*UPDATE* (Added cliff notes up top) New Rig Works Fine for 5 Days; Now Keeps Restarting

[BoycottValvoline]

Cliff notes: Comp worked fine for 5 days, then just started restarting a few minutes after boot. Comp was running a little hot, but well within limits. I tried three different hard drives to make sure it wasn't the HDD, but when installing a fresh install it blue-screened on all of them. Isolated the problem and it seemed to work fine if no PCIe x16 card was in the system (tried two different cards both of which worked Later I found out this only drastically reduced the rate at which it would restart from after only a few minutes running to taking a few hours to restart.

Today, a new motherboard arrived, I launched windows under the old install and it froze after several minutes of recognizing the new hardware. I then proceeded to try a fresh install. I tried two different hard drives and two different versions of Windows XP, both blue-screened during installation. With "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" at the top and "*** STOP: 0x0000000A (0x0000001C, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0x80524B91)" at the bottom.

Any ideas on what the problem could still be?







The following is the rest of the original message:

I recently built a new comp with the following processor/ram/mobo:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 Conroe 2.13GHz
G.SKILL 2GB DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3

Earlier tonight it just froze randomly as I was typing in a word processor and running all my normal programs in the background. When I hit the reset button to restart it, it booted up fine and everything seemed to be working. I used a program that accesses Postgre SQL's databases and it read from them fine. Then I opened another program and it said it couldn't find any of the databases. So I reopened the original program and now it couldn't find the databases either.

After toying around for a few seconds, it restarted on it's own. When XP booted up again I immediately went to do virus and spybot checks but it froze midway through those. So then I decided to boot off the other partition of my hard drive which also has XP on it. I downloaded AVG free onto it and started to do a virus scan but it froze on this partition as well.

So, I took this drive out and put it into my other computer and ran TuneUp Utilities Disk Doctor on both partitions of the drive. I did a thorough scan and it didn't find any errors. Meanwhile I took an old ATA 60GB hard drive and hooked it up to my new comp and tried installing windows on it. It froze several times while trying to install windows giving me the blue "memory dump" screen each time. Even after a full format.

Anyone have any ideas on what the problem could be?



Thanks in advance,

Josh

 

[PurdueRy]

Have you checked temps? What is the rest of your rig composed of?

 

[Ausm]

Yes by all means check the temps could be rebooting due to overheating.


AUsm

 

[TheStu]

Do you have more RAM laying around? Or do you have more than 1 RAM stick in your machine? If you have more than 1 stick, remove one of them and see if the problems continue. If they don't, try it again with the other stick as the only stick in the system. If the problems come back, then you have found the guilty party. If they don't then also try re-arranging the sticks. On a couple boards that I had (one nForce 2 chipset so AMD, the other with the 845 chipset so intel) I couldn't put a 512MB stick into the second slot, or at least the the 512 stick that I had. That is what I would recommend at least.

 

[dealmaster00]

sounds like a temperature/PS issue.

 

[BoycottValvoline]

I started it up and went into BIOS. From a cold boot she went from 32C to 44C in less than 5 minutes. And for some reason the CPU fan started at 800RPM and only got up to about 1200RPM. I tried disabling Smart FAN but then the fan speed just idled at 1200RPM. Then I tried booting up and going into the Gigabyte program Easy Tune 5 which allows you to modify the smart fan settings, and I set it to always be at 100%, but then fan only got to about 2000RPM when I've seen it before higher than 3000RPM. Shortly after this the CPU rebooted.

The processor had been idling around 40-45C during the 5 days that it worked fine too, which I thought was a little high, but since I didn't bother to overclock it I figured I should be fine. System temperature was around 40C.

EDIT: I also dismounted and remounted the heatsink and it seems very properly secured, and tried flashing the cmos. On a "warm" boot the CPU starts right up at ~45C and the fan is only spinning at 1500RPM.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: BoycottValvoline
I started it up and went into BIOS. From a cold boot she went from 32C to 44C in less than 5 minutes. And for some reason the CPU fan started at 800RPM and only got up to about 1200RPM. I tried disabling Smart FAN but then the fan speed just idled at 1200RPM. Then I tried booting up and going into the Gigabyte program Easy Tune 5 which allows you to modify the smart fan settings, and I set it to always be at 100%, but then fan only got to about 2000RPM when I've seen it before higher than 3000RPM. Shortly after this the CPU rebooted.

The processor had been idling around 40-45C during the 5 days that it worked fine too, which I thought was a little high, but since I didn't bother to overclock it I figured I should be fine. System temperature was around 40C.

EDIT: I also dismounted and remounted the heatsink and it seems very properly secured, and tried flashing the cmos. On a "warm" boot the CPU starts right up at ~45C and the fan is only spinning at 1500RPM.

What about the rest of my question...what is the rig composed of(complete)?

 

[BoycottValvoline]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
What about the rest of my question...what is the rig composed of(complete)?

Seasonic S12-600 Watt PSU
WD Raptor 150GB
Rosewill R5601-BK Case

And a floppy and DVD-RW.

 

[oynaz]

Off the top of my head:

89% chance of defective RAM. 8% of defective mobo. 1% of defective CPU. 1% of defective PSU. 1% of something else.

