from the equation.
Is this a recent problem? If so, did it start after you'd installed some new h/w or s/w? If so, uninstall it and see if the problem has gone.
If the problem remains, are you running the latest BIOS? You'll see this number when the PC boots - it'll be 4 digits, e.g. "1004", "1005" etc.
According to ASUS' Download Page for this Motherboard the latest is "1007" - if you need to upgrade that, get the BIOS upgrade tool from the Download Page above and follow the instructions.
Now we have a fairly clean machine with an up-to-date BIOS and extraneous bits removed.
Error check the disk (you will have to re-boot to do this) - check the box asking if you want to fix any errors and check free space. Reboot.
Download Piriform Defraggler - Go to "Action" then "Advanced" then "Check Drive for Errors" - do not defragment the drive at this point.
When that's over and XP is running again, download and run Piriform CCleaner to remove all the crap temp files cluttering up you system, then defragment the disk using Defraggler (Action->Defrag) - do the CCleaner first as it makes the defragment much faster. Make sure all apps are closed when running CCleaner - if a browser is open, it won't be able to clean out the caches.
Now we have an up-to-date mother board and a good clean disk.
Do a complete scan with your virus scanner - again, takes a while but very necessary - make sure its base version and data files are up-to-date before the scan. Some virus scanners can severely impact system performance - which one are you using? Make sure it automatically updates every day - not every week or manually.
If your problem is still there (!), now we update each driver in turn for the audio, IDE (disk) and LAN from the ASUS download link above.
If problem is still there, go to Microsoft Update and keep running it until it says that there are no more updates for your computer - note that you need to check the optional updates because there will probably be updates to the drivers you installed in the previous step that will be deemed to be out of date and replacements will be marked as optional updates by Windows Update. Make sure "Automatic Updates" are enabled..
Download and run Piriform Speccy - this is a great tool to look at the whole of your system to report on its hardware and file versions... just checks that you really have the BIOS versions etc. you think you have... Go to File->Save as Text files, save the report and send it to me!
Most of the above is just good practice anyway - you machine is now completely up to date at the BIOS & o/s level, free of rubbish files, defragmented and virus-etc. free.
At this point there is not a lot more that you can easily do to your machine - it had better be working !
HTH
This is a fairly mature AMD Athlon-based motherboard with an Award-based BIOS.
When dealing with stuff like this, the basic stuff needs to be ruled out.
Firstly, before all the operating system stuff:
Go to the Event Log (under Control Panel) and look if there are any warning or errors being logged in the System Event log - if so, let me know.
Have you got any extra cards plugged into the computer that are not essential? Like a DAB radio or TV card etc? If so, take them out for the moment. We need to remove variables from the equation.
Is this a recent problem? If so, did it start after you'd installed some new h/w or s/w? If so, uninstall it and see if the problem has gone.
If the problem remains, are you running the latest BIOS? You'll see this number when the PC boots - it'll be 4 digits, e.g. "1004", "1005" etc.
According to ASUS' Download Page for this Motherboard the latest is "1007" - if you need to upgrade that, get the BIOS upgrade tool from the Download Page above and follow the instructions.
Now we have a fairly clean machine with an up-to-date BIOS and extraneous bits removed.
Error check the disk (you will have to re-boot to do this) - check the box asking if you want to fix any errors and check free space. Reboot.
Download Piriform Defraggler - Go to "Action" then "Advanced" then "Check Drive for Errors" - do not defragment the drive at this point.
When that's over and XP is running again, download and run Piriform CCleaner to remove all the crap temp files cluttering up you system, then defragment the disk using Defraggler (Action->Defrag) - do the CCleaner first as it makes the defragment much faster. Make sure all apps are closed when running CCleaner - if a browser is open, it won't be able to clean out the caches.
Now we have an up-to-date mother board and a good clean disk.
Do a complete scan with your virus scanner - again, takes a while but very necessary - make sure its base version and data files are up-to-date before the scan. Some virus scanners can severely impact system performance - which one are you using? Make sure it automatically updates every day - not every week or manually.
If your problem is still there (!), now we update each driver in turn for the audio, IDE (disk) and LAN from the ASUS download link above.
If problem is still there, go to Microsoft Update and keep running it until it says that there are no more updates for your computer - note that you need to check the optional updates because there will probably be updates to the drivers you installed in the previous step that will be deemed to be out of date and replacements will be marked as optional updates by Windows Update. Make sure "Automatic Updates" are enabled..
Download and run Piriform Speccy - this is a great tool to look at the whole of your system to report on its hardware and file versions... just checks that you really have the BIOS versions etc. you think you have... Go to File->Save as Text files, save the report and send it to me!
Most of the above is just good practice anyway - you machine is now completely up to date at the BIOS & o/s level, free of rubbish files, defragmented and virus-etc. free.
At this point there is not a lot more that you can easily do to your machine - it had better be working !
HTH
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