Possibly the most random OCing related crash and spontaneous fix ever?

[Sukhoi]

I have a C2D E6300 with an Asus P5N-E SLI that I have been running at default speeds since I put it together in early Jan. Just hadn't gotten around to OCing it yet. So yesterday I flash the BIOS to the newest one (goes fine), update my nForce drivers (goes fine), and start to OC.

The voltages were only raised slightly. 1.35V for CPU, 1.92V for RAM, and 1.39V for northbridge. Temps were fine...CPU only ever got up to about 47C, and northbridge was at 39C. Voltages looked normal too. First I up the FSB to 300 MHz. Run ORTHOS (SP2004) for an hour with no issues. Up FSB to 315 MHz. Run ORTHOS for 20 minutes with no issues. Up FSB to 333 MHz. Start up ORTHOS to run for the night. It's fine after 20 minutes when I go to sleep.

Upon waking up I find some nasty kernel fault BSOD. I reboot and it's like my HDD isn't even partitioned. Can't access it at all other than the BIOS recognizing it's connected to the computer. Needing to get to work, I popped in Memtest86 and let it run. I come home to 11 hours of perfect Memtest86. Next I do a full HDD scan with the WD Diagnostic Tools and find no problems.

Before booting off a CD to use the Recovery Console I shutdown and unplug the power from my other two HDDs (these had been running the entire prior two months). I boot up and Windows loads perfectly like nothing had happened! :Q Is there any sort of way to pinpoint what the heck caused this? My PSU is a good Seasonic 430W so I really don't think I'm low on power. Even if I was shouldn't everything have gone back to normal once I stopped OCing after the BSOD?

 

[GuitarDaddy]

In my experience when you hard crash like that and corrupt the boot sector of the HDD, it is almost always ram related. When overclocking ram test throughly with memtest as you take it up in small steps.

And unforetunately you will most likely have to do a format and reinstall of window

 

[Sukhoi]

Yeah I agree with you there, except for a couple things. One I should of specified...I wasn't OCing the RAM. When I was running all auto settings for 2 months the RAM was at 5-4-4-31 2T IIRC. When I put Speedfan on the other day it said the RAM was supposed to be at 5-5-5-15 2T at 800 MHz, so that's what I set it to. The RAM was still at 800 MHz during OCing because this board unlinks RAM and FSB. Also that 11-hour Memtest86 I ran today was done with the RAM at 5-5-5-15 2T so I think it's ok at those speeds.

Don't need to do a thing to Windows. It's working PERFECTLY after unplugging my other two HDDs. That's what makes no sense at all. It completely came back from the dead.

 

[Diogenes2]

Is there a chance the PCI wasn't locked ? Overclocking the PCI is the most likely cause of HDD corruption ..

 

[Sukhoi]

Nope it was locked to 100. And the HDD wasn't corrupted, or else it fixed itself without me doing anything. Just for some reason the comp wouldn't recognize the HDD until I disconnected the other two. I'll be out of town for the next couple days but when I get back I'm going to try hooking the other ones back up.