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Here's A Headscratcher For You...


Karma Supra
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Right, I'm fed up with my PC. I don;t know what it is, its a fairly well specced machine (it was awesome specced when I first built it!) but it tends to be a tad "tempromental" I am not a total computer noob, and know my way around setting/building a system, but I'm stuck!!!

Karma home made special, specs are as follows.

Cooler master case,

Asus K8vSE deluxe mobo

Athlon 64 3400+

1 gig sd ram

120 gig 'cuda sata HD

256 meg geoforce fx5500 graphics card

Antec 500w "true power" PSU

loads of fans, sony dvd-r card readers, wireless, 19" sony lcd etc etc

Every few months I reformat it, and give it a clean install (XP pro, sp2) just to keep it running well (clear the crap out that slows it down) I am pretty used to doing this and have no problems doing it at all.. I'm running the latest bios and all the drivers are the latest ones. Everything is bang up to date...

Heres the problem...

I have always had problems with playing videos... seems to be some kind of memory leak (although no other evidence of one, memory levels seem fine) but after playing a couple of videos (toc beer for example :P) I have to restart it if I want to watch any more, as although the sound was fine, the video would be very laggy and jumpy... odd. No one could seam to sort it, no hardware conflicts, nothing obvious.

Since the last reformat the problem has gone! wooohooo! - but at a cost, now whenever I play games (well try to) there seems to be serious video problems. there game loads fine, but there is no sound. on all games I tried.. intro videos (i.e. the ea games one) would not display, and on games with a 3d background and menu overlays, (half life, c&C generals) there is no visible menu/text overlays, in some cases some of the 3d renderings are missing (usually translucent overlays, but not always). the 3d acceleration did work though, and all direct X tests passed (9C). Still no hardware conflicts... very odd.

So after checking all the settings, re installing drivers, searching the web I decided to do my usual fix.

clean reformat.

Now for the real problem.....

It won't let me install windows!!! I boot from the CD as normal, setup starts, install the via sata drivers as usual, no probs, All goes well up to the point where I am asked to press enter to install rindows, R to reinstall/fix windows, or F3 to exit. at this point the system hangs... and has to be restarted by the power switch (no ctrl+alt+del). No hardware has changed at all, I am running the exact spec I have run for ages, no bios setting had changed (at first, now defaulted). no joy. I have even tried 2 spare hard disks and two spare windows disks.. no change.

Sorry for the long winded post...

I'm stuck and ****** off.. Can anybody shed some light on this???

Ta!!! Charlie

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I know for a fact XP SP2 had issues with a lot of video cards...

I would not be surprised if your video problem is related to that - id reccomend on the next reinstall just going for SP1 - ;)

As for the current problem... I'm assuming you've checked all the cables, connections etc?

might be worth disconnecting the HDD, giving the connector a good blow, the same for odd parts just to see..

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I would not be surprised if your video problem is related to that - id reccomend on the next reinstall just going for SP1 - ;)

Yep, agree there. Try that first and if it still does it then i'll bring round a spare video card and some memory for you to try :thumbsup:

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Its the same install disk I have always used (I upgrade to sp2 later)

I have checked all the connections, blown out any dust etc....

Like I say this is exactly the same clean install that I always do, same bits, same CD.

Cheers Lee.

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I would not be surprised if your video problem is related to that - id reccomend on the next reinstall just going for SP1 - ;)

Yep, agree there. Try that first and if it still does it then i'll bring round a spare video card and some memory for you to try :thumbsup:

At the point Karma's getting to in the install, it knows nothing about the service pack it's about to install from the disk.

My money's on either a power supply problem or maybe graphics card.

Could be SATA connector/cable/power as well though, like Fidgits is saying.

Have you got another SATA power supply you could try... then another SATA cable... then try the other SATA channel on the mobo (will probably have to change boot settings in BIOS for SATA channel priority).

Have you run memtest on your memory too?

You've mentioned the size of your memory, but what speed is it? brand is it? do you know what chips it's using (eg. TCCD, BH5, Hynix...) I know you'll say it has been working fine with it, but certain brands of memory can be very sensitive to dust and hence static (again depends what pcb the memory is using).

Have you checked your cooling on the northbridge and southbridge chipsets?

Check your cooling fan on the heatsink on the graphics card as well.

