HELP: Total Crash -> What to upgrade?

[sso]

guys, I really need help for this one. Anything you can contribute with is greatly appreciated.
I am currently in Korea and have had a total crash of my PC.

Through the last year my otherwise stable machine has had problems and now the end has come. Yesterday I saw it alive for the last time.

Current (dead) configuration:
AMD XP 1800+
MSI MSI-6380-RU VIA K7 266-RU-Pro (On board Promise Fasttrack 100-lite RAID controller)
2x256 Crucial PC2100U DDR 266MHz CL2.5 ECC RAM (have one extra identical block in spare)
Crucial ATI Radeon 9700
Creative Audigy player
LiteOn CD burner.
LG-4040 CD/DVD burner.
Win XP SP1.
Seagate 200GB + 2xSeagate 30GB Harddisk running with SMART check via BIOS.

History
Last year the first signs of weaknesses came. My win XP setup on the onboard RAID-0 array was messed up. I bought a new 200 GB HD and installed XP directly on this via a main IDE controller.
A couple of months ago the entire RAID-0 setup was lost without prior warning through the SMART check or the Promise RAID array surveilance. One disk moved to IDE and used now as "simple" 30 GB HD.
Registry cleaned for incorrect references to the old RAID array. Reinstallation of programs previously on the RAID, amongst others MS Flight Simulator 2004.
The PC has been unstable during execution of MS FS2004 (CPU 100% over longer periods. Lockup or reboot after ½-1 hour. CPU temperature max 65%. Win XP indicates problem with device as cause (not a great help).
During various trials to find the source i have moved around on the RAM blocks, tried to downgrade the Creative Audigy drivers, since this previously have been the source of other problems.
Since yesterday I have not been able to boot the PC.
It will neither boot via HD in safe mode, nor from the XP installation CD. (From HD it blockses during reading of drivers, and from the XP installation CD it ends with blue screen with varying error messages.) I have removed the sound card, reduced BIOS settings to minimum performance, and canged between the RAM blocks without any effect.

Need
Besides the typial home applications regarding digital photo work, wordprocessing etc. I use the machine extensively for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, which is very demanding on CPU and RAM.
It is also used for video editing.

Questions
1 - Any ideas on were the fault is from the above scenario? CPU/Motherboard/RAM?
2 - What should I purchase to get the machine running again Taking the use of most of the above items. I have been looking into an Intel P4 3.06GHz which seem to be a good vakue. What motherboard would be good for this? preferably an ASUS model. Anything I cannot reuse if I purchase this?

I really hope you can assist here, since one is totally lost in Korea if you dont know exactly what to purcahse. Communication here is in very basic english.

Thanks in advance.

 

[ivanwolf]

How good was the power supply? Was it putting out stable voltages? With your switching stick of RAM around it seems that the RAM should be good at least. I don't have much experience with RAID set ups. Maybe one of the more savvy members hav run iinto a similiar situation.

 

[mechBgon]

Check that MSI for leaking/bulging capacitors. Also, what power supply is floating the boat here, what brand/model/wattage? Got any good-quality spares you could try?

If I had to suggest a replacement, see if you can find a Shuttle AN35N Ultra and/or a quality 400W power supply (Antec, Enermax, Fortron, Heroichi, Enlight, Sparkle Power). The AN35N Ultra uses an ATX12V auxiliary power cable, so if your existing PSU didn't have one, there's your excuse to upgrade the PSU in the process. I realize some people would say 400W is overkill, and if all you can get is a good-quality 300-350W one, then that's what you'll have to do. Good luck.

 

[sso]

I had not tought of it as a problem source, but actually now you mention it I did change power supply when comming to korea, which may be causing the problem.

In addition Since posting I have been working a bit further to understand what could be the problem.
Additional info:
- MB Selfcheck does not find any faults. The MSI board goes through 16 steps during power on, including RAM count up and all is fine until then. Contact with BIOS is also ok.
- During a number of boots it started extreeemly slow (real slow motion), and seemed to stop at MUP.sys. In another thread I noted discussion abut MUP.SYS which seemed to concern USB ports. I then disabled these in the BIOS.
- I also once got contact through the XP CDR and was able to copy the /repair files into /config. This has twice allowed me to see a basic login screen. Here the mouse does not seem to work, and things still run in slow motion.
This is really strange...

