Help! Unreliable Booting <SOLVED>

[Tango Charlie]

Hello all!

I'll try to summarize this as quickly as possible - Basically, I cannot rely on my machine to get running solidly in Windows for the first few boots after several hours powered-off. After rebooting a couple times, it seems to be stable - I have yet to see any crashes while running. Admittedly, the most I've pushed it is running COD2 for about twenty minutes, but I've been able to install most of my software and leave it on for some hours. It's worked through memtest overnight without issue.

SPECS:
- AMD X2 4200+
- ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
- OCZ EL Platinum PC3200 2X1GB DDR400 CL2-3-2-5
- EVGA E-GEFORCE 7800GT CO 470MHZ PCI-E 256MB
- Linksys WMP54G Wireless PCI Adpter
- NEC ND-3550A DVD+RW
- Panasonic 1.44MB 3.5IN Floppy
- Seagate 250GB SATA HDD
- Antec P150 Case
- Seasonic S-12 430W PSU

HISTORY:
Originally this system was assembled with a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 HDD and powered by the Antec P150's PSU. The system would crash all the time. I took it into NCIX, from where I'd bought all the parts, and they went about troubleshooting. Initially they replaced the HDD with the Seagate drive, which helped, but it wasn't until the PSU was replaced that the system would even load Windows with some sort of regularity. This whole process took about a month and a half of back and forth (which is why I opted to buy a new PSU rather than wait to diddle around with Antec's RMA process).

So now I have it back, though cold boots are still unpredictable. Thinking it's a RAM issue, I've been trying different timings with the help of the folks at the OCZ Tech Support Forums. The full thread can be viewed here: OCZ Tech Support Thread
However, I'm still having the problems.

Chipset drivers have been updated to 6.65, and BIOS has been updated to 1009, both the latest non-beta updates on the ASUS site.

So, I am posting here in hopes that someone might have had a similar experience or might be able to offer some insight. I would really like the confidence that my system will boot when I need it to, and the peace of mind that my data isn't being messed up.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!
Tony

 

[mechBgon]

Is your motherboard's EZ-Plug hooked up? Yes = good, it provides more power lines.

 

[BadThad]

Exactly what happens on a failed cold boot?

 

[Tango Charlie]

The EZ-plug isn't hooked up, as both the manual and the Tech guys at NCIX say, "oh, you only need that if you're using SLI".

However, it does make sense... my only concern is that it might over-power something, frying the board and/or just making things worse. (I am a relative n00b, so I don't understand the finer workings of all the circutry) What is the likelihood of this happening?

EDIT: Oh hey, mechBgon! Your newbie building guide was so helpful when I was getting ready to put my system together! Thank you!!

 

[Tango Charlie]

Originally posted by: BadThad
Exactly what happens on a failed cold boot?

I've posted a couple explicit examples in this thread.

The worst is that Windows will just stall during the loading process without any errors. Sometimes I get BSODs, two of which have included "memory_management" and "irql_not_less_or_equal". Once I recieved a "Winlogon.exe - Application Error" dialogue window - I reset, it BSODed quickly, and started running CHKDSK. Twice I've recieved a super-slow boot with a "Virus Scanner could not be Initialized" dialogue on getting into Windows. But after rebooting two or three times, the system seems stable. Stable enough for me to post forum entries at least!

This is a great improvement over the situation before swapping the PSU, where I would frequently get "BIOS ROM checksum error" messages and more BSODs than I can count.

 

[BadThad]

Post a hijackthis log for us to look over. We should eliminate software first.

 

[Tango Charlie]

Originally posted by: BadThad
Post a hijackthis log for us to look over. We should eliminate software first.

I haven't read the fine details on HijackThis, but I clicked the first button and generated a log. It can be viewed by clicking here, a link to the .txt file hosted by my site.

Edit: Is there another, particular way I should run HijackThis?

 

[BadThad]

O23 - Service: TabletService - Wacom Technology, Corp. - C:\WINDOWS\system32\Tablet.exe

Are connecting a tablet to this PC?

 

[Tango Charlie]

Yes, I have a relatively old serial Wacom tablet hooked up. That's actually one of the reasons I bought this mobo - it included a serial port.

