Dark times my friends, dark times.

Wang Chung

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 Very Happy

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 Smile

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 Smile

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 Smile

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 Smile

Thanks in advance for your help Smile

^^^^^^ That's a copy of my post from another forum. I'm in a jam here, so any other thoughts are appreciated. I know I'm probably skipping over something obvious.
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is now -=|CT|=- Frothy Mixture

firefox_71 · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 4:12 pm Post subject:

I would think the mobo is the culprit and would buy that before the vid card even......mine does that shut itself off and hang loading windows quite often. Sometimes I come home from work and it is doing that.....I kill the power with the switch on the PS and let it sit for a minute. It usually does it if it is too hot in the room.

The reason I say mobo first is that I recently had to replace the AMD mobo in my daughter's machine because the AGP slot just quit working altogether. I tried a 5200, a 4200, and a 440MX which all worked just fine, but that slot was just gone.....luckily I have an old Jaton PCI for just such an emergency.
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CountChocula · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 4:38 pm Post subject:

I know a solution: Eat your computer. All of it. Just eat it.
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Quote:

[20:43] -≠∫ĆŤ∫≠- ŜρξčļαГ јỈмMﻻ: we'll aim for bender
[20:43] -≠∫ĆŤ∫≠- ŜρξčļαГ јỈмMﻻ: but use a lot of napalm

AlMightyBob · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 5:02 pm Post subject:

CountChocula wrote:

I know a solution: Eat your computer. All of it. Just eat it.

QFE
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Wang Chung · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 5:12 pm Post subject:

firefox_71 wrote:

I would think the mobo is the culprit and would buy that before the vid card even......mine does that shut itself off and hang loading windows quite often. Sometimes I come home from work and it is doing that.....I kill the power with the switch on the PS and let it sit for a minute. It usually does it if it is too hot in the room.

I'll give that a shot because I'm pretty sure if the video card is still in fact broken, the mobo is what's causing the other problems. Memtest found nothing, and system restore is no good. This is definately a permanent problem - as I said I didn't even touch the thing at all on sunday and still no dice.

Quote:

The reason I say mobo first is that I recently had to replace the AMD mobo in my daughter's machine because the AGP slot just quit working altogether. I tried a 5200, a 4200, and a 440MX which all worked just fine, but that slot was just gone.....luckily I have an old Jaton PCI for just such an emergency.

Roger that. I'd follow the same steps but with PCI-Express I have little choice in that sense. It currently is running w/ some cheese whiz PCI card. I have a pair of PCI cards, this is the shittier of the two (i should probably switch to the other one that I used the first time I broke a GFX card Smile

)
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is now -=|CT|=- Frothy Mixture

Wang Chung · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 5:29 pm Post subject:

Looks like then, this will be the upgrade to my AA8 Duramax:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127213
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is now -=|CT|=- Frothy Mixture

theboomboom · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 6:09 pm Post subject:

I was having similair issues with the computer I built my uncle a few months ago. I RMA'd the board, newegg was great about getting us a new one and it has been fine ever since.
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You do not say that the wheel is fatigued, yet the body is as material as the wheel

firefox_71 · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 6:33 pm Post subject:

looks like a winner to me, Wang. I like the additional cooling on the chipset, 4 SATA's and support for 8GB of RAM.....damn, I want a new board now Very Happy

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Wang Chung · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 6:50 pm Post subject:

Yeh that board is only mediocre. Maybe I missed it but I didn't see any firewirse support. At first glance it does look better than my current board but I see a few pitfalls.
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is now -=|CT|=- Frothy Mixture

SupaFly · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 8:45 pm Post subject:

before you do that, try a new stick of ram

this JUST happened to me at work this week... same symptoms, hell, while i was reading it you basically described my day at work

my dad insisted his crucial ram was not to blame, & that it was all full of spyware... after 2 hours of messign with it, i got a boot & it tested clean

went to another comp, ganked the ram & it ran like a million bucks

what happened was one of the actual ram chips went bad & would only manifest itself when it was to be accessed... i guess the random part is true, sometimes it just plain wouldnt boot, others itd be just fine, but sluggish

im quite willing to blame the ram, if you got a stick you can snatch, even for a minute, just to test, id highly reccomend it
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Wang Chung · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 9:09 pm Post subject:

I don't and that's the problem. It's good, new DDR2. I've tried nearly every possible configuration of the two sticks - what are the odds that all of a sudden both sticks went to shit?
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is now -=|CT|=- Frothy Mixture

SupaFly · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 4:34 pm Post subject:

better than you might think... but yeah... both sticks going would be a bit odd... but it was new, good ddr that went bad on the one i referred to also

its just one of those hardware probs thats close to fucking impossible to troubleshoot without spare parts

i just dont wanna see you go buy a brand new mobo & end up with the same probs
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Wang Chung · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 4:46 pm Post subject:

Yeh I understand, I'm pretty positive at this point it's Mobo + vid card that's having problems.
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is now -=|CT|=- Frothy Mixture

Kordoba · Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 10:58 pm Post subject:

!Linux.

Not Ubuntu.

Fedora Core. Very Happy

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theboomboom · Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 11:23 pm Post subject:

Kordoba wrote:

!Linux.

Not Ubuntu.

Fedora Core. Very Happy

<-hero
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You do not say that the wheel is fatigued, yet the body is as material as the wheel