I just built my first computer. Yay me! But there’s one major problem I’m having, that’s so specific that although I’ll mention it here just in case, my guess is I’ll need to find a computer-specific board. So am looking for recos on those boards, pls.
Here’s my post from the marginally active Athlon board:
Just built a new machine (first time ever!). Everything was working more or less ok until I installed a wireless card and Trend Micro PC-cillin (i’ve since uninstalled the anti-virus).
machine seems to work fine - even with wireless connection enabled - until I open up a browser (IE or Firefox, doesn’t matter). Then, after about 10 seconds, I get a machine check exception error. So it doesn’t seem to be the wireless card per se, only when I try to get on the 'net. Driving me crazy.
Problem is I need the connection to download an updated driver for my Linksys wireless card, but obviously can’t. This sucks…
Any ideas or help much appreciated.
Specs:
Athlon 64 3500+
Asus A8V board
1 GB Corsair RAM Value Select
eVGA GeForce 6800 GT 256MB
Linksys PCMCIA wireless WMP11
Seagate SATA 160GB HDD
by the way I was able to download updated driver. The machine check error is just seemingly random - one time I’ll be able to surf (using IE, Firefox crashes immediately) for 5 minutes, the next time machine will crash on first page it loads.
But it’s ONLY (at this point) when I’m using a browser, that’s what I don’t understand. And Windows Explorer works fine.
You don’t say what your wireless connection is to (straight to a wireless modem or similar or to a network) but can you transfer data across the network without using the browser to see if it’s usage of the connection that’s frying things ?
I’d say try replacing your wireless card, and I’m not sure you’ll get any advance on that.
It’s possible that it’s a voltage issue (the wireless card draws too much juice under certain conditions). I’d check all the internal connections. Are there settings in the driver for the signal strength etc ? Are there switches/jumpers on the card itself that need set ? Try moving whatever it’s communicating with closer ? If you have something that can monitor motherboard/CPU voltages and temps you could run that and see if there’s any correlation.
Of course it could just be a faulty card or a hosed driver or something.
The Tech Report is a good tech board, with plenty of helpful people, as well as a low percentage of idiots. Lots of AMD fans over there too, so you will fit in. I post there occasionally.