I know someone who had a GeForce FX card, and because his PC was playing up and was making a horrendous noise he sent it back to the bloke who built it for him. The noise went but he still had problems, so he bought it round to me. I found out the bloke had disconnected the fan because it was knackered... didn't bother replacing it. Genius. Luckily a new Arctic Cooler solved the problem and not too much damage had been done to the card.

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Cheers Jesus,

Ram is Kingston 2 x 512 MB PC3200 DDR RAM that came to gether in a matched kit for 1 gb

Sata power and cable are fine, as the disk was working perfectly in windows, I did try the other power connector (direct from psu) and use different leads in different sockets on the mobo.. no difference at all.

I doubt its the psu as it is pretty new and a good brand, (nota cheepy nasty one like the one it replaced!

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The bios checks ram on start up, so surely that would find any ram problems??? (it scans through, takes a few seconds)

I may canibalise the spare pc up stairs, try the graphics card and ram..

see how that goes...

Still its an odd one!!!

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The BIOS doesn't check the RAM in depth for errors.

Have a read here (further down page)... .: Clicky :.

Hope you get it sorted.

My graphics card cooked not so long ago... so upgraded my whole PC!!! Any excuse. No point buying a replacement AGP... so went for PCIe... which means mobo, 64bit CPU, heatsink, graphics card,... and some extra better spec memory (and more!). Could have used my OCZ stuff... but thought it would be rude not to get better memory at the same time!!!

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Depending on how enthusiastic you are ( :D ) take out the motherboard and inspect the soldering with a magnifying glass for dry joints.

I would also see if you can try new cables all round. Also, if you ever manage to boot again, check the disk's smart controller for errors. It could have been faulty for a while.

And of course, worth blowing a CD with Puppy Linux on it (see Google) and seeing if that will boot---your XP cd could be faulty.

Paul.

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I'd add another vote for it being RAM problems. Flaky performance across the board, despite repeated reinstalls could be little else - maybe some other hardware fault, but RAM is the most frequent.

See if there is any other ram you could use to test - or if the computer will work with just one of the sticks. Find a program to do a real ram test, and remember that many manufacturers have long or lifetime warranties.

Otherwise, you could just blame windows - as a Mac user that would be my favourite option...

David.

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I have just built a new system myself....

AMD 64 3800+ dual core cpu

BGF nforce4 ultra pci excpress mobo

nvidia 6800 GS 256mb graphics card (point of view)

1gb kingston memory

19" Samsung monitor, mouse keyboard Speakers etc etc

I have got 5 hdd's to power too

I had bought an Antec Smart Power 480w power supply and on booting up the comp i had no raid drives working.. next reboot would hang after the windows logo.. next reboot wouldn't get past post etc etc.. tried formating and reformating.. in the end i took out the raid drives and all worked fine.. put in raid drives and it went t**s up.. seemed like a different problem each time i booted up.. so, i decieded it must be power related.. not enough power to get everything running at the same time.... I have an ANTEC 480w power supply unit, so maybe your 500w isn't doing as good a job as it used to do.. or an updated bios or graphix card driver is causing somethimg to use a little more power.

I have just purchased a thermaltake 560w psu today.. and i'm going to put it in shortly in the hope i can get my raid drives back online (3 hdd's down at the moment) will let you know how i get on.

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Right, I'm fed up with my PC. I don;t know what it is, its a fairly well specced machine (it was awesome specced when I first built it!) but it tends to be a tad "tempromental" I am not a total computer noob, and know my way around setting/building a system, but I'm stuck!!!

Karma home made special, specs are as follows.

Cooler master case,

Asus K8vSE deluxe mobo

Athlon 64 3400+

1 gig sd ram

120 gig 'cuda sata HD

256 meg geoforce fx5500 graphics card

Antec 500w "true power" PSU

loads of fans, sony dvd-r card readers, wireless, 19" sony lcd etc etc

Every few months I reformat it, and give it a clean install (XP pro, sp2) just to keep it running well (clear the crap out that slows it down) I am pretty used to doing this and have no problems doing it at all.. I'm running the latest bios and all the drivers are the latest ones. Everything is bang up to date...

Heres the problem...

I have always had problems with playing videos... seems to be some kind of memory leak (although no other evidence of one, memory levels seem fine) but after playing a couple of videos (toc beer for example :P) I have to restart it if I want to watch any more, as although the sound was fine, the video would be very laggy and jumpy... odd. No one could seam to sort it, no hardware conflicts, nothing obvious.

