Am I paranoid to reformat?

[onetrueday]

Sometimes I get a little paranoid about reformatting. I've gotten it down to such a science that I can format and install winXP have all necessary programs installed in less then an hour.

Anyway, I recently put together my new case and have been really pushing everything to see how fast it'll go. I pushed it too far the other day and now it's acting a little strange. I've gotten more then one ie error and a couple restarts, for no reason. However, my worst problem has been at night. I'll be about to leave for work and I'll restart my computer. Well, it wont startup at the normal 800(@1035 and 154fsb). In fact, the only way I can boot it up is at the default speeds. If it is anything higher, then I have a constant reboot that is caused by a quick flashing blue screen. I dont have time to read it.

My real question is this. Could this be related to hardware, or would it be more worth my time simply to reinstall winxp? i only ask your opinion on this becuase time is on short supply the next couple of days and I'd like to fix this. My system has always been 100% stable, except for some minor sound problems. The only thing that might have caused this was pushing it too far.

thanks!

[Dakota]

Heheh...I feel your paranoia WOman! That's why I upgraded rather than reformatting and it went awesome! Not a lick of troubles like with other upgrades. But, I know most of you guys are total purists and would never upgrade.

I was very impressed with the upgrade as it deleted a bunch of crap from ME I had setup as defaults and set it all to XP defaults rather than what I had set it at. Not like with 98-ME upgrades which was a joke.

Anyway, just thought I'd mention that FWIW.

[TEH WIN]

Originally posted by onetrueday
I've gotten it down to such a science that I can format and install winXP have all necessary programs installed in less then an hour.

[onetrueday]

<laughing> okay... enough funny business here. Does anyone have any thoughts on the matter?

michelle

[richardc]

You don't say exactly everything you have done for the reinstall e.g. Updates/Drivers etc, so I am just guessing that perhaps it is the order of the installs/updates or perhaps there is a newer one. Have you run SFC from Start/Run, choosing the option that suits your schedule best?

[Dakota]

Heh...That better, John?

Anyway, OTD, I do think you're being too paranoid. Did you run the little compatibility utility and take care of those issues? If so, then just go for it. Very few people have problems and (usually) the ones that do are trying to do something weird.

I mean, it's either you do it or you don't do it, right?

Less that an hour? I'd like to see that. Installation alone took longer than that on my machine, though I was downstairs watching TV.

Anyway...Go for it! You're gonna give yourself (and us) an ulcer if you tarry much longer!

[Sid]

From my experiences the NT kernal is much more likely to not OC as the 9X kernal. I could get my system stable under 9x kernal but at the same speed my 2k would bsod all over the place. They way I look at it is cpu's are cheap and if I want to go faster than buy on faster. XP is rock solid for me(not OC'ed).

[martialcomp]

The 9x kernel was more forgiving when overclocking...it seems to have more slop in the programming. However, I really do feel that the 2k kernels are much more stable. But, they stress the memory and processor more. When overclocking, make sure that

1. You have sufficient cooling for the processor.
2. Always use thermal compound.
3. Make sure that you are not running the hard drive above its specified pci bus speed. IE, a hard drive that is suppose to run at 33.3 mhz will sometimes not run at 37.5 mhz. Other components can cause instability when run above their specified pci bus speeds (usually above 33.3 mhz).
4. Try changing your memory settings to CL3 instead of CL2. However, you lose a lot of the advantages of the overclock when you do this.
5. Provided you have adequate cooling, try increasing voltage on the processor.

[ddadmin]

hey onetrueday, not sure if you already decided on this, but i was having a similar problem and i just decided to start all over. saved some file that i needed and then just started fresh with xp. no problem after that. good luck

[martialcomp]

I am overclocking mine as well... 667 Celeron to 1000. I am obsessive about standard PCI bus speeds so I always try to run 33.3 PCI bus.

[onetrueday]

Well, I ended up reinstalling twice. The first time didnt turn out very good, then I over modded the services.exe. So, it wasnt worth my time to try and fix it. I'm running on the second format and install now and it seems to ahve done the trick. I'm running slighty slower now, but hardly something that I notice.