Lots of external devices and stability

[dkm777]

Hi,

I may be a strange fellow, but I do have an awful lot of things connected to my PC besides KB/mouse: printer/scanner combo, Playstation 2 gamepad to USB adapter, flash USB stick, a USB hard drive and a FireWire audio interface. Occasionally when using most of these at the same time (a game controlled by the PS2 gamepad minimized while playing audio over FireWire and scanning a document or transferring files to/from USB storage device) the PC would BSOD. Is there something I can do about this? I disabled Legacy USB after the last BSOD today and there's nothing in the BIOS about FireWire besides turning it on or off. Maybe I need to increase IOH or ICH voltage? I know that using more than one graphics card requires a voltage increase on IOH but I found nothing about lots of USB/FireWire devices.

 

[Zap]

Don't know about Firewire, but I think USB usually goes off the 5VSB rail of the PSU. You can try using a powered USB hub for most of your devices and see if it helps.

 

[corkyg]

I have 6 external devices - scanner, HDD, burner, Dymo printer, laser, inkjet. All USB devices go through a powered hub.External eSATA drive has its own power. Never a stability problem - running steady for years.

 

[dkm777]

I think I found the problem and it's not hardware related. I started getting BSOD just from defragmenting my drives and decided to reinstall Windows to rule out any software causes. And lo and behold - everything is rock-stable without installing Intel chipset drivers and Rapid Storage. I managed to restore everything from backups and defrag without a single hiccup. I always used to run latest versions just for the heck of it but now I learned my lesson and will only be using drivers provided either by the manufacturer (Asus) or by Microsoft under Windows Update.

 

[dkm777]

Bump with an update.
Looks like I have something a lot more sinister than a corrupter driver. I reinstalled Windows and couldn't update, because the PC would BSOD under heavier HDD activity. I think I have either a bad SATA cable (replaced with a brand new one, will test in the upcoming days) or a bad SATA controller. Running BlueScreenViewer revealed that the BSODs were caused by either ntfs.sys or ntsorkrnl.exe with error messages either MEMORY_MANAGEMENT or REFERENCE_BY_POINTER. The Windows installation is ruined now and I'll have to reinstall again. I so wish it's the cable.

 

[mfenn]

Those errors are indicative of either a serious Windows/driver bug (not likely given that you're doing a clean install), and I wouldn't expect you to get them unless you had a corrupt install. Don't rule out that the drive itself could be going bad as well.

 

[dkm777]

It was not a completely "clean" install as I had this program - Smart Defrag - installed to test whether I'd get a BSOD when trying to defragment. Only very recently I found out that it loads as a driver and the BSODs started as soon as I had Smart Defrag and either Intel Chipset drivers or Rapid Storage installed. I have a feeling that uninstalling Smart Defrag didn't remove it cleanly so I'm not touching that ever. So far I got Windows installed with all the drivers for my devices. I didn't have much time to test yet, but I managed to install all the updates without problems. Once I start installing my heavy applications then the problem might appear again or - hopefully - not.

Edit: i decided to do a surface scan on both of my drives first - 500GB ant 2TB Samsungs - gonna take a reeeaaally long time. I'll report back with results.

 

[dkm777]

Bump after surface scan.
Looks like my HDDs are OK. I'm now fairly certain that it was either the cables (I bent them really bad in places and they were the cheapest I could find - maybe even SATA I and not II) or Smart Defrag. Right now I left my PC running and will see if I find a BSOD when I get back from work. Hopefully not.

Update 1: didin't find a BSOD. Reinstalling all apps and games, then will restore the overclock. Right now I really think it was Smart Defrag and Intel SATA drivers not playing nice with each other.

 

[mfenn]

:thumbsup: Nice catch!

 

[dkm777]

Restored my overclock and everything works just fine. I even noticed that hard drive transfers a slightly faster. Don't know if this is because of a fresh install or did I really have SATA I cables before. Anyway, those old cables are going into the trash and wow, what a headache this has been.