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Very Strange Problem [Unsolved]
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Noctis
Junior Member
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27. June 2005 @ 14:13 |
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Quote:
These resources can be re-allocated by the ACPI OS, however this hardware setup is not irrelevant because it will identify fundamental setup & config problems that are important!
This was the only part I didn't really quite understand.
As far as updating the BIOS, that has already been done.
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Noctis
Junior Member
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27. June 2005 @ 19:00 |
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As stated above, I made the changes I could figure out on my own. Still locking up. Here are the IRQs per Windows Device Manager...
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Noctis
Junior Member
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28. June 2005 @ 05:18 |
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FYI - I installed a new PSU that has 28A on the 12V rail. While I can notice a significant increase in the performance of my 6600GT, the computer still freezes up after 10 minutes of strenuous activity.
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ddp
Moderator
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28. June 2005 @ 12:58 |
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is the cpu heatsink & fan clean & what is the cpu temp at restart in the bios??
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Noctis
Junior Member
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28. June 2005 @ 18:02 |
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The cpu is definitely clean. I don't have a heatsink, I installed liquid cooling after the problems began.
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Noctis
Junior Member
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29. June 2005 @ 06:29 |
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Sorry, forgot to add that the temp at restart ranges between 32-40C
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The_OGS
Senior Member
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30. June 2005 @ 13:41 |
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Okay, lemme see here...
If you load BIOS defaults, load the 'Optimal Performance Defaults' not the High Performance Defaults.
Use PCI slots 2/3/4
Avoid slots 1/5
PCI delayed transaction Enabled
AC97 Disabled
AGP master 1 WS Write/Read Enabled
Disable USB BootROM, Disable LAN BootROM
Disable onboard RAID
Note: they sell a 'D-Bracket' LED panel for your mobo, which can debug a flaky system by LED code - they have an extensive guide to all the possible lights, in the mobo manual.
Ensure the MSI CoreCenter is not installed, and is not dynamically overclocking in the background.
If stability cannot be achieved, we must run just 1 stick of 512MB in single-channel mode, to see if any difference/improvement.
Run that CPU-Z and tell me what it says.
Don't worry - we'll get this fooker tap dancin'! :^)
ABit AB9 Pro
Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 @ 2.4GHz
2GB OCZ PC2-6400 Platinum XTC R2
ATI Radeon X1900XT 512MB
Enermax Liberty 620W
320GB/16MB WD, 150GB/16MB Raptor
Plextor PX-755SA DVD (SATA)
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Noctis
Junior Member
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1. July 2005 @ 08:09 |
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Okay, did all of the above (except the LED, have to track that down).
The computer is still locking up.
I did come up with two questions from this, though.
First, is CoreCenter something that runs directly from the mainboard, or is that a Windows application? The most recent lock-up occurred without me ever even booting Windows - happened during the POST after adjusting the BIOS.
Second, according to CPU-Z, my RAM is running in single-channel mode. How can I change that to dual-channel?
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brickdust
Newbie
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1. July 2005 @ 12:13 |
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Just a few thoughts on your ongoing problems, as some time back I to was suffering from the same sort of problems you have posted about.
I,m not saying that following any of my suggestions will sort out your problems but you will not lose anything by trying them.
(I may be wrong but looking at your post I don,t think windows in
itself is at fault as you say problem persist in safemode.)
And they may be of help and relevance to others if not yourself
But after carrying them out on my system the problem dissappeared.
The following suggestions are in no particular order except step 1.
1. Disconnect both optical drive units, remove any other adapter cards
with the exception of the graphics card. Disconnect any external
devices
2. When you do restart system I would enter Bios and set to default
(F7)
Personally from looking at your bios settings I would then
a, Disable logo screen show
b, Disable Hard Disk S.M.A.R.T. As I believe this can cause heavy
loading on system startup and slows startup. And can in certain
situations can actually cause startup problems
c, AGP aperture size I read in some forum somewhere should be set
to 64MB, why I don,t know, maybe some one on this forum knows.
d, Try setting all other AGP options to enabled one at a time and
reboot to try and prove all are Ok
e, Don,t know you graphic card but ensure you have AGP mode speed
set correctly.
f, If you have the option to disable Sleep State in Power
Management Features I would try that
g, In your Intergrated Peripherals Page I would disable any
service that you do not use, especially the sound options and
the Legacy USB support function if you don,t use it.
h, With reference to your question as to running in memory
Dual Channel mode I suspect that this option is either
automatically selected by bios or more likely set up by
selecting Top Performance in Advanced Chipset Features, not
knowing the board though just a guess on my part. It may come
into effect also by selecting Loading High Performance Defaults
at the first Bios options page.
