gordonlw

first of all forgive me if this is the wrong forum. I didn't see one for general hardware issues/problems.



long post......built my first PC back at the end of Dec. here are the specs

mb = GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3P
cpu = Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0GHz w/ zalman 9700 cpu cooler and Arctic Silver 5 Thermal

(I burned in the cpu, didn't leave it running 24/7 for a while)

ram = Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) x 2 (4 gb total)
vc = EVGA 256-P2-N615-TX GeForce 7600GT 256MB
hd = Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA x2 (one 80gb and one 500gb) no raid
pcu = CORSAIR CMPSU-520HX (520W)

also have a internal multi card reader, a few external hdds (esata and usb), wireless mouse and keyboard (usb) and a sata dvd burner (samsung). case is a antec 900 so everything stays nice and cool.

NO OVERCLOCKING ETC running a legit, legal copy of XP pro (have it on my old machine as well and it runs fine but is only used to surf).


ok as I said first build back in late dec. besides a few minor issues with the bios (it was my first time) everything ran smooth for a few months.

in mid march I noticed a few random reboots. no blue screen or any errors etc just rebooted a few times over a few days. then my multi card reader began to act up (would only work sometimes, would connect and discount itself etc). I disconnected it and it seemed fine for a few days. also thought it may be bad ram so I ran the windows mem test and nothing showed up with that.

then my device manager was blank, network places was blank and "my computer" took over 1 min to load/show. I googled and found all the above happening to others. only one I could fix was the my computer thing.

so I reinstalled XP. ran very stable for two weeks. when I got home from work last night (my machine which was running when I left) said


again when I left for work it was running fine. when I got home this was on the screen. I'm the only user of this machine. clean of virus, spyware etc etc.

I googled the error and found a few fixes. I tried

Repair or replace the boot.ini file.

Restore the hal.dll file from the Windows XP CD using recovery console.

Perform a repair installation of Windows XP


the first two did not work at all. the third (repair install) seemed to work for a min. it did get the missing dll file back but windows still would not load properly. it would not load in safe mode either. so I reinstalled again! 2 weeks since the last one


so something is going on with hardware but I don't know what. maybe the harddrive? I ran chkdsk and found no errors, seatools shows it's ok as well.
perhaps the motherboard?? I have not flashed the bios (scared I'll mess something up worse) so it's running the one that came on it.


one thing I noticed in the last week I would randomly get the "ding dong" (hardware added or removed sound) when there was no hardware added or removed. everything looked fine in the device manager.

sorry for the long post. I hope y'all can help! I spent way too much time and money to have a unstable machine ;)


Gordon

forcifer

my guess is motherboard problem. try to flash the bios. dont worry, you wont mess up :)

gordonlw

updated the bios just fine. no real way to know if that was it except to wait ;)


gonna run memtest + overnight for the heck of it.

TheMatt

Check the voltages in your BIOS and post them back. Also check the temps, especially the CPU temp. Post them back here.

gordonlw

voltages for the ram are wrong. I had them set to auto and they are way off. hoping this should fix everything. as far as temp goes this thing is cool.


cpu idles at 28-33c. under load maybe 35-40c. hottest thing in there is the video card and it stays around 40c.

gordonlw

edit: oops sorry.

TheMatt

Sounds like it should. If you set your RAM to 1.8V things should operate properly.

gordonlw

it was the ram. I had the bios set to auto. so I changed to the recommended settings of 4-4-4-12. this actually made it worse! it wouldn't post with all four sticks. would barely post with 1-3 etc.

I did a little more research and found that many folks have had issues with the same ram (bad batch). The .16 memory are double sided vs. the .8 memory which is single sided (batch 97432). also there were MANY post saying that at the recommended settings 4-4-4-12 the ram would cause the computer to not post & it would only post at 5-5-5-18. this is the same thing that happened after I changed my settings. I changed back to 5-5-5-18 and it posted just fine with all four sticks. as of now it's running fine but I don't trust it to for long. time for a RMA.

http://www.google.com/search?q=cruci...ient=firefox-a

TheMatt

Yeah, sounds like a bad batch. If the RAM doesn't run at the advertised timings at the advertised voltage, it is in some way faulty.