*solved* Problems with brand-new build

[VirtualLarry]

I built some AMD Athlon II quad-cores last year, intending to sell them, based on parts and combo deals from Microcenter (free or nearly-free mobo with purchase of AMD X4 630 and 640 chips).

Anyways, I finally sold one of them at the beginning of this year, along with a HD4850 graphics card.

I had two left, one with an Asus NV-chipset board (6150 maybe), and one with a (I think, Biostar?) 760G mobo, both micro-atx, both DDR2 (paid through the nose for 4GB of DDR2 back then, it was when it was at $100).

I was using a case + PSU combo from ewiz, with a "400W" (25C) PSU.

For the machine with the NV chipset, that I upgraded with another HD4850, I tested it with five minutes of OCCT PSU test, and nothing smoked or shut down. I was however afraid to test it any longer.

For the machine with the 760G, I dug it out tonight to run some Distributed Computing on it. I set it up at my third desk, with a newly-unwrapped 25" Hannspree LCD.

When I hooked it up and turned it on, it wouldn't POST. So I opened it up, and re-seated the RAM. That seemed to do the trick.

I am using a USB Dell keyboard, and generic ewiz USB mouse. For video output, I'm using a DVI-to-HDMI converter from AMD (out of a HD4850 box), and an HDMI cable to an HDMI port on the monitor.

I have a "Tenda" wifi N150 adaptor, and a "High-power" wifi G adaptor, as my options to connect to the internet.

Once I had the machine booted (Windows 7 HP 64-bit), I plugged in the Tenda adaptor, and it automagically installed the drivers.

It seemed to work for a little while, but then it gave me the yellow warning icon over the network icon, no internet access.

I did the diagnostics, and it said to investigate the router. Only thing is, I also had a laptop running internet radio streams over the same wireless router, and it never missed a beat.

I tried various things, and to make a longer story shorter, sometimes the network icon would hang, I wouldn't be able to access the Network and Sharing Center thing, and when I tried to shut down and reset, Windows would hang at the Shutdown screen. So I hit the reset button.

At one point, with the Tenda adaptor plugged into the front-panel USB, the BIOS POST hung at "Enumerating USB devices". So I thought that perhaps the front-panel ports weren't supplying enough power, so I plugged it into the back. I had to re-arrange the keyboard/mouse plugs too.

At some point, the keyboard and mouse would stop working.

Even further along, with nothing plugged into a USB port, the computer stopped booting altogether.

Thinking it was a failing PSU that was dying due to the load on the +5v or +5vSB, I swapped in a nice OEM Enhance 500W unit.

After swapping in the new PSU, it booted right up again, and I managed to get online briefly with the Tenda adaptor, but it was still hanging up at some random point after showing that Win7 had internet access.

And that's where I left it. Not with the Tenda adaptor, not with the High-Power G adaptor, it won't stay online for more than a few minutes. Very frustrating.

My last-ditch effort, would be to connect up one of my routers with DD-WRT, as a WDS node, or client-mode wireless.

But I'm wondering if there is a potential mobo issue, especially with the USB ports.

Or maybe I just need to do a fresh install of Windows 7, perhaps something has gone wonky?

Or perhaps the Crucial Ballistix DDR2 has gone bad? It's not the 2.1v Ballistix that was famous for failing, it's newer stuff at standard timings and voltages.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I resorted to the DD-WRT router in client mode. Cannot seem to figure out why USB wifi doesn't seem to work right on this machine.

 

[Motorheader]

I've run into this before and though it sounds like a hardware issue it turned out to be more of a driver issue. After going through the driver installation and configuration for the network it would drop within several minutes. I ended up going with a different driver - sometimes older and sometimes newer depending on the hardware involved. Though modern OS's are great when installing default drivers they can still be the root cause of such issues.

I've seen situations like this from my days of early USB video cameras, game controllers, and even satellite modems. The nearest thing I could dig up as to why is that it is related to default power output required for the USB device connected to the port. Having the items on a powered (not self powered) USB mini hub would often resolve the issue.

My answer does have what appears to be some double speak regarding the whether hardware or driver, but my experience would say driver because of hardware.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I noticed that it was using the in-the-box drivers for the ATI HD3000 onboard video, and when I went to resume it from the screensaver, the monitor came out of standby mode, but I had no video. I had to turn the monitor off and then on again to get a picture.

So I figured I would download and install the ATI Cat video drivers.

