Jiketsu

Hello,

This seemed to be the most appropriate place to ask for help (which i admittedly was hesitant about doing) since i myself am suspecting ram or psu to be the culprit. I'll post my system specs below.

Background:
I built this computer at least 2 years ago. It has been running fine, and I have not made any recent changes. The only thing I did before the anomolies occurred was, I turned the computer off and unplugged everything for three days while I was away (it never gets turned off, only restarted every couple of months when windoze eats all the memory and doesnt give it back) and then when I got back I used the dust remover spray to clean out the fans and whatnot. I couldnt get all of the dust out but I don't really think dust is the problem. Its much less dusty than it was before when it was running fine ;)

A short version is at the bottom!

Detailed Version:
Upon reconnecting and turning everything on.. it wouldnt turn on. I tried a couple more times, and thought I just had to press a lil harder/longer and it turned on sure enough. Then it got to the motherboard welcome screen thing to give me an opportunity to enter the bios or whatnot, and it stopped here. no abnormal beeps or anything btw. I left it for a couple minutes, and had to hold in the power again. I turned it back on, it came on first attempt, loaded windozexp just fine.

So then strange things started happening. Ventrilo started to disconnect. It'd wait its 8 seconds to reconnect and then do so. Then imediately disconnect again. Over and over. Browser1 refused to load websites in new tabs, while browser2 loaded new websites in new tabs just fine. IRC and MSN experienced no problems. Besides being annoyed and probably blaming windoze or my isp, I thought nothing of this.

Well I decided to make food and watch a dvd. So I loaded windvd and it lagged horribly. I couldnt for the life of me to get it to play from the drive I wanted. It hanged badly. I closed it and tried again a few times to no avail. Then closed again and waited 10 minutes or something and reopened it and it loaded and played just fine without lag or problems. Made no sense. Also while this was happening I looked in 'My Computer' and noticed that my virtual dvd-drive had disappeared. I tried re-adding it in Alcohol 120% but was given an error message stating 'ddl has no memory' or something of that effect. (just now i tried to reproduce the error and ironically it let me re-add a virtual drive. tho its a day later and ive restarted since windoze ended up being frozen in the end).

Things went okay until later on. I played LEFT4DEAD on steam for a few hours without lag or any problems at all. After I could load new pages in browser1, but couldnt download files. It'd let me pick the save location but it refused to write or initialize the actual downloading. I tried running another game that was standalone, an mmo and it comes with this gameguard thing and it gave me an error saying it couldnt validate something or other and then the game would lock up and freeze. i tried a couple times, one time the game just crashed altogether and closed. its never done this before. i tried reopening it then it froze before reaching the gameguard state and then it caused msn to freeze. i could interact with the taskbar still so i tried to run task manager. it never came up, then the taskbar froze as well. i could minimize and close the msn windows and folders, but couldnt get them back after that. they left their shadows behind.

i left it like this overnight thinking that itd correct itself (ive had things freeze before because of other program crashes and then recovering after windoze sorts the crashed program out). When I awoke nothing had changed. It wasnt completely frozen but it was unusable. So I hit the power button to turn it off.

Then it wouldnt turn back on again. I tried and tried for like 30 seconds and nothing.. then I left the room to go get a drink, and WHILE I was in the kitchen and another 10-20 seconds had passed, IT TURNED ON! it turned on and got to the motherboard welcome screen again. It stopped at this point. I powered off and powered it back on (i think without difficulty) and this time it went past the motherboard welcome screen into an amerikan microtrends one that said overclocking had failed (btw i only ever once attempted to overclock and that was right when i first built it) and so i hit f2 to reset it default settings and it loaded into windoze again without problem.

And so now here I am currently. Nothing bad has really happened yet but all ive done so far has been making backups, posting here, and re-adding that virtual drive. Any ideas what the problem is? I really appreciate any help!

