MikeSty

OS: WinXP SP2
Board: ABIT Duramax AA8 w/ intel 3.0ghz prescott LGA775 (oc'd to ~3.225ghz before cmos clear)
HD: Seagate SATA 7200 120GB (main), " " " 80GB (secondary), 250gb external
RAM: 2x512 DDR2-4200 Corsair ValueRam
Video Card: 6600gt

Most components purchased over 1.5 years ago, so most warranties expired.

***

Let's rewind to the beginning - last wednesday, I came home with my lovely computer. It was pretty filthy and smelled of cigar smoke, so I figured I'd give it a good cleaning. I did a pretty swell job of cleaning it up too. I hook it up and boot it up - no dice! No video, no nothing. I do some basic troubleshooting and eventually get it to reboot upon reseating the RAM. There's a good chance I knocked it loose cleaning it, I suppose.

So for the rest of wednesday AND THROUGH thursday we're happy as a clam. Runs like a charm. Early friday afternoon I wake up to find that it's booting, but not loading Windows. I've had this happen occasionally, so I just reboot it - still nothing! This problem is different from wednesday's because it boots, it just hangs randomly at some point in the Windows load.

I figure maybe I pwned my hard drives, so I decided to pop in my DUBCD disk with MiniPE XT on it. That doesn't boot either. I even go as far as disconnecting the hard drives to isolate the problem for sure - MiniPE still won't boot. So I give a very defeated sigh and whip out the XP disk, preparing to run (shield your eyes if you're weak) - system recovery. Of course, the XP installer just stops before I even get to select a thing.

This is the point where I become very worried I'm pretty adept at solving such problems, but I've ran myself into a corner. I tried a few things over a course of a few hours involving CCMOS, RAM reseats, and video card reseats and I finally get it to boot. It's a tad sluggish, but it works through the night. I turn it off and go to sleep after a night out

Saturday comes, and it's back to the same situation as Friday afternoon - no windows boot. I try the same steps over and over as I did on Friday and still no luck at all. In fact, the situation worsens as I apparently fried my own video card and no longer get any signal. To make matters worse, I'm watching the yankees lose on TV.

I pop in a crummy video card and find for sure that the other video card was definately toasted. As with friday, I am occasionally able to boot into safe mode - my data is fine.

Eventually I decide to give it a rest at sometime on Saturday and figure I can just use my server to work out of while I think of some things. In the meantime, I cobble together enough spare parts to convert a 64mb/600mhz/10GB Presario into a dandy Ubuntu machine. I had a lot of fun playing with it for the rest of saturday and some of sunday.

I wake up today and decide to give the shit a try - no dice yet again. Time to order some new parts. The problem is, I can't really tell if it's the RAM or the Motherboard or what? I know I need a new video card for sure, but the other part of the problem is what's worrying me the most. I was able to get Memtestx86 to load and the RAM appears to be okay, but I'd like some more heads to think on this one.

****

Timeline:

Wednesday: No boot at all, reseat RAM =>> boots, works great
Thursday: Works great all day.
Friday: No Windows load, no bootable CDs load right, occasional safe mode, works somewhat great after several RAM/Card reseats and CMOS resets
Saturday: Same as friday, video card now fried, still nothing
Sunday: Gave it a rest
Monday: Same as Friday, still occasional safe mode

****

ATM it looks like my best option is to at least start with replacing the video card and then the RAM - if that doesn't work, then get a new motherboard. Money isn't a huge issue (as in like, $300 is chill) - and time isn't that much of a factor either. I'm pretty patient

Thanks in advance for your help

Memtestx86 = Nothing
System Restore = Nothing

I've been told maybe I just had a crummy mobo all along (windows not loading properly was reported by someone else I know; mobo was the fix) and maybe the card isn't toasted just yet.

I can definately get into safe mode almost every time. That would most nearly indicate a software issue in my mind, yet as I said - sysrestore did nothing. Also, whenever I restart via safe mode, it just hangs on the logout screen.

liquidlight

I'd be more suspect of your Mobo than your videocard. . . from past experience 18 months is about the operational life of Abit crap. Examine the capacitors around your processor, are any of the tops of them bulging?

__________________
Halfway to hell and picking up speed.

MikeSty

Not sure why I never thought to check for bloated capacitors. I'm almost positive it's the mobo at this point.

