Now, the problem is, when I boot it up its all find, I goto the PC health in the bios and its idleing at 31c so its nice and cool.
When I boot the CDROM to isntall XP - it randomly freezes at spots here and there, like copying files, or deleting files or … when its examining the HDD… but then somtimes it gets as far as the next step when you have to reboot works find and I get to the next stage of setup… but then freezes.
Is this a XP bug or do you think its this new PC I have made?
The power supply may be the problem. 300 watts is borderline for a 1GHz+ Athlon. Also, you may want to plug that Volcano into the power supply with a 3-pin to 4-pin connector instead of a header on the motherboard if you’re not doing that already. Failing that, I’d get ahold of a diagnostic utility from WD to see if the hard drive is bad. However, I don’t really see that as the problem. It looks really like your system isn’t getting enough juice. Antec, Sparkle or AOpen make good power supplies, and 350 watts should be plenty.
You could try Win2k, but it’s most likely to give you the same results, as it is gonna be just as sensative to hardware issues as XP. 98 is less so than either, but that won’t stop you from having problems.
Yeah, a 400 watt shouldn’t be too expensive and would most certainly be enough for the future. I picked up a 350 Antec for like $56 at Best Buy, and I’ve seen their 400 Watt version for around $84 elsewhere.