My Specs:
Mobo: Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe
GFX: ATI Radeon X1900 CrossFire (Single)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64X2 4800+
RAM: Two sticks of 1gb OCZ Gold. DDR1 or DDR2 I can find out if needed.
PSU: OCZ GameXStream 700watt
OS: Windoze XP Pro

Also if theres a recommended program that would help diagnose that'd be great. And sorry if my post was really long.. here is a shorter version:

Short Version (in order of occurrence):
- computer wouldnt turn on easily. froze at mobo welcome screen on first successful turn-on. loaded fine on second successful turn-on.
- ventrilo connected/disconnected quickly nonstop, browser1 couldnt load new pages, but browser2 could. irc/msn unaffected.
- windvd slowed to a crawl, couldnt load from a certain drive. after several failed tries, program later loaded and behaved just fine with no problems.
- virtual drive disappeared and was unable to be reloaded do to memory error.
- played left4dead without lag or issues for hours.
- browser1 decided it could load new pages, but couldnt download files. could choose save location, but then would refuse to write the file/initialize the download.
- ran a standalone game that had problems loading, froze or crashed. caused the rest of the system to start to hang, such as msn and browser.
- could still use taskbar, tried to load taskmanager. taskmanager never loaded and taskbar then became inoperable.
- left it like this overnight. no changes. was forced to power off.
- computer refused to turn on. left room, and while gone after 10-20 seconds computer TURNED ON BY ITSELF. hanged at mobo welcome screen.
- powered on again (right away i think) and computer went past mobo welcome screen to amerikan microtrends screen stating that overclocking had failed. (i only attempted to overclock once when i first built the computer) hit f2 to use default settings. windoze xp loaded just fine.
- spending the afternoon using nothing and making backups, posting here, and was able to re-add that virtual drive.

Any help at all would be very much so appreciated. Something is most definitely wrong. Anything I can do to test or any program or something would be great. I would be happy to provide any further information if needed.
Thank you!

-Ji

Doby

Run diagnostic tests on the hdd avalible free from the manufacture.

Memtest run from a bootable disk to test the ram but it should be tested one stick at a time.

UBCD includes many hdd manufactuers test plus memtest and much more

Post your voltages and temps.

Jiketsu

Thanks for the reply Doby. Windows shut itself down, and it was very soft. closed the programs and saved my settings and everything. On reboot it boots past the motherboard welcome just fine, then gives this message:

"reboot and select proper boot device or insert media in selected boot device and press a key"

i didnt mention this, but the hardrive was sounding a bit louder than usual, but only when it was performing tasks. its eight years old now actually, so its time is probably near. i fortunately have ultimatebootdisc which does have a seagate diagnostic on it, which i am running right now. interestingly though, as its doing this scan its not loud at all. i have 3 altogether so maybe its another drive making the noise.

I'm on my laptop now. ill post more information when i get the results!

-Ji

Doby

IT does sound like a problem with the boot drive let me know the results but also if you have a floppy drive make sure there is no disk in it, you can even remove power temporarily from the floppy drive in case its messing up.

You may also want to remove power from all drives except the boot drive just to see if anything changes, also check bios to see if all drives are listed.

from what you have explained it seems the boot drive is on its way out so if you have important data on it you may want to consider slaving it in another computer to save your stuff before it s to late

Jiketsu

Thanks again for the reply.. I seem to have a new even more scary problem now. I have made a backup of the drive and it still boots and hasnt died as of yet. However it took some time and it became late, so I had to sleep. I was going to post those voltages and stuff today just to be certain, but sometime in the night the power went out (other things here in my apt turned off too).

Now the computer refuses to turn on at all. No matter how persistently and how long I hold in the button. (It was doing this before remember but it eventually turned on) When I turn the switch for the PSU on, the light on the motherboard does come on, the KVM does beep, and surprisingly my external USB HD illuminates (even though it has its own power supply).

I checked the cabling, everything seems to be secure. I checked the physical connection between the power button and the wiring and its secure as well. I tried removing power from the graphics card to see if that would lighten the load or something but there was no change.

Any ideas? Everything seems normal it just wont turn on. Its very very evil... especially since I'm supposed to be on vacation :P

I really do appreciate your help.

-Ji

Doby

Pull the power switch of were it connects to the 2 pins on the motherboard, then touch the 2 pins with a screw driver, this should start the computer, if it starts release the screw driver you can then should down by the normal method, if it would start this way then the case switch is bad if not we will try something else

Jiketsu

Thats ossum advice. I feel bad because I didn't give it a try. Before your post, I took out the power supply and plugged in an old one from another box. The computer started. The only problem is the old one is too old and theres no plug for my ridiculous graphics card, so it beeps and beeps. So looks like I am going to have to put out money for a new power supply. Unfortunate since I'm pretty broke :P

So seems like two things were failing on me at once. Thank you so very very much for your help on this. I really appreciate you responding. I commend you!

Take care.

-Ji

Doby

Your very welcome, your OCZ should still be under warranty, I doubt both the psu and the switch are broke looks like its just the psu