This little thing is slowly dying
 

Its like a dying little puppy

I will try to give as much info as possible, but this thing is dying like anything

this is a athlon xp 1900+ running at a swift, yet underpowered, 1200 Mhz

"1200 Mhz?" you may say

yes, windows is pretty much reluctent lo load on 133 even though my motherboard can support it (its a MSI one, will get the model number if anyone would wish, i know its a arse make, but my abit went schitzo and i needed this for uni so a cheap mobo with USB was what i needed and what i got)

The thing is i heard it couble be to do with WIndows XP SP1

Now uninstalling this is a option, but i dont want to HAVE to install it later, and i would prefer to have the security updates it provides.

The other little problem is My SB Audigy card, but i think i may have fixed that problem, if not i will go into detail into it

The thing is i dont know of any fixes or workarounds for this 133 Bus Problem, if anyone has any ideas/Links then they will be appreicated

No GET LINUXSX!!! plz, it requires even more effort to get all these wonderful devices working, and the USB 2 compatibility is probably not there, due to limited driver support for things that may use it

Usual questions...[list=1][*]What BIOS version are you using?[*]What model is the mobo?[*]What's your PSU?[/list=1]
Not that I'm overly likely to be able to help but I can almost guarantee those who can will want to know :)

What is it doing, other than only running whilst underclocked? Blue-screening? Rebooting? When?

GET LINUX!!!!

sorry cba to read the whole thread

maybe cos you can't read more than 2 lines :p

Have you tried running another Windows??? 2k, ME, 98?

Certainly XP doesn't give you that many extras that keeps you from switching OS.

What is it doing, other than only running whilst underclocked? Blue-screening? Rebooting? When?

Reboots while going into XP before the login screen

and bad slidey :rolleyes:

I assume you're usin DDR ram since I don't know an AXP motherboard that doesn't require it.
Some motherboards can be incredibly touchy about ram. Bluescreening/lockups/reboots trying to load XP is a classic symptom of the board not liking your ram.

Now, if you didn't know, your ram speed is linked to your front side bus speed - decrease the fsb to 100(/200) like you have done and you also bring the ram down from PC333 to PC266 - assuming you have PC333 ram.
Without getting too technical, in order to be able to support PC333 ram you have to effectively 'overclock' the bus between cpu and ram, since the max fsb speed is 266Mhz and we want 333Mhz. The get-around is a multiplier setting.
To support PC333, the multiplier is set to a 4:5 ratio ((266/4)*5 = 333 when rounded up). Why am I telling you this? Some motherboards allow you to manually controll the multiplier in case you want to bring down your ram to the slower speed. For example, on my Asus board there is an option in the bios called CPU/Memory Ratio, which can be set to 1:1, 4:5, or auto. If it is there and you have PC333 ram, set it to 1:1 to bring the ram down to 266Mhz.

While you may think this is going to impact your performance - think again.
Even if the ram is hopping along at 333Mhz, the processor bus speed is 266Mhz so the cpu can't keep up with the ram. Since throughput from the cpu to the ram and the ram to the cpu is the major deciding factor with ram vs. cpu performance, PC333 ram brings very little benefit to the system (it may be able to 'find' data slightly faster, but thats it).
I am running my Crucial PC333 ram at PC266 speeds because even my Asus board doesn't seem to like it at the higher speed - it doesn't crash during boot but does during games.
In fact, a couple of benchmarks on the system showed that ram performace was actually better at PC266 speeds with all the latency settings turned down to minimum (it's crucial ram so should be able to handle it) than at PC333 speeds at normal settings.

That may or may not be your problem, but it sounds quite likely to me.

:)

ps. Most Asus boards should be ok with PC333 ram. However, I was daft enough to buy the board before reading the reviews, as it was on special offer. looking at the reviews, that was probably the reason it was on special offer.
Type Asus A7V333 problems into google and you'll see what I mean.