I downloaded 11.10, and proceeded to install them, and they basically hung at "Detecting Graphics Hardware". I tried to exit the installer, but couldn't. I also couldn't go to Devices and Printers, and right-click on the computer, to bring up Properties.

So it seems like anything related to Device Manager was hanging up somehow.

So I'm doing a re-install. I probably should have ran SeaTools on the Seagate 500GB 7200.11 drive first, just to scan for bad sectors, but oh well.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Ok, tried re-installing Win7 from a SP1 DVD, and it hung after copying files, before it reboots.

So I did a surface scan of the HD with SeaTools, no bad sectors found.'

Did a zero-wipe of the first few MB, now I'm going to try the Win7 install again.

 

[Motorheader]

In the bios does it have any type of setting for IDE/SATA Compatibility Mode?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes, it has RAID, AHCI, Native IDE, Legacy IDE, and some option that has IDE(arrow)SATA.

The board has an IDE port, as well as several SATA ports. I'm only using the SATA ports.

During the Win7 re-install, it doesn't reboot the first time it says it is going to reboot. But if I press RESET then it will continue the install, and the second time it goes to reboot, it reboots correctly. Go figure.

There is an option in the BIOS for ACPI version 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0. I'm not sure which one I should pick.

The ATI Cat 11.10 don't install, it just kind of hangs on the "Detecting Hardware" phase.

So I downloaded and installed 11.7, and they installed right away.

Although after that installed, and I re-set the Win7 theme to Aero default, then I tried to shut down or reboot, and it hung again.

So I hit RESET, and booted Win7 again, and then shut it down, and it shut down fine.

So then I used IE to download the BOINC 64-bit client software. I tried to install it, and it says it is decompressing the .msi file, but then when it goes to install, it just sits there and does nothing.

What's strange, is I installed the very same BOINC client, before I re-installed Win7, and it worked just fine.

Something is very wierd with this system.

I'm not certain that the brand-new replacement PSU is OK. The 12v and 3.3v lines in the BIOS hardware display are slightly above their respective voltage levels, but the 5v line is below somewhat.

Edit: I let the BOINC install sit for a half hour, and it finished on it's own.


It said it needed to reboot, so I clicked restart, and it's just sitting here at the "Logging Off" screen.

Ok, it moved to the "Shutdown" screen, and is just sitting there. I'm going to leave it. After it restarts, I'll download a SMART tool and check for interface CRC errors. Wonder if I should just swap HDs.

But the SeaTools ran a surface scan over the entire drive, and didn't have any errors, nor did the Short Self-Test I did afterwards.

Edit: Ok, it bluescreened, and quickly disappeared. Didn't catch the code.

 

[Motorheader]

Compatibility between the onboard controller and the SATA controller of the hard disk? Is there an option for onboard SATA of some type other than the native controller? Yes swapping drive sounds like next step.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Voltages measured with a VMM at a free molex connector:

5v - 4.97
12v - 12.06

is that too low for the 5v line?

Edit: Decided to pop in a memtest86+ CD.

 

[Motorheader]

That sounds like it well within acceptable values.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I unplugged the 4-in-1 card reader (USB), and flashed the BIOS to the newest on their web site, unsure if that's a different version than what was on there.

It defaults to ACPI version 1.0, so I left it at that.

Edit: Before I did that, after one pass of Memtest86+ passed, I rebooted into Windows, and ran Disk Checkup, it's Passmark's free smart tool.

There were no interface CRC errors showing. I unplugged and replugged the SATA ports on the motherboard just in case.

Edit: IT SEEMS TO BE FIXED.

I tried flashing the BIOS, which of course, the main BIOS was able to recognize the USB keyboard, but not the embedded flasher program, so I had to shut down and plug in a PS/2 keyboard.

So between flashing the BIOS, unplugging the card reader, and plugging in a PS/2 keyboard, it's working now.

I installed Win7 for the umpteenth time, and this time, it rebooted automatically just fine. I downloaded and installed the Cat 11.10 drivers, and they installed just fine too. So did the BOINC client.

So now it's working, I didn't really need the crappy card reader anyways.

Thanks for your help, Motorheader.

 

[Motorheader]

Nice to hear you got it working. An extraneous USB device - what a PITA.

My son helped with a rebuild/refresh of his rig a while ago. When I wasn't paying attention (and he thought he was "helping") he hooked up the built in USB hub on the monitor to the back of the PC. Fresh windows install kept dying with unknown hardware/driver issue with some bizarro name.