[Dr. Schnellinger (Again)]

Hello.

 

I have a strange problem with my mainboard, it is a Biostar P4M890-M7 SE Ver. 7.0 Socket 775 and DDR2.

 

My CPU is a Intel® PentiumD E2180 2.0Ghz, but for some weird reason the mainboard lowers its speed to 1.0Ghz. Also, the PCI-E slot speed is randomly decreased as well, it should be 16x but the speed is randomly decreased to 8x, 4x and even 2x. There are a few boots where the real speed is shown but it is very rare, say 2/10 times.

 

The computer runs ok, but it is d*mn slow in some tasks such as games or browsing the internet.

 

Recently I decided to manually set the base clock (Default is 200Mhz) so I set it to 201Mhz, it worked for like... 40 minutes, the game I was playing (Skyrim) was running smoothly, but then the PC froze.

 

I rebooted and it kept freezing randomly, either before the windows loading screen, on the logon screen or while browsing folders.

 

The solution for that kind of problem is to reset the CMOS, so I did the jumper trick. Powered on the PC, set up boot order, time, date, disabled floppy drive, PnP OS to "yes", etc. But I didn't touch the base clock.

 

Booted the system and it was ok, no random freeze, but my game speed was like 15 FPS, that's so stressing.

 

I rebooted the PC to enter the BIOS setup utility and change again the base clock, the default is 200Mhz, so this time I set it to 200Mhz, that way it should 'force' the CPU to work at full speed.

 

The PC rebooted as usual, but on the loading screen I got a BSOD, Rebooted and the PC said:

 

"DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"

 

This happened to me before with another PC, it's a disk corruption problem, so I booted Hiren's BootCD 15.2, booted Mini XP and then chkdsk on the system disk.

 

There were 341,449 files corrupted, I made a backup of my files and I pretend to format the disk and re-install windows 7 professional x64, but before I do so, I would like to know What the... is going on.

 

I don't know if it matters, but I have 2,5GB RAM:

 

Slot 1 512MB DDR2 667

Slot 2 2GB DDR2 800

 

When the PC boots it says the "DDR DIMM SPEED" is 533.

 

Also, in the "Advanced Chipset Features" there is an option called "Top Performance" which is disabled by default. What does that do? Do I get more speed if I enable it?.

 

The name shown on the upper side of the setup utility reads "Phoenix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility (P4M89-M7A)

 

And if it's worth something, my GPU is a XFX GeForce 9400GT 512MB.

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Use Hiren's to run a memory test.

 

Also get Speedtest and check your temps.  A CPU will slow down when hot.

 

http://www.filehippo...nload_speedfan/

Download, save and Install it (Win 7+ or Vista right click and Run As Admin.) then run it (right click and Run As Admin).
 

[RKinner]

Use Hiren's to run a memory test.

 

Also get Speedtest and check your temps.  A CPU will slow down when hot.

 

http://www.filehippo...nload_speedfan/

Download, save and Install it (Win 7+ or Vista right click and Run As Admin.) then run it (right click and Run As Admin).
 

[Dr. Schnellinger (Again)]

My system was irrecoverably broken, I had to re-install windows. I did it through LAN.

 

I ran the WIndows in-built "memtest" and there were no errors found.

 

So I cleared the CMOS (The jumper trick) and removed the 512MB RAM module.

 

The PC has been stable for 2 days now, PCI-E slot is 16x and CPU is 2.0GHz,. And my games (Skyrim and Euro Truck Simulator 2) are running fine, I'll keep informing if something happens.

 

Edit: I installed SpeedFan and... well I don't know if there is something wrong.

 

Here's a ZIP with info, the program was installed when the system was "fresh", I mean, recently installed.

Edited by Dr. Schnellinger (Again), 14 October 2019 - 11:26 PM.

[RiffRaffMama]

I'm no expert, I'm not even sure this relates to your setup, but here's my two cents anyway. The initial speed problem and your subsequent problems may be unrelated. As in, you've tried to solve the original problem by performing various changes which have created a problem all of their own, and not solved the initial problem anyway.

 

I went through a speed issue a year or so ago where my (Dell inspiron 5555) laptop's speed was slower than it should have been. Days and days of research led me to the discovery that if you use a non-genuine power supply with a Dell, it throttles your system speed, effectively holding you to ransom. I was using a genuine charger, but the pin had broken out from inside the plug, which is apparently how the computer recognises a genuine power supply. I bought a new generic charger and same problem. It wasn't until I stumped up for a genuine replacement that things returned to normal. So, yeah, I get the impression you're using a desktop, but I thought I'd throw this out there in case it gets you thinking about some hardware change you made recently that might disagree with your motherboard.

 

Good luck.

[Friedrich Schnellinger]

I think I just found part of the problem. There was a bad cap (See picture), I replaced it but the PC is still freezing. I'm 50% sure there are some other(s) bad cap(s).

At the moment I don't have a tester so I have to wait until I get one, then I'll post back the results.

 

 

I'm the thread starter, it's just that I lost access to my former account.

[Friedrich Schnellinger]

Hello. Sorry if I'm being annoying, but there's an important update:

 

I just replaced another bad cap next to the first one and the PC has been running for 3 days without freezing. One more thing: The CPU-GPU-RAM detection problem is still present, I have to manually set the processor base clock to 200Mhz on every boot in order to make the mainboard correctly detect the CPU, GPU and RAM hardware. I guess there's another bad cap somewhere.

 

I attached a referential photo so you can see the replcements; #1 [See the previous photo], #2 recently replaced.

 

Edited by Friedrich Schnellinger, 03 November 2020 - 10:18 PM.

[buddywiser]

So what's up with your mainboard now, is everything okay?

[Friedrich Schnellinger]

More or less, buddywiser. I have to manually set the base clock on the BIOS setup on every boot, otherwise, it would run very slow, as it would detect only 1.0GHz instead of 2 and randomly decrease DIMM speed.

 

It keeps detecting the PCIe lane widths as "2X" or "4X", but as long as I set the base clock to 200Mhz, the there is no problem. I've been playing heavy games for this PC, such as Skyrim, Euro Truck Simulator 2, UDK 2009 Example Game and some others. No random freeze, no extreme lag.

 

 

 

Resuming:

 

*Changing those caps solved the freeze problem.

 

*Setting up the base clock on every boot solves the performance/lag problem

 

*The CPU/RAM/GPU detection problem remains unsolved

 

.....

 

I'll continue investigating.