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Any practical way to troubleshoot a mobo?

L

lenjack

Platinum Member
Getting intermittent freeze problems in W10. Ruled out software, ps, ram. Think cpu is good. Suspect mobo or ssd, which passes Sandisk smart test.
 
The only practical way for most end users to troubleshoot a motherboard is to eliminate all other possibilities (or be lucky enough to have a really obvious problem, like a BIOS beep code or a RAM slot that doesn't work or something similar.)

But if you can boot with a recovery CD and run memtest, (recent versions also create some CPU load too, iirc) or boot from a linux LiveCD and the computer operates normally, than it's almost certainly your SSD or the Windows installation on it.

If the system is freezing and then recovering, Windows Event Viewer should tell you what the freezes are caused by. I had an old OCZ SSD that passed SMART tests but which had bad blocks that caused Windows to freeze. Errors showed up in Event Viewer.
 
Gigabyte p67a-ud3p-b3 with latest bios. SSD is Sandisk SDSSDA240G, only 57 GB used, and passes maker's extended smart test.

Does not recover after freeze. Must reboot. Intermittent to the extent that at times I can use the computer for an hour or two with no problems.

What should I look for in Event Viewer?

Thanks all.
 
Boot to a live OS and work for a while in that. If it doesn't freeze, you might suspect an OS problem. I've seen instances where the RAM needs a little more voltage than the motherboard is giving it, even at factory speeds. This can happen especially if the RAM is not on the QVL, which is most of the time. There are lots of things that can cause a freeze. Parted Magic is a nice tool for uncovering problems, it includes Memtest in the boot menu so you can double check the RAM.
 
Heat can be a problem check to see if there are not blocked non working fans, check mb and video card temps.
 
Ram is 2x2G adata ddr3 at it's recommended 1.65 volts, even though the board wants to give it 1.5, and cpu is i5 2500k at stock 3.3g. It's a 32 bit, w10 system. I have 4 sticks, although I only use 2. I've done tests on all 4 sticks individually in each slot, with all passing. Due to the problem, I recently reinstalled a fresh copy of w 10, but saw no improvement.
 
lenjack said:
Gigabyte p67a-ud3p-b3 with latest bios. SSD is Sandisk SDSSDA240G, only 57 GB used, and passes maker's extended smart test.

Does not recover after freeze. Must reboot. Intermittent to the extent that at times I can use the computer for an hour or two with no problems.

What should I look for in Event Viewer?

Thanks all.
Click to expand...
Red stuff in event viewer.
 
All fans are working. All temps very good, no blockages. Excellent airflow. I open and clean up the case periodically. I'm not a gamer, so it's a low stress system.
 
I can't figure out how a comprehensive memory test could be done if the machine is freezing often. I don't call a memory test within Windows probative, since the OS won't allow access to all the RAM.
 
Often, it will run for hours without freezing. I've run W10's memory diagnostic which doesn't run inside of Windows.
 
Never during the diagnostic. Just ran Who Crashed. Crash dumps caused by ntoskrnl.exe or ntkrnlpamp.exe. All programs and software and drivers are up to date.
 
so the mb must not be under a warranty and one way to see if the mb is your problem would be to run the system with as few components as possible to see if those missing parts might have been the problem.
If it were my system I was troubleshooting I switch all the parts like video card and memory I can with known good parts.
 
There are a lot of problems which can cause this. Sometimes it is a faulty program that uses up all the RAM and then it just stalls. They only way to find that is to remove all the programs one at a time. Another possibility is over heating which can be the CPU, the Video Card or maybe the chipset. Then there is another favorite being the power supply. They often start to go bad slowly. Another problem is Microsoft just makes buggy operating systems. You might try using more RAM if you have it. As always, did you overclock it and bust something in the process?
 
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