Problem w/ DFI nf4 Ultra Infinity

[twinturbostang]

I just built a new computer and am having problems with it. About half the time during the boot sequence, just after the DMI Pool statement and before Windows boots, I get the following error message...

A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart

At first I thought it was the hard drive. But I swapped in the hard drive from my old system (which is in GOOD working order) and it gave me the same exact error. Another thing I've noticed is that the standy power LED is on ALL THE TIME. According to the user manual, this should only be on when in "standy" mode.

So I'm just trying to verify that it IS a problem with the motherboard, and not something else. What do you guys think? I first posted this to the technical support forum, but thought I might get some more responses here. Link to the original thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=32&threadid=1748580&enterthread=y

Here's the full system specs...

DFI nF4 Ultra Infinity
AMD 64 X2 3800
OCZ Gold PC3200, 2x512MB (1GB total)
XFX GeForce 7800GT
Seagate 7200.9 160GB SATA
NEC DVD+/-RW
Antec P160 case
Antec SP-500 power supply
Thermaltake P0075 Venus K450 cpu cooler w/ Arctic Silver 5
(2) 120mm case fans
etc.

 

[emilyek]

Bios update?

Sata drivers?

 

[twinturbostang]

Haven't checked the BIOS version. I'll do that. SATA drivers is irrelevant though, because my old drive that I swapped in was ATA133, yet still gave the same error. So, two drives, two cables, one on PATA and one on SATA, both show the same problem.

What I want to make sure though, is it's not an issue with the cpu or memory. I'm pretty sure it's not. But how can I be sure? Are there any other tests I could run to determine for sure if it's the motherboard?

 

[twinturbostang]

Well, BIOS update did not fix the problem. Still does it. It either gives the error message during boot sequence, or Windows hangs during load. Sometimes I can get all the way through Windows load. But not very frequently. 1 in 4 tries maybe.

I did get an e-mail response from DFI tech support though. On the weekend too! Gota give them a thumbs up for that. Turns out it's normal for the standy LED to be on all the time. He did say, however, that it does sound like the motherboard needs to be returned. Guess I'll tear the system down, box up the motherboard and ship it out to newegg tomorrow.

 

[twinturbostang]

I tried a third hard drive today just to see what would happen. This is an old IBM 10GB IDE drive. No problems at all. I can't get it to duplicate the error. So...
SATA 160GB has issues
IDE133 120GB has issues
IDE100 10GB does NOT have issues

Any suggestions guys?

 

[tomt4535]

The guys over at DFI street may be able to help you out. Check out the forums at www.dfi-street.com

 

[yomafire]

power supply! I had same problem after i took off the molex connectors to do sleeving. I eventually fixed it but it took me a while to see what happned