Since the last reformat the problem has gone! wooohooo! - but at a cost, now whenever I play games (well try to) there seems to be serious video problems. there game loads fine, but there is no sound. on all games I tried.. intro videos (i.e. the ea games one) would not display, and on games with a 3d background and menu overlays, (half life, c&C generals) there is no visible menu/text overlays, in some cases some of the 3d renderings are missing (usually translucent overlays, but not always). the 3d acceleration did work though, and all direct X tests passed (9C). Still no hardware conflicts... very odd.

So after checking all the settings, re installing drivers, searching the web I decided to do my usual fix.

clean reformat.

Now for the real problem.....

It won't let me install windows!!! I boot from the CD as normal, setup starts, install the via sata drivers as usual, no probs, All goes well up to the point where I am asked to press enter to install rindows, R to reinstall/fix windows, or F3 to exit. at this point the system hangs... and has to be restarted by the power switch (no ctrl+alt+del). No hardware has changed at all, I am running the exact spec I have run for ages, no bios setting had changed (at first, now defaulted). no joy. I have even tried 2 spare hard disks and two spare windows disks.. no change.

Sorry for the long winded post...

I'm stuck and ****** off.. Can anybody shed some light on this???

Ta!!! Charlie

Not that this helps but I've been using the same motherboard for a server with a Athlon 64 3000 processor / 2GB Ram / 4* 300GB Raid and a crappy ATI video card - its been rock solid for months using a 650W Enermax PSU.

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Hi

We have a similar problem with SATA drives at work which have a proper SATA power connector (Slim and black) and not a molex (Chunky and white). The company who used to supply our PC's love cable ties for everything, and they were tying up the leads to the power connector on the hard drive end too tight, thus damaging the hard disk. Our PC's are built with windows and all the applications over the network, so a CD rarely touches the drives, and our builds were failing at a similar point.

Have you tried running a Seagate Disk Utility disk on the drive on boot to see if it comes up with any errors? That might not be a bad idea! We tend to do that (on non-seagate drives aswell!) before we call the company out to replace the disk (Yes i could so it myself but that's what we have a 3 year on site warrany for!! :rolleyes: )

Also, i'd stick a spare hard drive in your PC if you have one and try and install windows on that, see if it hangs at a similar point, and then try another XP CD? Worth a go! :thumbsup:

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As has been mentioned before in this thread RAM and power supplies are the most common problem for this kind of fault.

Check the RAM first, it's an easy test, search for MEMTEST as Jesus said above, download it burn it to a CD, reboot and boot off the CD. Then set it going and leave it for as long as it wants, I've sorted no end of PC's out which had, had faulty RAM in them.

That's the easiest test to do and doesn't cost anything (except 1 blank CD!)

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Right cheers guys....

I have now tried:

Different HD (tried two others, IDE cable, molex power, no difference so carried on with the SATA Drive (less case clutter!)

Different Video card (old geforce 2, its poo, and I have to find the none DVi cable for my screen (shock!) but I know it works, still no change.

I have removed ALL auxillary cards, no joy, different keyboards, different Mouse, no joy

I have tried three different XP pro disks, no change

if I connect up a fresh installed win XP hard drive (always keep one spare lol) the pc boots up fine.... but I don't really want to run my pc's operating system off a 6.4 gig 9 year old hard drive for ever!!!..

Currently running memtest (cheers Jesus)..... makeing a bootable floopy, on a laptop with no floppy was interesting .. had to rebuild another pc I had torn apart for test bits lol... either way its doing its thing, slowly...

If this test flags up nothing I'll take the xp installed hard drive out the other pc, fire it all up and run asus probe to check for and power probs... but surely if it runs fine in normal windows environment, the PSU is ok?

I really am stumped with this!!

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Try and install another operating system on your Sata drive. Eg. win 3.1, 95 or Linux.

Not 2000 or XP.

Paul.

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I'm still running the memory tests...

7 passes so far, no errors... So it looks like the ram is fine!

Win 98 installed fine...

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7 passes so far, no errors... So it looks like the ram is fine!

now 7 passes isnt technically enough for that program to properly diagnose faulty ram ac the documentation but its a number of passes id be happy with. in proper burn ins they reckon using it for like 24 hrs solid.