"Defective" includes overheating.

 

[btcomm1]

Good call oynaz. Since it's freezing up during anything I doubt you will be able to run a memtest, it will probably freeze before it finds any errors. Try removing 1 stick of ram at a time and see if the rebooting and freezing stops.

 

[BoycottValvoline]

Originally posted by: TheStu
Do you have more RAM laying around? Or do you have more than 1 RAM stick in your machine? If you have more than 1 stick, remove one of them and see if the problems continue. If they don't, try it again with the other stick as the only stick in the system. If the problems come back, then you have found the guilty party. If they don't then also try re-arranging the sticks. On a couple boards that I had (one nForce 2 chipset so AMD, the other with the 845 chipset so intel) I couldn't put a 512MB stick into the second slot, or at least the the 512 stick that I had. That is what I would recommend at least.

Tried this, and neither stick worked alone in the DDRII 1 slot. *EDIT* They worked fine but the computer still restarted, this time before even getting to windows.

Meanwhile the CPU is now idling at 49C at stock clock speeds, and the power supply I bought a year and a half ago and it worked perfectly fine in my other computer.

Any more help or advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm prepared to buy my way out of this if I have to, or take the slow route and start RMA'ing things and soon as I know something's gone bad.

Again, thanks for all your responses so far!

 

[btcomm1]

I would have to say at this point if neither stick of ram worked alone is either both ram sticks are defective, or it's most likely your motherboard. It could be something else but most likely I would say I think it's your motherboard.

 

[BoycottValvoline]

Also, earlier I forgot to mention my video cards. I'm running a PCI nVidia MX420 VGA (no, i'm not kidding) as the primary and an nVidia 7600GT PCIe x16 to run other monitors.

 

[BoycottValvoline]

What's the best course of action to diagnose the problem?

I can ...

1) order a new motherboard (I wouldn't mind ordering a different board because I was thinking of getting something that could run dual PCIe x16's anyway)
2) order new RAM
3) drive to best buy and buy a stick of RAM for $55 then hope they let me return it.
4) drive an hour and a half and borrow some RAM from a friend to test it/test my RAM in his system. (I would probably drive down and then spend a few days there as a mini-vacation, because I have a lot of family and friends in the area and don't need to be back home till Saturday)

And also, should I be worried about this CPU temperature Idling at near 50C with stock clock speed? Nobody seems to think anything of it, but when I read other forums/reviews people say they have there's idling at ~40C overclocked...

 

[BoycottValvoline]

I just tried putting the Hard Drive from my new comp into my old one and booting off it and it froze while loading windows. Then I went to try and boot off a separate partition on the same drive, and it froze again.

*EDIT: tried a different hard drive and it wouldn't install windows on this one either.

 

[PurdueRy]

Do temps continue to rise when you get into windows or can you not get a temp monitoring program to run in time?

 

[BoycottValvoline]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Do temps continue to rise when you get into windows or can you not get a temp monitoring program to run in time?

I can get it open sometimes, it stays under 50C

*EDIT: I even tried operating it with a box fan blowing right into the chassis, may have kept temps down a little, but didn't solve the problem

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: BoycottValvoline

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Do temps continue to rise when you get into windows or can you not get a temp monitoring program to run in time?

I can get it open sometimes, it stays under 50C

*EDIT: I even tried operating it with a box fan blowing right into the chassis, may have kept temps down a little, but didn't solve the problem

try a bare minimum config, one video card, one stick of ram, one hard drive, no optical and so on and see if you can get it to work.

 

[BoycottValvoline]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: BoycottValvoline

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Do temps continue to rise when you get into windows or can you not get a temp monitoring program to run in time?

I can get it open sometimes, it stays under 50C

*EDIT: I even tried operating it with a box fan blowing right into the chassis, may have kept temps down a little, but didn't solve the problem

try a bare minimum config, one video card, one stick of ram, one hard drive, no optical and so on and see if you can get it to work.

Thanks for the tip, I did this and it seems to be working OK.

I took out my PCIe x16 7600GT, unplugged my DVD-RW and took out one stick of RAM.

Does this narrow down what the problem might be?

 

[Captante]

Try putting back the second DIMM & see if the lockups start again ... if so then you've most likely found the problem.

If not, then try swapping the MX420 for the 7600GT (I doubt the DVD-RW had anything to do with your issues) ... if the lockups come back with that card installed, then you'll have narrowed it down to the video card itself or the motherboard, if not & they appear to only happen with both video cards installed together then its almost certainly the motherboard itself.

 

[BoycottValvoline]

Think I isolated the problem, everything works fine just so long as a PCIe x16 video card isn't installed. Tried two different ones that are both working in my other comp and each resulted in freezing up the new rig.

I'm assuming this means the problem is with the motherboard correct?

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: BoycottValvoline
Think I isolated the problem, everything works fine just so long as a PCIe x16 video card isn't installed. Tried two different ones that are both working in my other comp and each resulted in freezing up the new rig.

I'm assuming this means the problem is with the motherboard correct?

Provided you have all the power connectors on the motherboard and card connected...yes that is what I would assume.

 

[BoycottValvoline]

Bumping, edited original post with cliff notes up top explaining problems.