Strange instability problems - what's going on?

[Atheus]

Hi all...

Following on from this thread in the PSU forum... http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2218815

I'm no longer sure it's a PSU problem so I'm moving the discussion here. If you haven't read it, basically I've had some (assumed) power problems, in which the machine turned itself off randomly and then failed to boot for a random amount of time. I think I've fixed this with a BIOS flash but now I'm failing memtest... well not exactly failing - I can't see any errors due to a mess of unicode characters covering the screen after 24 hours...

Does that count as a memtest failure? Could it just as easily be mobo or GPU as memory? What on earth's going on and how can I diagnose it?...

 

[westom]

... basically I've had some (assumed) power problems, in which the machine turned itself off randomly ...
Does that count as a memtest failure?

A marginal power system can cause anything else to behave strangely. If the foundation under a house is collapsing, do you blame humidity for making doors stick? Until the foundation of your computer is known, then all other testing may only be chasing ghosts or fixing things that are not defective - ie memory.

MemTst is useful when a pattern is observed in its error messages. Strange and random errors suggest failure elsewhere. Just because you saw an error message does not say where a problem might exist. First learn what the numbers are saying.

Very dangerous to flash a BIOS when other hardware is unknown or unstable. A BIOS does not go intermittent. Either it works. Or it completely fails. Flashing a BIOS may even permanently damage hardware. Flashing was one of the last and riskiest things to do.

 

[Atheus]

A marginal power system can cause anything else to behave strangely. If the foundation under a house is collapsing, do you blame humidity for making doors stick?

Well, maybe, it depends if it's the humidity or the foundation sinking causing the doors to stick 0_o

I mean obviously you'd want to replace the foundation anyway, but if you follow the analogy, we only know the doors stick - we don't know for sure the foundation is going.

Just because you saw an error message does not say where a problem might exist. First learn what the numbers are saying.

There's no need to be patronising. I didn't get an error message, I got mess of random characters all over a blue screen, which as far as I know isn't diagnostic of anything.

A BIOS does not go intermittent. Either it works. Or it completely fails.

You seem very knowlegable westom, but I can't agree with that at all - I've seen plenty of buggy BIOSs... in fact they're extremely common in my experience... not really sure what you're talking about here...

Anyway if this was true, how could you explain the fact that the flash (at least partially) fixed my power problem? This BIOS is clearly more stable.

Flashing a BIOS may even permanently damage hardware

Really? I dunno about that either. Only if you flashed a completely untested image and it configured some horrible over-volting of some component... and then only turning the machine on after the flash would damage it... not the flash itself...

If you don't mind I'm going to take your advice about power systems but handle the firmware and software myself.

I'll get back to you in the PSU forum when I've taken the measurements you suggest.