OT Somewhat: Cruncher down...got any ideas?

[ICXRa]

Hello TeAm.

I lost two boxes last week but have recovered one. The remaining downed box has me scratching my head so I thought I'd see if anybody on the TeAm has any ideas.

This box produces (or did) about 3.5 wu's a day.

piii-866
MSI 6337 (i815e)
visiontek 16 MB GeForce MX
Intel Pro S desktop nic
Soundblaster Live OEM
512 MB (2-256 sticks) Crucial cas 2 pc133
Was running win2k w/FAT 32 but when the problem started I blanked it and loaded XP Pro w/NTFS but the problem showed up as soon as the XP installation was complete.

This box will POST and boot into the OS but as soon as you do anything that requires hard drive access, i.e. right click desktop and choose properties, or click start and select a program everything freezes. I have looked over the board to see if anything obvious is wrong such as a capacitor etc etc but all looks well.

What I have done:

Loaded failsafe options and basically ran the system underclocked
Removed all cards
Removed RAM and installed only one stick and moved it to each of the four slots available
Replaced the RAM
Reseated the cpu and then the heatsink and fan assembly
Reinstalled cards one at a time moving slots
Installed a new hard drive, formated with NTFS...loaded XP Pro but the hang problem then appeared during mid setup

I am stumped completely. I have built computers for many years and never seen this problem. The system is clean has no IRQ conflicts but something is not working. Perhaps the motherboard has just failed and I should move on.

Any Ideas?

Thanks

 

[GeoffS]

I had a board that was doing this (Abit) and figured that the IDE controllers were going. Replaced the board and it worked fine thereafter. Do you have an ATA controller card that you can try?

Geoff

 

[ICXRa]

Good idea, I will look around and see if I got one here or at the other office.

 

[Freewolf]

If that doesn't work replace the data cables. PS could be going out also

 

[SinfulWeeper]

You may have your jumper setting backwards on your drives. ie... having a slave drive running on master. Or if you replaced the cables alltogether there have been a lot of mis-wired ones. They put pin one on the correct setting for one and put pin one for the second on pin 40 or 80 (depending if you use ata/33 or ata/66 or higher).

I had very simalar problems on another newly built computer and replaced everything in it till I looked closely at the the wires and discovered that. The easy way to tell this is if your master drive is the last connector on the cable on the top drive. The the second one as the slave drive on the second connector (The middle one).
If you have to invert the middle connector as master for the top drive and the end connector as slave for the bottom drive, you have a bad cable and needs replacement. If you use ata/33 the ends are available cheaply. But if you use ata/66 or higher, lmk if you can find replacement cables and connectors. I have not found any yet, even at cables-to-go.

If that was not the problem, and you just reformatted and reinstalled... well welcome to the world of WinXP. I do not run it and WinXP is my biggest money maker as it has nothing but compatability issues and crashes, so people come to me for help/repair. Not to mention the EULA has a 'agreement' that is totally bogus and for that Microsofts monopoly ought to bring them to a quick halt on that OS. So long as it remains there. The newest version of Windows I will run/install (unless specifically asked for) is either Win2k or WinME. But that is just me. (It has absolutely nothing to do with activation either. In essence it allows Microsoft to detect software that competes with them and disable the use of that program should they decide. I recommend you read the entire EULA if you ever reinstall WinXP.)

Anyhow I hope that cable thing I explained is the problem.

 

[dmcowen674]

You didn't mention trying a different Power Supply. It sounds like it freezes when you attempt to load o run anything besides the OS by itself. The PS may have become marginal over time as Capacitors dry out. Of course it could be the Caps on your Motherboard too.

 

[ICXRa]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
You didn't mention trying a different Power Supply. It sounds like it freezes when you attempt to load o run anything besides the OS by itself. The PS may have become marginal over time as Capacitors dry out. Of course it could be the Caps on your Motherboard too.

Yeah unfortunatley I don't have an extra power supply laying around.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: ICXRa

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
You didn't mention trying a different Power Supply. It sounds like it freezes when you attempt to load o run anything besides the OS by itself. The PS may have become marginal over time as Capacitors dry out. Of course it could be the Caps on your Motherboard too.

Yeah unfortunatley I don't have an extra power supply laying around.

Is there another computer around that you can just borrow the PS for a test?

 

[ICXRa]

yes but the system runs perfectly stable in safe mode with networking support so I would think that if it were a power supply issue I would still see it.

edit: Thought it ran stable in safe mode....it just crashed...I will purse the power supply swap out. Thanks for the suggestions everyone😀