What with memtest not showing any error id be tempted to say the memory is fine(matched pairs can be very awkward but that prog shows up errors in memory whatever the cause). im assuming your voltage setting for the memory is appropriate and that this isnt a psu related matter as if there was low power i reckon it would show with memtest(my LLPT mem did just that, too low voltage in bios). the clean install rules out for the main bad software install, assuming you really take it all down every time (good maintenance routine btw). now this really isnt leaving much to go at .....

have you made any alterations to bios settings at all? attempted OC? default settings may well not be appropriate for your hardware so you need to ttweak that back to appropriate settings first and foremost. Despite what any professional will tell you, and im not saying theyre indestructible kk, pc components are a bit more resilient than some believe so im going for settings being the problem(unless you like spilled a 2 litre bottle of coke in it while it was powered up for instance).

id take it down to barebones, remove all unecessary stuff and place safely on one side preferably in antistatic bags and try to get it setup for like just mobo, cpu, mem, graphics card, hd's, one drive to install from. leave soundcard and anything else out. What with the default bios settings, u might want to make a note of your current settings if those are the ones that got 7 passes just in case.

the other alternative... and this jus hit me is what setting u have set for the hd's in bios(legacy, sata, ide whatever it is etc) and whether you are installing the driver(the thing u need to press f6 for). gotta reinstall mine again tomoz so ill be more clear on what order things are done in then .....

whatever it is.... its the result of a change. find the change and unless its hardware related or disk error it can be sorted. ima keep lookin at this thread so post up whats happened an what youve tried ... sure an answer will come from somewhere as theres a few clued up ppl lookin from what ive read here

oh and windows 98 isnt as fussy as xp btw ;) installed fine when i had low voltage to my mem and MANY MANY MANY memory errors as result from memtest lol. but it is a good indication that the hardware is effectively ok... settings im thinking

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I had a similar fault on my system, although it's rather old now. In the end - one knackered HD and a call to MS to reissue my XP code later - it turned out to be my RAID controller not getting on with XP Pro! Not much I could do about it so I had to turn it off (Highpoint RAID) leaving me with 4 IDE drives... not 8 like I had planned. It worked fine then, but only after I had reinstalled XP ELEVEN TIMES trying to find the solution.

At the 11th attempt on my PC I broke the whole lot down into it's seperate pieces then cleaned them all and put it all back together, swapping the PCI ports that I used for cards, using a different memory slot, etc.

The reason I say "similar fault" is that every time I had a Bluey or an error, it flagged the video card as a culprit... which was believable as it was a Radeon 9500 Pro, but on a forum, I saw one little post about the Highpoint cause video errors!

Bizzareness and good luck.

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my problem turned out to be a faulty hdd.. no matter where or how i plugged it in..master/slave, or on the raid card.. the comp refuses to boot up.. removed te drive alltogether and all is ok now.

Now i am left with a spare Antec Smart Power 480w psu. :lol:

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Right then Chaps... cheers for all your help... its SORTED.

I tried a third keyboard... and it worked!!!!!!

VERY odd....

In all the taking apart and rebuilding of spares, I rebuilt my "spare" system and reformatted and put a fresh install of XP on that, same screen, same keyboard, same mouse etc.. it worked fine.... Installed no sweat..

It turns out for some reason this time round (I had not changed anything in the bios prior to the problem, I just usually reformat and re install) the USB keyboards were being shut down with the XP setup, they worled before hand, but as soon as setup started, they were disabled (but still powered, num lock, caps lock etc LEDs still responded!) I still don't know why it was different this time (like I say I regularly reformat, same disks, same windows, and no hardware/bios changes since I built the machine!) but the USB keyboard no longer seems to work in setup.

Either way it seems to be working now... Even the problem with the graphics card seemed sorted (maybe last install was just a "bad" install? I did nothing different to the usual, and I can pretty much do it in my sleep now!)

Thanks again for all your input... I still have no idea why it was different this time round, it makes no sense (unless its an intermittant hardware fault that will come back and bite me in the **** lol)

Cheers again... Charlie.

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pcs are freaky at times init

Too !Removed! right! Mine once tried to boot up from a USB keyboard! :lol: Until I unplugged the keyboard, the PC kept complaining about not being able to find the OS on the keyboard. I like to have the USB boot option enabled so I can boot from stick into Linux, etc. Hmmm... A keyboard with an embedded OS.

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Haha how bizarre! I'll have to remember that one!

We have to have USB boot disabled at work because students are always trying to boot off floppies and cds etc, for what purpose god only knows but there you go! When they found out that a lot of new motherboards were able to boot to USB, all the wannabe hacking nerds were trying it! Geeks. :lol:

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