 

[mechBgon]

If your Western Digital hard drive is solo on its own cable, jumper it for Single Drive if you didn't already.

 

[cirthix]

try running memtest, then try prime 95, those will tell you if it is mobo/ram/cpu. it may be overheating, try to clean out the heatsink. and i'll put my money on you overclockign WITHOUT AGP LOCK AT 66MHZ. i've seen comps keel over with weird problems without agp lock. pm me if its not one of the above

 

[sso]

Originally posted by: ivanwolf
How good was the power supply? Was it putting out stable voltages? With your switching stick of RAM around it seems that the RAM should be good at least. I don't have much experience with RAID set ups. Maybe one of the more savvy members hav run iinto a similiar situation.

Here im uncertain about what to expect.
Im currently looking in the BIOS hardware monitor, and see the following:
VCore varying 1.680, 1.696, 1.712, 1.728 most 1.712
Vtt 1.216, 1.232
Vio 3.168, 3.184, 3.200, 3.248, 3.264, 3.280
+ 5.000V 4.948, 4.975
+12.000V 11.680, 11.741
-12.000V -12.235 -12.153, -12.071
- 5.000V -5.077, -5.026
Battery 3.376, 3.392
+5V SB 4.921, 4.945

Mouse now works again. That was simply due to a frustrated technician (me) by accident disconnecting one to many cables.

Cheers

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: sso

Originally posted by: ivanwolf
How good was the power supply? Was it putting out stable voltages? With your switching stick of RAM around it seems that the RAM should be good at least. I don't have much experience with RAID set ups. Maybe one of the more savvy members hav run iinto a similiar situation.

Here im uncertain about what to expect.
Im currently looking in the BIOS hardware monitor, and see the following:
VCore varying 1.680, 1.696, 1.712, 1.728 most 1.712
Vtt 1.216, 1.232
Vio 3.168, 3.184, 3.200, 3.248, 3.264, 3.280
+ 5.000V 4.948, 4.975
+12.000V 11.680, 11.741
-12.000V -12.235 -12.153, -12.071
- 5.000V -5.077, -5.026
Battery 3.376, 3.392
+5V SB 4.921, 4.945

Mouse now works again. That was simply due to a frustrated technician (me) by accident disconnecting one to many cables.

Cheers

Hmm, odd results. Your VCore shouldn't vary that much, and your +12v rail looks a bit too low for my liking. Do you have a decent-quality PSU that you can borrow to try?

 

[sso]

Thanks for the comment on the voltage. I dont have access to another PSU but buying a new of these is definately cheeper than starting to change CPU and MB...

Had contact with the system for a short time, Windows initiated a diskscan and found around 20-30 lost links.
I then got it started from Recovery consol, and managed to copy /repair files over, followed by a startup and restore to a previously state. However it did not seem to retain Display drivers etc from the previous restore time. Strangely enough this was not a problem if starting in safe mode ????
After this I initiated restore to a previous point, which failed as it indicated nothing had been changed on the system between the two states. Again not correct.
Then after starting to reconnect LAN card, USB cables, and the 2nd stick of RAM the system locks up indicating ntfs.sys is missing.
Restarting on XP CDR I get an error "File setupdd.sys could not be loaded. The errorcode is 7".

Having removed one stick of RAM it is now up and running again.

After Windows login, PCAlert4 from MSI, the voltage data is shown as follows:
VCore: 1.70-1.71
3.3V: 3.20-3.26V constantly varying up and down within this range.
+5V: 4.81 - 4.84V rather constant.
+12V 11.52V-11.64V constantly varying.
This data is even lowe than the BIOS data. I presume that after startup it is heavierly loaded.

Is this considered too low?

Can this cause extra strain on other components, resulting in failure of eg RAM?
I can see that it might result in errors in diskwrites if it is lower than expected, or non constant...

 

[mechBgon]

The best source of voltage readings isn't a 3¢ chip on a motherboard, it's a multimeter. If you have a nice Fluke or something available to you, bust it out and get some REAL voltage readings