Hey everyone,
This is my first technical support post...i can usually struggle through these types of issues myself, but now i've hit a wall and wanted to see if anyone had any ideas.
Here are the specs:
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Athlon xp 2500+ barton
1 gig (2x512) corsair valueram
Gigabyte 7n400 pro2 w/ passive NB heatsink
2 hard drives (parallel)
OK, here's the story, so I decided to replace my crappy turbolink PSU with a nice 500W Antec Smartpower. (normally a 10 minute ordeal) And add another 512 of ram.
10 minutes later, I power up the machine and case and cpu fans spin up, but no post, monitor doesn't even turn on, and both CD-rom drives were chattering and blinking like crazy. Very strange.
I then proceed to troubleshoot, swap ram, reseat everything, pull all pci, etc. with no luck.
Now I take everything out of the case, hook it up with minimal components, and voila! BIOS! Although the wierd thing was that the bios didn't come up as quickly and as cleanly as normal. When I would go into the next menu (like Advanced Configuration), the image on the screen would waver and flicker a bit and then go to that menu. Odd, but after clearing CMOS and getting settings back to normal, I stuck it back in the case.
Ok, so now I put everything back in the case including all pci cards, etc. Boot into Windows, Yay! It works great for about 3 minutes, but then the computer just restarts, no blue screen, no nothing. Then I proceed to pull out every card, just leaving in video, one stick ram. Same thing, about 3 minutes and it freezes this time, requiring a hard restart.
So I decide, fine windows doesn't work...maybe I can diagnose a ram/motherboard/cpu issue.
I run memtest with both sticks in Dual Channel Mode and show 36 errors!
Run each stick separately with no errors.
Hmmm, so it seems to be an intermittent error, maybe a motherboard problem?
Now I download the "Ultimate Boot Disk" which has some stress tests on it.
I run Prime 95 for about 25 minutes, no problems.
I run the CPU stress test, no problems.
But it still won't stay alive in Windows for longer than 3 minutes. It fails memtest when in dual channel mode, but passes the stress tests. What the heck!
So one thing I can think of is that since I don't have any motherboard risers along the far end of the motherboard (e.g. away from the I/O ports), maybe I put too much stress on it when inserting/removing the power connecter? Would a cracked motherboard cause this type of problem? Or is this more of a cpu like issue?
If anybody has any thoughts I'd greatly appreciate it!
This is my first technical support post...i can usually struggle through these types of issues myself, but now i've hit a wall and wanted to see if anyone had any ideas.
Here are the specs:
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Athlon xp 2500+ barton
1 gig (2x512) corsair valueram
Gigabyte 7n400 pro2 w/ passive NB heatsink
2 hard drives (parallel)
OK, here's the story, so I decided to replace my crappy turbolink PSU with a nice 500W Antec Smartpower. (normally a 10 minute ordeal) And add another 512 of ram.
10 minutes later, I power up the machine and case and cpu fans spin up, but no post, monitor doesn't even turn on, and both CD-rom drives were chattering and blinking like crazy. Very strange.
I then proceed to troubleshoot, swap ram, reseat everything, pull all pci, etc. with no luck.
Now I take everything out of the case, hook it up with minimal components, and voila! BIOS! Although the wierd thing was that the bios didn't come up as quickly and as cleanly as normal. When I would go into the next menu (like Advanced Configuration), the image on the screen would waver and flicker a bit and then go to that menu. Odd, but after clearing CMOS and getting settings back to normal, I stuck it back in the case.
Ok, so now I put everything back in the case including all pci cards, etc. Boot into Windows, Yay! It works great for about 3 minutes, but then the computer just restarts, no blue screen, no nothing. Then I proceed to pull out every card, just leaving in video, one stick ram. Same thing, about 3 minutes and it freezes this time, requiring a hard restart.
So I decide, fine windows doesn't work...maybe I can diagnose a ram/motherboard/cpu issue.
I run memtest with both sticks in Dual Channel Mode and show 36 errors!
Run each stick separately with no errors.
Hmmm, so it seems to be an intermittent error, maybe a motherboard problem?
Now I download the "Ultimate Boot Disk" which has some stress tests on it.
I run Prime 95 for about 25 minutes, no problems.
I run the CPU stress test, no problems.
But it still won't stay alive in Windows for longer than 3 minutes. It fails memtest when in dual channel mode, but passes the stress tests. What the heck!
So one thing I can think of is that since I don't have any motherboard risers along the far end of the motherboard (e.g. away from the I/O ports), maybe I put too much stress on it when inserting/removing the power connecter? Would a cracked motherboard cause this type of problem? Or is this more of a cpu like issue?
If anybody has any thoughts I'd greatly appreciate it!
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