My new system is crashing (power shutdown) after a few to several minutes and I can't figure out where the problem is. It is built on:
Chaintech 7njl6 mobo
Athlon 2900 (sees proper cpu speed)
1 gb Ultra pc3200 RAM
FX 5200 128 mb graphics
set at 200MHz fsb
200 gb Serial ATA (WD)
NEC DVD RW

At boot up I see several postcodes (52, 65, 75, 84, 96 and I think 8b) and it showed an odd "PXE-E61: media test failed, check cable; PXE-M0F: exiting PXE ROM" errors before I got my Windows XP system loaded.
Everything is recognized but I had a lot of trouble keeping the system up long enough to adjust the bios. Kept powering off a few seconds after an ominous click. I got Win XP on and luckily it didn't crash through the long disk format operation and loading windows. Now it crashes after a few to several minutes and windows is describing page fault errors in nonpaged areas. What does that mean?

Make sure all cables are securely and correctly connected.

If ok, and a network card is installed, then uninstall it.

If that does not work or there's no NIC installed, then install a different known working IDE cable to the HD, and connect a different power lead to it.

If no luck, then the HD or the MB may be bad.

I think it must be the motherboard. I've tried disconnecting all the devices except the graphics board (CD, floppy, HD) and swapped out the memory with another computer that works fine, and the result is always the same, the system powers down after a few minutes. thanks for the suggestions anyway.

Any chance the chip is overheating? I can't monitor its temp with this mobo. I've got thermal grease on it (a fair amount) which I spread over most of the 1.5" Athlon. A friend told me I should only be putting the grease on the small 1/2 cm center portion of the chip. Could the extra grease be causing a problem?

Barebones, as you have tried, is the best way to troubleshoot...

You did say after a few minutes that it is shutting down...is this after Windose loads?

Try tapping the delete key upon bootup and see if you can get into the BIOS. Most motherboards have processor temperature monitoring in the BIOS. See if you can get to that portion of the BIOS and check whether the temps are climbing...

If this is shutting down before you can even get into the BIOS would seem to indicate either the CPU is overheating or motherboard is bad, or the power unit is bad...

Based on what you're saying about the thermal grease on the CPU, I would suggest disassembling and lapping the heatsink.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/guides/heatsinklappingguide.php

I'll try lapping the heat sink, thanks.

Yes the system cuts out whether Windows is loaded, in Bios, not in Bios... Oddly it survived the 1.5 hours it took to format the harddrive when i first loaded winXP; outside that its never made it much past 10 min, as few as 2.

You also might want to try downloading the harddrive diagnostics and see if anything turns up...

Also, I would attempt running a RAM checker: http://www.memtest86.com/

Both of these are self-booting entities...

Were you able to look into the BIOS temps??

I've got thermal grease on it (a fair amount) which I spread over most of the 1.5" Athlon.

I would say this could be part of your problem. On my AthlonXP there are several other raised circuits on the CPU that I think are not supposed to be covered with thermal grease. From what I have read it could cause some kind of short. Here (http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm) is a link that will show you the proper way to apply the thermal grease. A little down the page are some pictures of the Athlons and where to apply the grease. It is worth a shot.

My new system is crashing (power shutdown) after a few to several minutes and I can't figure out where the problem is. It is built on:
Chaintech 7njl6 mobo
Athlon 2900 (sees proper cpu speed)
1 gb Ultra pc3200 RAM
FX 5200 128 mb graphics
set at 200MHz fsb
200 gb Serial ATA (WD)
NEC DVD RW

At boot up I see several postcodes (52, 65, 75, 84, 96 and I think 8b) and it showed an odd "PXE-E61: media test failed, check cable; PXE-M0F: exiting PXE ROM" errors before I got my Windows XP system loaded.
Everything is recognized but I had a lot of trouble keeping the system up long enough to adjust the bios. Kept powering off a few seconds after an ominous click. I got Win XP on and luckily it didn't crash through the long disk format operation and loading windows. Now it crashes after a few to several minutes and windows is describing page fault errors in nonpaged areas. What does that mean?

Hey, my situation sounds simlar. Most of my components are different but I have heard that ominous click. Especially after I first started the computer. My computer is freezing up or restarting, but not after a few minutes. It's more random but it's usually, but not always, more than an hour.

The click reminds me of a hard drive dying, but I don't think that could make the computer restart.

I know this is a relatively old post, so I wanted to know what has happened in the last 6 or 7 months.