[bustydeluxe]

Appologies in advance for the length of this post!!!

The problem started with a delay write error to my USB hard Drives (1tb and 3 500GB drives - all failing). On restart they would be fine but as time progressed they would fail again. Then once they had failed and I'd kept the computer on they decided to fix themselves and work for a time being before failing again. When this happened the Lan connection suddenly started dropping out (wired line).

I tested the USB devices and my Lan connection (using the same wires) on my laptop - all fine.

I then went into the components taking them out one at a time to see if anything was causing the issue (Sound Blaster Audigy, Graphics Card). The problems kept occuring on rebooting my machine when these devices were out of the machine.

Then I came to the memory, I have two 2GB sticks and there are four memory slots on my Motherboard. I started by taking one out. On restarting all the problems had vanished and I assumed I had found the culprit. Then, after a week running on the same component configeration the USB and Lan problems came back. I then swapped that stick out for the one I'd taken out previously, again the machine ran perfectly for more or less a week before the problems started again. I then put both sticks back in to their old slots when the machine was really bad at the start of this whole process and everything was fine - again this only lasted for a week before the USB and Lan issues came back with a vengence. Every time I move the memory about it fixes the issues for about a week. I have tested the memory using Memtest and it's fine. Is this a Motherboard issue or an OS issue? Thanks, Ben.

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Opps, thought it would be a good idea to list my computer components (it's custom built):

PROCESSOR: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ AM2 3.0GHz
MOTHERBOARD: Gigabyte GA-M56S-S3 - AM2 nVidia NF560 Dual DDR2 ATX Audio Lan
MEMORY: Kingston ValueRAM 2GB 240PIN PC6400 DDR2 800MHZ NON ECC UN REG CL5 (X2)
GRAPHICS CARD: XFX GeForce 8500GT 1GB DDR2 PCIE DVI TV 450/800MHz
SOUND CARD: Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2

OS: Window XP Professional - Service Pack 3

I have checked all my drivers using Driver Detective and everything checksout fine. Also in Device Manager nothing is flagged up as having a problem!!!

[bustydeluxe]

Opps, thought it would be a good idea to list my computer components (it's custom built):

PROCESSOR: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ AM2 3.0GHz
MOTHERBOARD: Gigabyte GA-M56S-S3 - AM2 nVidia NF560 Dual DDR2 ATX Audio Lan
MEMORY: Kingston ValueRAM 2GB 240PIN PC6400 DDR2 800MHZ NON ECC UN REG CL5 (X2)
GRAPHICS CARD: XFX GeForce 8500GT 1GB DDR2 PCIE DVI TV 450/800MHz
SOUND CARD: Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2

OS: Window XP Professional - Service Pack 3

I have checked all my drivers using Driver Detective and everything checksout fine. Also in Device Manager nothing is flagged up as having a problem!!!

[dsenette]

does the problem happen if NOTHING is plugged in on the USB ports? or can it be completely avoided by not having anything in the USB ports? do the issues seem to include having a USB mouse or keyboard? or just data transfer devices?

how old is your PSU? (and all of the computer for that matter) do you have a spare PSU that you could test with?

[bustydeluxe]

All the computer components are 18 months old. Have tested with other PSU's (I have 3 and know them to be good as run simial configurations on other desktops with no issues) and get the same issues on this desktop.

The USB problemm affects my storage devices, scanner and printer. The scanner and printer will always dissapear whilst the storage devices will sometimes dissapear from the system but other times they will stay there but just work incredibly slow (minutes just to open a folder!).

My mouse and Keyboead both run off USB as well but I have no issues with these.

As I have so many USB devices I run a PCI hub. Throughout testing this problem I've run minimal components and usb devices so everything was plugged into the main MotherBoard USB slots. I've tested every variation possible, also tested with no USB storage desvices but strangely still got the same 'Windows - Delayed Write Failed' error message which always heralds the start of the problems!

This one really has perplexed me. I thought it might be my host controllers but like I said, all my drivers are fine (have done clean re-installs etc.) and if I move the memory around the system will run perfectly for about a week before slowly degrading back to the problem and I've assertained that the memory is fine... arrrrgggghhhh, it just doesn't make any sense.