Glitchy new computer

[FSH42NA]

This is what I've got:

Asus A8N32 sli deluxe; bios 1009
Opteron 170 oc'd to 2.4 (prime stable; temps fine)
Thermalright 120 with panoflo fan
2gb (2x1gb) stick of OCZ Gold (don't remember my timings since I'm at work )
Evga 7800GT (non-oc; non-sli)
4x250gb Hitachi SATA drives (non-raid)
Benq 1650 primary master
Benq 1655 primary slave
Nec 3550 secondary master
Turtle Beach sound card
Enermax EG701 Noisetaker 600w ps
Lian Li case
Windows XP pro sp2
AMD dual core driver installed

This was supposed to be my dream machine, but it's acting very choppy. I'm running Zone Alarm Security Suite.

(1) When I check my email via Outlook Express and close the window, my Zone Alarm screen looks like a hybrid of my email and Zone Alarm screen. This lasts about 5 seconds and it's back to normal. It seems like I'm watching a choppy movie.

(2) Last night I tried to burn 2 different dvd's (benq 1650 and Nec 3550 = diff ide channels) and burning good TY media took between 25 and 30minutes at 8x/12x! I verified that I was in DMA mode and I was. Each burner is on a separate ide channel with different flat ide cables.

(3) On my other machine, same gear cept X2 3800 cpu, all was well till this weekend. When I booted up, it stalled and I saw error message regarding pccom.exe (?) and also my time had changed to the year 3038! Once I changed the time and rebooted, everything seemed OK again. What in the world could've caused this glitch?

Gaming (only COD2) seems to be OK for now

Both mobos are brand new.

Mods please feel free to move my thread to the appropriate forum.

Thanks in advance for your input.

 

[unkn0wnhacka]

no clue what the problem is but i wouldnt recommend zone alarm

i like tiny's personal firewall... you can even block exe's and processes from starting

 

[FSH42NA]

My old Zone Alarm worked fine, but I get a feeling that this Security suite is a resource hog. However, if I close it down, my pc still acts the same way.:disgust:

 

[KGB]

Okay... a couple of things to try:

1. Clock your processor back to stock speeds.
2. Open your case up and point a table fan inside.
How hot are things inside the case? 4HDDs & 3ODDs draw a lot of power and create a lot of heat.
3. Try running with only 1HDD and 1ODD and see what happens.
4. Are you using the NVIDE drivers for the PATA channels?
If so, try reverting back to the vanilla M$ ones in XP.

 

[FSH42NA]

Originally posted by: KGBMAN
Okay... a couple of things to try:

1. Clock your processor back to stock speeds.
2. Open your case up and point a table fan inside.
How hot are things inside the case? 4HDDs & 3ODDs draw a lot of power and create a lot of heat.
3. Try running with only 1HDD and 1ODD and see what happens.
4. Are you using the NVIDE drivers for the PATA channels?
If so, try reverting back to the vanilla M$ ones in XP.

(1) Will do
(2) Will try. Will try and remove at least 1 HDD and 1 ODD
(3) ditto
(4) Just running the MS drivers

Thanks for the suggestions

 

[KGB]

Good.

Please report back with your findings.

 

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally posted by: FSH42NA

Originally posted by: KGBMAN
Okay... a couple of things to try:

1. Clock your processor back to stock speeds.
2. Open your case up and point a table fan inside.
How hot are things inside the case? 4HDDs & 3ODDs draw a lot of power and create a lot of heat.
3. Try running with only 1HDD and 1ODD and see what happens.
4. Are you using the NVIDE drivers for the PATA channels?
If so, try reverting back to the vanilla M$ ones in XP.

(1) Will do
(2) Will try. Will try and remove at least 1 HDD and 1 ODD
(3) ditto
(4) Just running the MS drivers

Thanks for the suggestions

Looking through your specs, the first things I'd check would be your temps and your voltages. Your PSU should be a heavyweight performer ... but your machine might be more than it can handle. You've got more components in that one box than most people have in two or three. As mentioned above, all that hardware in a confined space is going to produce a ton of heat. Your system could be suffering from poor ventilation. You'll need a lot of airflow to keep all that cool.

 

[FSH42NA]

Soon as I finish posting this, I'm gonna go in and pull a hard or two and one of my dvd burners. I'm gonna also replace my Panaflo low with a medium speed one. While I'm in there, I'll swap out a low speed case fan or two (strategically) for a couple with more CFM. I'll let you know how it goes. Wish me luck!

 

[FSH42NA]

Well, I removed one hard drive and one optical drive. Replacement my low flow Panoflo with a med flow Panoflo for my XP120. Replacement a couple of case fans with higher CFM fans. Lowered my OC to 2.2 from 2.4. Ran Prime for 3 hrs without problems (previously I ran it overnight and more without errors).

End result is that my computer is still jerky. There seems to be a lag between opening and closing programs. And I still can't burn 2 diff dvd's on my 2 burners on sep ide channels.

Things to do:

(1) Uninstall Zone Alarm and try Trend Micro Security
(2) Figure what version of Nvidia chipset drivers I've installed (how do I do this?) and see if there are issues with mine.
(3) Reinstall OS and give the pc to my sister in law and go Conroe!!