Shame the replacement board I was looking at on Newegg just sold out. Bad luck indeed. Maybe I ought to just switch to AMD while I'm at it... eh.

Bossnass

I don't know if this fits your situation, but I've recently replaced my PSU.

For a couple days it wouldn't boot at all. The day I planned to take it to a buddies to determine if it was the psu or the mobo, it worked, but no video signal. So I thought my 6600gt was dead and popped in an old raedon 7000, which worked.

The next day it wouldn't boot at all, until I was down to 1 stick of ram and 1 hard drive.

Finally, I pulled the PSU and took it to the technician at the place I bought the case and PSU. They hooked up a tester, and it turned out that power was flowing, but voltages were all over the place, mostly low. A second test for a manager 10 minutes later showed fine, but a third test 5 minutes after that showed problems again.

I replaced it, and now everything works fine. (2 hard drives, optical drives, card reader, 4 sticks of RAM, a sound card, AND the 6600gt that I thought was dead).

liquidlight

If you're a gamer at all the AMD cores EMBARASS what the Intel chips can do these days. I'm just waiting for any excuse I can get to sink another $500 into my rig and replace my motherboard and processor to go Athlon X2.

__________________
Halfway to hell and picking up speed.

cyrnel

Mike, don't know if you're still working on this. Did you eliminate non-essential hardware? Cards, USB devices, etc?

If it safe boots reliably the problem could be a driver or driver-to-batty-hardware issue. Even shared interrupts, etc.

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

Dilbert1234567

Um, wow, just wow... currently the AMD core is just a tiny bit better then Intel's core, but that all changes when the Conroe come out, the Conroe is simply spanking amd. hothardware and tomshardware got some pre releases of the conroe 2.66GHz and in both cases they had huge increases against the FX-62 and FX-60, for gaining, between 25% and 50% higher frame rates. further more, the conroe was not the fastest that will be available, at release they are slated to go as high as 2.93 ghz

http://www.hothardware.com/viewartic...?articleid=794
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/06/...-62/index.html

Beyond all that...

Start with the ram, mainly because it should have a life time warranty, get that replaced by Corsair first. As for the OC, you did not push it to very far, did you remember to lock the PCI bus and the PCI-e bus to there normal frequencies?

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

MikeSty

1. PCI buses are locked and have been. Have had no issues with those. Also, I've CCMOS several times so everything is stock, so that's certainly not an issue IMO.

2. I'll check, but I don't think I have a lifetime warranty. As I said, they passed Memtestx86 fine

3. Cyrnel - That's the exact logic I've been having the past few days. I eliminated most of the non-essential hardware but I did leave a USB card in it and I'm not sure how I managed to skip that. I'm pretty sure that's not it, but since that's so simple, why not give it a shot?

4. I'll consider checking the PSU, pretty sure that's not it

Thanks a bunch for the extra opinions guys It saves me a little time here and there.

Dilbert1234567

as long as the pci bus was locked at the time of the ocing, you should be safe, 7% is not that much, but can be for the pci bus and the cards on it..

on the PSU, next time you boot, get into bios and check the hardware tab, see what voltages its pumping out.

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

liquidlight

Dilbert, you forgot one VERY important thing. . . I mentioned a price of $500 for the chip/board, if you look at comparable cores around $300 the AMD chips are pretty superior for everything gaming related, Intel barely eeks out a lead for certain desktop publishing apps.

I wish I had $800 (FX-60) to $1200 (FX-62) to spend on a core!

__________________
Halfway to hell and picking up speed.

Dilbert1234567

The Conroe in the article is slated to release at $530, and completely spanks amd's priced twice as much. The next slower Conroe (2.4 GHz) will be priced at $316 and should still meet if not beat the fastest amd's on the market. i'm not saying amd's are junk, I have an AMD 64 because I need 64 bits of addresses, and at the time I bought it, it was the best between the 2, now, Intel closed the gap for the first time in a long time, and AMD needs to catch up.

but this thread is about hsi broken system, dig up one of the old threads about amd vs intel and get it going again if you want to discuss this further.

as for the computer in question, one more thought is to remove the hard drives and make sure they are still ok and stable, mount them in your Ubuntu box and see if they are ok.

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

MikeSty

They're SATA drives, so no dice. As I said though, I could get to safe mode and all the data was fine. Plus, when I disconnected the drives I was still having issues. So I'm pretty sure they're fine