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System unstable after upgrading to 4400+

T

TheInternal

Senior member
current system specs: (everything at stock speeds, latest drivers were all downloaded no more than one month ago) Previous CPU was the Athlon 64 3500+.

Antec P108B case
Athlon x2 4400+ with Sythe Ninja passive heatsink
MSI K8N Neo 4 SLI Platinum (with latest BIOS update) with Zalman ZM-NBF47 passive northbridge heatsink
4 x 512 MB crucial ballistix PC3200
EVGA 6800 Ultra in x16 slot 1
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum in PCI slot 2
Happauge 500 PVR dual tv tuner in PCI slot 3
OCZ Modstream 450 watt power supply
Maxtor Maxline III 300 GB SATA hard drive (primary)
Western Digital 120 GB special edition ATA HD
Lite-On DVD-RAM/-RW/+RW (master)
Lite-On DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive (slave)
Windows Media Center Edition 2005
Dell 2405FPW color monitor
Microtek ScanMaker 5800


Thermals:
-----------------------

CPU - 42-45 celcius at idle, 52 celcius at load
system - approx. 32 celcius at idle, 43 at load


Symptoms:
-----------------------

regularly fails to boot into Windows, speaker buzz will cease (like when the sound card kicks in) then the load bar will stop as well. System responds sluggishly, and will lock up... usually while running media center.


Attempts to fix:
-----------------------

Reformatted HD after processor install, hoping it would clear up problems. It didn't.

Ran microsoft extended memtest. Passed.

Made sure on board audio was disabled in BIOS. nforce audio driver not listed as being installed (will probably fully uninstall then reinstall next, just to be certain).

Moved the sound card and TV tuner card from PCI slots 1 and 2 (respectively) to slots 2 and 3. No noticable change.

Downloaded tons of windows updates and latest virus definitions. If anything, performance went down.

I can enter Windows safe mode without system lock up.


Theories thus far:
------------------------

No visible ESD occurred during the system build, but I wonder if the northbridge may have been damaged when removing the compound from the stock fan that was on it (the fan was starting to fail).

My other initial guesses are either a bad processor, or hard drive going out. The fact that the system freezes after the sound card seems to initialize the speakers also seems odd and noteworthy. I'm not familiar with the OS initialization sequence, so if there is something right after the sound card that is checked or initialized, ideas are welcomed.

I'm HOPING there is some weird incompatibility with the 4400+ or some driver issue that is obscure and can easily be fixed.

Furthest out on a limb theory: that I got a proc with low temperature tolerance. On a vendor website, 49-60 degrees celcius is listed as max temperature.

Any comments/suggestions are welcomed.



 
If it works in safe mode, it is usually a driver problem. It can be faulty hardware (less frequently) that causes problems when the drivers access it. I have seen conflicts with sound and vid capture drivers before. Try running without the tuner and sound cards (and uninstalling their drivers). If it works ok then, put in the sound card and try again. If still ok, add the tuner card. You may isolate the problem.
 
thanks. That's what I started playing with after I posted. I'm leaning towards the tv tuner drivers at the moment, and did a system restore back then started redoing a few things. However... why would merely updating the processor cause my tv tuner and audio drivers to suddenly crap out on me? Anyone else have this issue?
 
Another symptom:

While playing back recorded tv, system hiccups/image flicker for a milisecond or two in a fairly regular interval.
 
Alright...

apparantly, after removing the sound card and the tv tuner, and successfully restarting and loading windows about a dozen times, I've concluded that there is something indeed wrong with the tv tuner driver. with the tv tuner card physically installed, the system will boot. When the tv tuner driver is installed and the card set up in windows media center, I can't boot into windows.

I'm going to make a post asking if anyone else knows of x2 4400+ and Happauge 500 MCE PVR tuner incompatibilites.

I'll leave this thread open to additional suggestions/comments, but am quite certain it's the tv tuner driver conflicting with the x2 4400+
 
Just a shot in the dark, but a guess why a new psu might have caused a problem is that it is requiring more (and different?) resources. When Windows boots, it will allocate resources to the cpu before the add in cards. Out of the remaining pool of resources, it assigns for the cards. The cards now have to operate under a new set of resources that is different from what worked before. It is posssible that Windows has assigned some resources inadvertantly that are out of usable range for one of the cards, or that some that Windows considers "sharable" may not actually share well between the devices involved.
 
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