Edit: I should say, I've been experiencing these problems before I hooked up the tablet and installed its software.

 

[BadThad]

Is your PCI card in Slot 1 or Slot 2? I don't recommend slot 1, lots of sharing on that slot according to the sharing table.

Manual

 

[BadThad]

Beyond that, it sure sounds like possibly a bad mobo to me.

 

[Tango Charlie]

Hmm... I'll talk to the guys at NCIX and see if they'll stand by me if I try plugging in the EZ-Plug. This is actually the second A8N-SLI Premium that's been in the machine - NCIX swapped it trying to troubleshoot the initial problems.

Maybe the first was fine, but the PSU was the issue? And NOW I have a bad board? I love computers.

Edit: Whoops, missed the point there - BadThad, the Linksys card is in Slot 2.

 

[BadThad]

Well, something is heating up, which causes the interconnects to expand. If this is the second mobo, perhaps the CPU is actually bad. I have seen it, albeit rare, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.

 

[Tango Charlie]

That makes sense... but I suppose the only way to find out which interconnects are being affected would be to swap out parts until it's stable. Logically, the only parts that would be affected by such a heat change would be the CPU, maybe the RAM? If the HDD connection were the issue, a change in heat wouldn't affect it too much. Incidentally, thank you, BT, for your continuing help on this thread.

Here's what happened this morning, first time I've recieved these messages:
- Long time loading.
- "Winlogon.exe - Entry point not found (the procedure entry point a could not be located in the dynamic link library SHLWAPI.DLL)", plus the same message from "services.exe" and "lsass.exe". Then,
- "User interface failure. (The logon user interface dll msgina.dll failed to load. Contact your sys admin to replace the dll or restore the original" and a restart button.
- Restart
- Windows loads alright, but I get Acrobat Distiller and NOD32 errors.
- Restart
- No issues so far.

So it's continuing the trend of being predictably unstable for boots one and two. Turns out third time really is the charm. *Sigh*

 

[Tango Charlie]

Update: I've run Mersenne Prime for almost three hours with all tests passed successfully and no issues. This was off a warm boot, though.

 

[BadThad]

See if your vendor will swap out the cpu for you.

 

[Tango Charlie]

Aha! Progress: the MOBO defaults to "quick boot", a setting where it "skips some tests" or something. I disabled the quickboot (and the boot logo that would obscure the results). On boot, the system does the memory test we're all familiar with, which it must have beem skipping before. It takes a long time (because of the 2GB?), but on the cold boot, I get a "Memory Test Failed" message after the IDE drives are detected. The next time, it passes, but I get the same "Virus scanner could not be initialized" message in windows. The third time, no issues.

I'm going to try the RAM in different slot/stick combinations. If that doesn't produce any result, I might try that suggestion, BT.

 

[Tango Charlie]

Aha, even MORE progress: so I finally got around to swapping the RAM. Initially I had one stick in slot A1 and the other in B1.

Just Stick 1 in Slot A1:
- passed the memory test, a bit slow to load, but booted without issue.
- 2nd time, booted without issue again.

Just Stick 2 in Slot A1:
- bios rom checksum error
- (warm, this time) windows started without issue.
- (again, but cold) nothing. No screen, no keyboard lights, no mouse lights. Just some whirring fans.
- bios rom checksum error

Back to just Stick 1 in Slot A1:
- memory tested fine, windows booted fine.

It seems safe to say one of those RAM sticks has issues. I'll be calling NCIX today (hello Bryan, if you're reading this).

 

[Tango Charlie]

Well, I recieved a new pair of sticks from NCIX, and so far (knock on wood) they're performing perfectly! W00t! Thank you, BadThad and Mechbgon, for your help!!

 

[BadThad]

Originally posted by: Tango Charlie
Well, I recieved a new pair of sticks from NCIX, and so far (knock on wood) they're performing perfectly! W00t! Thank you, BadThad and Mechbgon, for your help!!

Strange, I thought ram was eliminated as a possibility with the OCZ guy. Also, that POST memory test is NOT really a test. It's just a count of the available ram, there's no test involved.

Well, glad it's working for you now!