[Retired Tech]

Posts 34 and 35

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1: What is psu output (i Watts)? It should be written on it. Even though voltages look good it is still possible that they flactuate at times due to a too weak or defective psu and cause restarts and freezes. A marginally faultyor weak power supply can cause problems like you wouldn't believe.
The power supply is an Antec TruePower 2.0 and is rated with a maximum power of 550W. Now I want to go a little more in depth with this. Is it possible that this power supply if not powerful enough to supply enough power to my system? I've got an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processor, ASUS A8N-SLI Premium, eVGA GeForce 7900GT, 1GB of GeIL (2 x 512MB) RAM, one optical drive, 5 hard drives (3x320GB, 1x160GB, 1x80GB), 5 120mm fans, and one light fixture mod that isn't on all the time. Looking back thats a lot of stuff. So have I just overloaded my PSU? Is there a way to test this?

Is there any time correlation betweet the parts replacement and the freeze/restarts. Has this computer ever been stable? If it was stable then try to remember if there was anh hardware/software installation after which the problem started.
Truth be told, this system was NEVER 100% stable. Back when I had the wrong RAM and only 2 hard drives, the system would BSOD approximately every 2 weeks (occasionally I could leave it on for weeks at time with no problems whatsoever). But starting in September I started adding hard drives and starting in late October problems started cropping up (more often). I'm an idiot so every time I got to a problem I reformatted the system drive and started fresh.
I also had a brief interlude with XP 64 edition I'm not sure if I installed it wrong or what, but that was by far the most unstable any computer I've ever seen has been. After 3 days of normal behavior, the computer became exponentially unstable.

3: Do you have a video connection integrated on the motherboard? If yes, remove the video card and connect to the one onboard. Try to run it for a while to see if there is any improvement.
Nope.

Edited by you_silly_mortals, 13 December 2006 - 10:02 AM.

[you_silly_mortals]

1: What is psu output (i Watts)? It should be written on it. Even though voltages look good it is still possible that they flactuate at times due to a too weak or defective psu and cause restarts and freezes. A marginally faultyor weak power supply can cause problems like you wouldn't believe.
The power supply is an Antec TruePower 2.0 and is rated with a maximum power of 550W. Now I want to go a little more in depth with this. Is it possible that this power supply if not powerful enough to supply enough power to my system? I've got an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processor, ASUS A8N-SLI Premium, eVGA GeForce 7900GT, 1GB of GeIL (2 x 512MB) RAM, one optical drive, 5 hard drives (3x320GB, 1x160GB, 1x80GB), 5 120mm fans, and one light fixture mod that isn't on all the time. Looking back thats a lot of stuff. So have I just overloaded my PSU? Is there a way to test this?

Is there any time correlation betweet the parts replacement and the freeze/restarts. Has this computer ever been stable? If it was stable then try to remember if there was anh hardware/software installation after which the problem started.
Truth be told, this system was NEVER 100% stable. Back when I had the wrong RAM and only 2 hard drives, the system would BSOD approximately every 2 weeks (occasionally I could leave it on for weeks at time with no problems whatsoever). But starting in September I started adding hard drives and starting in late October problems started cropping up (more often). I'm an idiot so every time I got to a problem I reformatted the system drive and started fresh.
I also had a brief interlude with XP 64 edition I'm not sure if I installed it wrong or what, but that was by far the most unstable any computer I've ever seen has been. After 3 days of normal behavior, the computer became exponentially unstable.

3: Do you have a video connection integrated on the motherboard? If yes, remove the video card and connect to the one onboard. Try to run it for a while to see if there is any improvement.
Nope.

Edited by you_silly_mortals, 13 December 2006 - 10:02 AM.

[The Skeptic]

The psu you have is quite powerfull but your computer seems to be loaded to a breaking point. Let's leave for the moment all other possible issues that could affect the stability (and there are plenty, I can assure you) and concentrate on the power supply. Try to disconnect temporarilly as many HDs as you can and as many fans as you can. Leave only the psu fan (obviously), cpu fan (obviously) and only one of the other fans. In case you worry about over heating leave the side cover open. Run the computer and let us know what happens.

[you_silly_mortals]

OK I've had the HDs and the fans unplugged for like 15 minutes and since I had really nothing else to do with just my tiny system drive, I booted up Half-Life 2. Three game crashes and a blue screen later, I decide I should post it in here.

Mid post, I get another blue screen. Sorry for the blurriness of this one.

I'm getting close to my wits end here. Should I just bite the bullet and take it to my on campus computer repair people?

Edited by you_silly_mortals, 13 December 2006 - 10:29 PM.

