Is my motherboard causing my BSOD crashes?

Hello,

I have been going through this problem off and on for quite some time now, at least two years with an ASUS A7V333 motherboard with onboard RAID. Just as you describe, I can be working along when, all of a sudden, the blue screen of death in Windows XP.

My question is, should reducing the clock speed of the processor in the BIOS lower the operating temperature? I have an AMD 1.8 XP processor and am using the original fan that came with the unit. I assume it is a ball bearing type. I also have an ATi All in Wonder Radeon video card that seems to have issues itself with drivers. All along I have been cursing the motherboard because I thought it was at fault. Maybe I have been wrong.

Thanks in advance for any assistance you could lend.

Yes, reducing the clock speed of the CPU in the BIOS will lower its operating temperature, just as overclocking it will raise the average temperature. That said, assuming that your CPU’s heatsink is adequate and that you’ve cleaned it out, it shouldn’t be overheating. You’ll want to check the temp in the BIOS right after it bluescreens on you and see where it’s at.

You mention that your ATi’s drivers don’t seem to be working properly, which would lead me to believe that is the culprit of all of this. Faulty video drivers are one of the fastest ways to get Windows to BSOD on you, and so you will want to go to ATi’s site and download their latest drivers. You also could update your video card, but your system is old enough that I don’t know if I’d bother.

I recently had my own machine freaking out a few weeks after I built it, and that turned out to be one of the sticks of RAM had gone bad on me. You many want to grab some replacement RAM and see if your machine is stable after that if the video driver update doesn’t do the trick.

I’d have to say the least likely is the mobo itself, although I’m not willing to totally rule it out. You can always try flashing the BIOS to a more recent version, as ASUS is very good at releasing updates.