3. Inspect if possible the contact between the cpu and cooling fan,
I personally would get some cpu @ heatsink cleaner and re-apply the
appropriate paste to the cpu. (this may not apply to your system as
I know the square root of "**** all" about liquid cooling)
4. Inspect and clean the fan blades on all fans in your system,
check that they all rotate freely, if you can do this by actually
removing the fans from the system all the better.
(extra suggestion here - buy a can of compressed air from
somewhere like Maplins)
In particular ensure nothing is obstructing the smooth operation
of you cpu fan
Make sure the the intakes and exhaust grills on your PSU fans are
also clear and clean. Infact I opened up the PSU and blew out all
the crap and dust in there.
5. Remove and reseat memory modules, try just using one stick when
reinstalling at a time to try and prove/disprove if any are causing
your problems. Also inspect and clean contacts on modules and
memory slots if required.
Another good use for the compressed air.
6. Other tips I picked up is
a, Uninstall in totality both sound and vidoe card drivers then
when reinstalling drivers or on completion of a O.S install,
install the sound card drivers first, shut down Pc. for at
least 20 secs. Reboot then install graphic card drivers, this
in my experience has worked fine.
b, When physically cleaning your system, removing or installing
cards etc. use an anti-static wrist strap and mat if possible.
c, As I understand it if you do a re-install of windows booting
from the CD the setup will overwrite your previous settings
of windows (assuming you install to the same directory)
but if you run setup from within windows it will basically
repair your installed windows. but you will still require to d/l
updates etc.
Here,s an example of a problem very similar to the one discussed in this post which took a very long time to rectify on a computer belonging to a friend of mine and which in the end was very simple to
fix. (don,t think it applies in this case - liquid cooling?)
I had carried out all of my own suggestions from above plus more and reading countless forums etc. But could not fix the damn thing.
I then realise that this problem only seemed to raise it ugly head at certain times, this was the ambient air temperature, on further investigation I found that the fins on the heatsink under the cpu fan
had clogged up with dust, after cleaning the fins out lo and behold the problem dissappeared. This was something I had never heard of before.
I asked a another friend of mine (a senior company computer service engineer) about this and he explained that dust does get drawn into this area and builds up quite quickly and can need regular cleaning as
the cpu obviously gets hotter as the heatsink is not doing its job correctly, (hence the link to ambient air temperature)
The reason he was knowledgable about this is that he has to deal with a lot of server problems (running 24/7)and this is one of the first thing he checks, he reckons he can cure upto 50% by checking this.
Again an ideal use for the compress air and small soft pencil brush.
I would therefore agree with Induna's post with reference to the side panels as all your doing is letting dust accumulate inside your PC.
Especially if your unit is at floor level. (remember dust drops and settles, also retains heat and can affect conductivity i.e short out connections )
Anyway I hope my post may be of help if not for Noctis it may help other users.
Apologies for the lenght of my reply.
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brickdust
Newbie
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1. July 2005 @ 12:36 |
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Further to my last reply,
something in the back of my mind was bugging me about your irq settings,so I decided to check it against mine as I have a Via chipset board and I noticed you have no irq allocated to you mouse, now I know sometime back on another system of mine the system would freeze and in the end it turned out it was caused by this exact problem, don,y know if that will be the same for you, but it might be worth checking out.
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Noctis
Junior Member
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3. July 2005 @ 18:38 |
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Thanks for the replies, Brickdust. I've been out of town this past weekend, so I'm a bit late in seeing them.