[ultimateslacker2]

Well all I got is a failing hard-drive.

[The Skeptic]

What is the volume of your system drive and to what extent is it full. Did you run clean disk and defragger lately?

Run check-disk on this drive: my computer > right click system drive (most probably c:) > properties > tools > error checking > check now > check the two squares > start. The process takes some time so be patient.

Don't give up yet. We me be zeroing on the problem. Just now we excluded tons of hardware from being the source of the problem. If, however, your time is limited then taking the computer to a shop will resolve the problem quicker. Whatever the case the process of elimination that we are taking is a must.

[ultimateslacker2]

yeah boot up with your xp cd and do

chkdisk /r


It will take a little while as The skeptic said..

If that doesnt work, I got one more suggestion

[you_silly_mortals]

Well the good news is that my computer has stayed on since my last post.
The bad news is the possible reason its still on: I haven't done anything with it since then. I left it on with just the startup applications running and just walked away. But this condition for stability defeats the purpose of having a computer since to keep it on I'm not allowed to use it.

What is the volume of your system drive and to what extent is it full. Did you run clean disk and defragger lately?
The volume of the system drive is 80GB and I recently defragged it so I could test it with Sandra Lite XI.

Lately an increasing number of error reports to Microsoft have been blaming my video card, saying I should download the latest video drivers (which I have installed) or under-clock my video card. This has happened to me before with my original video card for this system (XFX GeForce 7900), but in that case the video card was the problem.

[you_silly_mortals]

Am I going to need a special disk to do this? I looked here and it says that if the drive is a SATA drive I have to use a special boot disk. Is this true?

[you_silly_mortals]

Ran chkdsk, I wasn't in the room so I never saw it finish but there is a log file on the disk called bootex this is whats in it (I think its been run before because there is more than one log of chkdsk being run):

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Prometheus.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the
master file table (MFT) bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

78140128 KB total disk space.
26752808 KB in 38789 files.
11944 KB in 3764 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
111664 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
51263712 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
19535032 total allocation units on disk.
12815928 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
b0 a6 00 00 44 a6 00 00 27 e0 00 00 00 00 00 00 ....D...'.......
95 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 34 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........4.......
88 9f 2a 03 00 00 00 00 0e 32 72 1b 00 00 00 00 ..*......2r.....
04 f5 43 04 00 00 00 00 60 62 4c f9 01 00 00 00 ..C.....`bL.....
92 33 59 93 02 00 00 00 00 e4 65 b6 04 00 00 00 .3Y.......e.....
b0 81 d3 77 00 00 00 00 d0 3c 07 00 85 97 00 00 ...w.....<......
00 00 00 00 00 a0 dc 60 06 00 00 00 b4 0e 00 00 .......`........

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Prometheus.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 43 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 43 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 43 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.

78140128 KB total disk space.
32355016 KB in 45483 files.
14720 KB in 4620 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
124612 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
45645780 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
19535032 total allocation units on disk.
11411445 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
20 d9 00 00 c2 c3 00 00 b9 12 01 00 00 00 00 00 ...............
d0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 84 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
48 81 0f 04 00 00 00 00 70 16 73 1a 00 00 00 00 H.......p.s.....
06 59 cd 05 00 00 00 00 98 1a b7 07 02 00 00 00 .Y..............
14 dd 4c 56 02 00 00 00 2a ab 2e 89 04 00 00 00 ..LV....*.......
e0 f6 d3 77 00 00 00 00 90 38 07 00 ab b1 00 00 ...w.....8......
00 00 00 00 00 20 cb b6 07 00 00 00 0c 12 00 00 ..... ..........

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.

Edited by you_silly_mortals, 14 December 2006 - 04:26 PM.

[Ozzyb]

Hi again.

couple of things

What Operating system did you upgrade from
Is your current Operating system winxp pro 64?

i went to EVGA's website and followed all the links to your drivers.

Could you try downloading them from this link

DRIVER DOWNLOAD

[you_silly_mortals]

Theres no upgrade. I'm running XP Pro 32 bit edition (installing from XP Pro disk).

Those drivers are the same ones I have installed already.

[Ozzyb]

ok thanks.
Is it possible that you could try getting hold of another card to try and see if same problems happends.

[ultimateslacker2]

since you ran chkdisk .. how are you running now

[you_silly_mortals]

Well, I haven't crashed yet. If thats what your asking. But I also haven't really done anything either. Also, can I hook up my fans and hard drives again. Not hearing any noise while using my computer kinda creeps me out. I suppose I could try playing HL2 again.