There are an awful lot of possibilities, including a bad driver,
overheating, bad memory module, OC'd CPU, etc. When something like this
starts occuring, it's best to return to "ground zero", i.e., make sure the
BIOS is set to BIOS defaults, no OC'ing!, etc. You don't want to complicate
matters by trying to diagnose the problem while the system is over spec (in
fact, that could *be* the problem!), you want as conservative a
configuration as possible.

Once "at spec", do the following.

1) I suggest taking a *very* close look at the motherboard and look for
leaking capacitors ( http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195 ).
Whenever a perfectly good system suddenly starts acting up, esp. if it's
around 18 months old, I start looking for leaking capacitors. I've had
several people over the past year discover this problem, much to their
surprise. The KT7A seems particularly prone. Not likely, but worth
checking. This is easily missed, even by an expert! You often need to be
*looking* for it to even notice it.

2) Download memtest-86 ( http://www.memtest86.com/ ) and run it through
several passes, overnight even better. Memtest-86 is very good at finding a
failed memory module. Or sometimes if you OC too much, it will fail too.

3) Download Prime95 ( http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm ) and run the
torture test. For my money, any system that can't run 24 hrs. without
errors is NOT stable.

4) Reseat the CPU and HSF. I had a guy install the HSF *backwards* one time
and had nothing but trouble.

If all appears OK, return to normal usage of your PC ("at spec") and see if
the problems continue. If so, then go into the BIOS and *slightly*
underclock the FSB, in 1MHz increments, maybe down as far as 4-5MHz max and
see if stability returns.

If all these measures fail, you probable have some driver issue.

HTH

Jim



"Charlie" wrote in message
...
I have a KT7A-Raid board, with a 1 GHz Athlon processor and 768 MB
PC-133 RAM, running Win 98SE. I have run this board configured with
Raid-0, but I'm now just using it without the Raid function.... but I
do have 4 WD drives on it. The system has just recently started having
a problem with locking up. It usually occurs when I'm doing something
important, like editing a large Photoshop file, or have several apps
open at the same time. On lockup, which also seems to occur with a
mouse click (using a MS Intellimouse USB), a hard reset is required,
as there is no response to either the keyboard or the mouse.

Does this sound like its processor or Motherboard related? Are there
system setting that I could adjust (perhaps trying to slow down
things) that I could try that might improve stability? Could it be
related to the mouse? (I've swapped out the one I had been using for
another of the same model, with no improvement).

Appreciate any suggestions.... I'd like to keep this system running
for at least a few more months before upgrading to a newer
motherboard.

Charlie Hoffpauir
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~charlieh/