Just to further update (and perhaps give some definitive troubleshooting ammunition):
After not being on my computer since Friday, I returned home just now and booted up. I was somewhat surprised when WindowsXP promptly "discovered" practically every piece of hardware in my machine (HDDs, optical drives, etc) except for my sound card and video card. It then re-installed all the drivers and prompted for a reboot.
Also, as a side note, I picked up a 160GB HDD from Best Buy (had them on sale for $50, couldn't resist). Just for the heck of it, I tried to load a clean copy of WindowsXP Pro on the drive. The PC locked up before it could even finish formatting the HDD. Just another thing to think about.
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Eh_Chop
Newbie
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5. July 2005 @ 08:15 |
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I seem to remember reading a lot of people moaning about MSI putting next to no thermal paste on the (I think) northbridge chip. I have an MSI board myself and am getting lock ups in games - same kind of thing you're getting. Display turns off, repeating sound, sometimes monitor won't come back on after restart. But only in games.
I've been fiddling with memory sticks and BIOS settings for months to no avail, and my GPU and CPU temps are fine. So I'm thinking it's something else.
If there's any way you can monitor northbridge temps that would probably be a good idea. But I am no expert, I could be totally wrong.
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Noctis
Junior Member
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5. July 2005 @ 10:24 |
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FYI for everyone, I've decided to go ahead and upgrade my motherboard. NewEgg.com had a great 4th of July deal so I picked up a much better quality Asus board (also got a good price on another 2GB of DDR PC3200 2x1GB).
The motherboard arrives tomorrow, so I'm going to test the northbridge theory tonight by applying some more thermal paste and I'll let you know so maybe you can benefit from it.
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Noctis
Junior Member
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6. July 2005 @ 12:53 |
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To update those following this thread, I did monitor the temperature of the northbridge during the course of the day and, even under stress, the temperature did not exceed 29C, which doesn't seem high to me at all. The southbridge has no active or passive cooling, however the temperature there did not exceed 27C under stress.
This did prompt me to check around the internet for the typical symptoms of a northbridge problem and they seem to match up perfectly with my problem. According to what I've read, it's most likely that I have a short in the northbridge. Since this is apparently commonly caused by power spikes, I've purchased a UPS, which I know I should've had anyway because I live in a beach area where the grid is unstable at best.
I'm installing my new motherboard tonight. I'll let you all know whether or not the problem persists. If it does, I'm going to give up custom built PCs forever and go buy a Dell, dude :P
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ddp
Moderator
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6. July 2005 @ 13:02 |
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hopefully was just the northbridge, touch wood!!
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Noctis
Junior Member
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7. July 2005 @ 06:10 |
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New motherboard is installed and running great. Thanks to all those who helped.
I took the motherboard to a buddy of mine who works in a nearby shop. Turns out it really was the northbridge, seems to have been fried a bit, probably by a power surge as expected.
I've learned a lot through the course of this, especially regarding the BIOS and a few other tricks for running at top performance. You guys have been great.
Thanks!
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ddp
Moderator
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7. July 2005 @ 06:33 |
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no problem, teach & learn
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D15C0
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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16. July 2005 @ 18:03 |
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Hey, just new to the forums after reading this post. im having nearly the same problem tho it crashes whilst plaing a taxing game like bf2
my system is as follows
-AMD 64 3200+ skt 939
-Abit AV8 K8T800 Pro chip-set
-160gb WD Serial Sata HDD
-1 GB dual channel geil HP ram
-Albatron 6600GT AGP vid
-Antec truepower2 psu 400w
-Thermaltake venius 12 CPU HS/F
the comp is in the shop getting "fixed" atm tho it has been there for a while. i have a good case thermaltake shark and cooling is not a problem. i have tried different psu with varying 12V rail amp ratings to no avail. any help would be tops.
Disco Stu - keeping the music alive
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 16. July 2005 @ 18:09
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thnva
Newbie
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16. July 2005 @ 18:21 |
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Sorry if this has already been suggested, but if you can replace the motherboard. I had similar problems with my pc and it was the motherboard. Some places will let you return it as well if its not the problem.
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D15C0
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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16. July 2005 @ 18:24 |
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Yeah i hope the tech's at my local replace it or try out another. its only a new comp and everything is under warnety. i didnt build it my self.
Disco Stu - keeping the music alive
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