July 21, 2004
Cases are for wimps....
I've been wrestling with my one remaining Windows XP system (3GHz P4, GeForce Ti4900, SATA, etc gaming PC) for the past few days due to a looping reboot problem. Basically, it tries to start Windows then flashes a bluescreen for half a second and reboots. Over and over again.
Doing a Safe Mode with Command Prompt leads one to believe it's a problem with AGP440.SYS but that's just the last thing that loads during bootup. The actual problem ended up being hardware, not software. Specifically, a failing power supply in an old ATX case.
Anyhoo, after much wrestling with it I found a temporary solution:
As you can see from the temperature monitor / fan controller sitting on top of the hard drive, it's running at about 82 degrees. The temperature probe is stuck inside the heatsink, so that's a good temp for a p4. Being in the open air helps a lot of course... this system normally ran about 100-105 in the case.
Found a nice (quiet) case to replace this with, the Antec Sonata. It's designed as a very quiet enclosure, while still being able to handle the heat output of a 3GHz P4. Not too bad looking either, but not sexy like the G5 or PowerBook. =) Antec are well known for their solid designs, and especially for their high quality power supplies, so hopefully this will fix my issues.
