condensed version: pretty decent system, been reliable for a year plus, suddenly starts acting flacky with no discernable reason, now hangs on EVERY OTHER boot - in other words, to start it, boot, hang, cycle power, fine. cycle power, hang, cycle power, fine, etc. wtf?!!!
long version:
so this is a diy system, abit is7 mobo, p4c 2.6, 1gb of corsair xms pc3200 ram, and a pny 6800gt. had it for a while now (video card is probably the newest component i i bought it at the end of 04!) and it's been a good work-horse. at first i was over-clocking it (the cpu would go to 3.2ghz w/no problem, forget what the 6800 did but it got a little bump), but then it started to show some instability so i returned everything to stock settings. anyway, every once in a while it will flake out - hang somewhere during boot-up or something, but not enough to be an issue.
until last monday. the machine was on most of the weekend, not really doing anything heavy-duty, just running office apps & such, with no problems. went to boot monday morning and nothing - hang during post. this was 100% repeatable even after clearing the cmos via the jumper AND by unplugging the psu and pulling the cmos battery. even tried yanking each memory stick one at a time to see if one of them was dead. no improvement. low and behold, things seemed to sort of magically repair themselves when i left the system on for a while - after a while the system got past the hang and now it boots fine ... sort of. now it literally hangs EVERY OTHER BOOT. this is 100% repeatable. if i turn the system off, when i restart it, it will hang (screen blank). if i turn it off again and restart it, it will power up just fine. restart, hang. restart, fine. repeat ad noseum. any ideas ...?
one last detail. i wondered if it might be my video card so i tried swapping that out as well. the replacement exhibited the same behavior so i figured the video is ok - but when i put the old (6800) card back it wigged out big time - garbage on the screen for several boot cycles - but now it seems ok. how can i identify the failing part in this system?
thanks,
-joe
long version:
so this is a diy system, abit is7 mobo, p4c 2.6, 1gb of corsair xms pc3200 ram, and a pny 6800gt. had it for a while now (video card is probably the newest component i i bought it at the end of 04!) and it's been a good work-horse. at first i was over-clocking it (the cpu would go to 3.2ghz w/no problem, forget what the 6800 did but it got a little bump), but then it started to show some instability so i returned everything to stock settings. anyway, every once in a while it will flake out - hang somewhere during boot-up or something, but not enough to be an issue.
until last monday. the machine was on most of the weekend, not really doing anything heavy-duty, just running office apps & such, with no problems. went to boot monday morning and nothing - hang during post. this was 100% repeatable even after clearing the cmos via the jumper AND by unplugging the psu and pulling the cmos battery. even tried yanking each memory stick one at a time to see if one of them was dead. no improvement. low and behold, things seemed to sort of magically repair themselves when i left the system on for a while - after a while the system got past the hang and now it boots fine ... sort of. now it literally hangs EVERY OTHER BOOT. this is 100% repeatable. if i turn the system off, when i restart it, it will hang (screen blank). if i turn it off again and restart it, it will power up just fine. restart, hang. restart, fine. repeat ad noseum. any ideas ...?
one last detail. i wondered if it might be my video card so i tried swapping that out as well. the replacement exhibited the same behavior so i figured the video is ok - but when i put the old (6800) card back it wigged out big time - garbage on the screen for several boot cycles - but now it seems ok. how can i identify the failing part in this system?
thanks,
-joe
