Hardware fault System Stopped?

[tommyis3]

Hi Guys

Must apologise before i start as i cant give you much information to go on, anyways here goes.

My friends system after a while will stop and he gets this error message: Hardware Fault, system stopped contact your vendor, this had been happening for a while so he replaced the HDD but he still gets this error message, we know its not the HDD as this has just been replaced, the DVD rom drive and modem have been disconnected still the error occurs, the only other hardware in the PC is a Gforce MMx440 and a K7s5a motherboard with a 1700 Athlon chip, told you not much to go on but i hope someone can help.

1700 Athlon
K7S5a Mobo
Maxtor 40GBHDD
G Force 4 MX440 V-Card
Liteon DVDrom drive
Windows 2K

[The-poacher]

no expert but sounds like an overheating problem check your temperatures

[Seb]

or faulty memory

[scarecrow]

Should be RAM.
Overheating does not happen that early- unless the CPU fan does not work at all.

[bionic]

To test your ram for errors you can use this
http://www.memtest86.com/
Good luck

[VIPER_1069]

keyboard fault possibly !? borrow a keyboard and test it !? also mice are notorious to cause failure if they have loose wiring test with another mouse too

[ChiMusic]

Set the video display to a lesser resolution? Never heard of that notification.

[tommyis3]

Hi there

Thanks for all your replys guys.

I swapped and changed all the bits from my pc to his, ram, Video card, DVD drive, mouse, Keyboard ect, still get the error, guess the only thing now could be a faulty mobo.

Cheers.

[scarecrow]

Seems quite likely- a faulty IDE controller. Not very common case, but it can happen.

[ChiMusic]

After buying parts I gave up and have the new MB and CPU. Prices are so low. I even got the 333 mem. You just have to know when to stop as every $20-$30 is a good increase in speed/parts. I almost could affor the Athlon Barton a 333FSB CPU.

Now all I need is 3 months and Win XP Pro.