Wacky error!

[bstout1]

I have a wacky problem. And hold on to your hats...it's a long one. but, I have built new systsems for years and have lots of tricks at my disposal but I submit and come to the wider community for help. I have racked my brain and my wallet trying to figure out what is going on. I hope you can help before I buy a completely new system...although I have almost done that already.

I had a stable computer with a msi p45 diamond, intel 9550, crossfire with 2x4850 and 2 gb ram running fine for months.....

then I started to notice some weird delays in the hard drive access and after fiddling with that for a while, I just decided to wipe the system and reinstall everything. I had been dual booting XP and Vista 64 and around that time I also went out and bought 4GB of more ram and put that in.

I started to install everything and after installing both OSs, I would start getting strange crashes where the screen would randomly freeze (in and out of games) and I would have to cold reboot to get the system up and running again. Eventually, I would sometimes have a hard time to even get to POST when I would power off and back on (using the power supply switch). Then, i startted to get some electric arcing on the motherboard near the PCI-E slots so I thought maybe I was getting a short from some lint in the case.

so, I took it out of the case and set it up again on my non-conductive lined desk and could get it to restart again.....for a while. Occassionaly it would lock up again without any obvious reasons and I decided I must have a bad power supply b/c of the arcing and the intermittant problems. It was a toughpower 650 W supply and only a few months old but it seemed to be the likely problem. Also, the motherboard started to say my CPU was installed incorrected (via the LEDs on the MB) even thought it would intermittantly post. finally, it wouldn't POST anymore so I went out and got a new 850 W toughpower power supply convinced it was the problem.

Nope, I replaced it with a new PS and got EXACTLY the same errors...even some of the same arcing.

Now, i had already swapped the memory chips around, used the originals, used the new ones, both, neither, one video card in, both in, disconnected all the hard drives, all the optical drives, removed the X-Fi sound card, cleared the CMOS, everything I know of and would STILL get RANDOM errors and failure to post. Before it completely failed to POST I even ran Memtest 86 for 17 hours without a single error with BOTH sets of memory installed.

so, I replaced the motherboard next...now I have an Asus P5Q and reinstalled it into the case, hooked things up in a step wise fashion, all the while hoping to find the critical peice of equiptment that wouldn't work. this way, I found one of the power supply cables from the original unit would invariably lead to the inability to post and replaced that....also the optical drive it was connected to was dead (it was brand new and it had never been checked before I put it in this system). Elated, I finished the construction with the SATA cable from the new power supply, I used a different optical drive and when I finished I had the following system

Asus p5Q - p45 chipset. brand new
6 gb ram, 2x1 and 2x2 both 1333 memorry from patriot (one set is new the other is old)
2x diamond 4850 vid cards in crossfire with both getting power from seperate PCI-E 6 cable
320, 500, and 1000 gb hard drives from WD, WD, and seagate, respectively
BD-ROM from LG with DVD-ROM but no R/RW capabilities.
Onboard sound and GB lan.
Windows XP with SP 2 installed and running smoothly....

for about 3 hours!!!!! then, it crashed while starting Oblivion. I had already started it and played for about 20 minutes, shut it down and restarted and it the f*cking thing crashed to OFF, no freeze, no BSOD, just straight to off. the motherboard still had power with LEDs on but no fans or sound from the board.

After nearly throwing the thing on the floor, I powered off the power supply for 10 seconds and then back on, the LEDs re-light and then thing with not so much as give a whimper of life when I hit the power switch before it goes right back off again!!!

I can't figure it out. Any body know what could be doing this? I am left now with essentially the CPU and the video cards as the only possible culprits but it would fail randomly with the video cards in/out before.

sorry to ramble but there is not better way to explain this...

Bill

 

[mechBgon]

The top two reasons for the system powering itself off right away are probably

1) a short-circuit condtion that causes your power supply to shut down to avoid damage

2) CPU overheat


You mentioned a past incident of electrical arcing near the PCI-E slots. I was wondering if maybe there's one extra standoff under the motherboard along the rear edge. Some motherboards have four holes down the back row, some only have three. So cases have room for four standoffs, but if the motherboard only had three holes, that fourth standoff would be resting against the underside of the motherboard, possibly touching circuit pins. You'd want to check this position :camera:.

Another simple fact-finding step, is to remove the motherboard from the case and lay it on cardboard, as a test. I know that's not fun when you have Crossfire and four drives, but it would eliminate the possibility of a short-circuit caused by the case.


Regarding CPU overheat, you probably already confirmed that your CPU heatsink/fan is still firmly pinned down at all four corners, but while you have the board out, you can look at the underside to make sure.

 

[bstout1]

Thanks but I have tried all that.

the cpu fan is well seated, the MB is sitting on my desk on a nonconductive plastic bag on top of a peice of leather. I have also done it on a stack of paper without luck.

I have done a little more experimenting....if I plug in JUST the CPU and CPU fan with nothing else and then plug in the 24 pin power cable and the 8 pin 12 volt cable, I can not get the PSU to do anything but just breifly start the fans and then is makes a shorting out sound and shuts down with the LEDs on the motherboard still lit.

I swapped in a different CPU but the same thing happened.

When I unplug the 8 pin 12 volt cpu power cable from the motherboard, the fans start spinning and nothing shuts down....it won't boot b/c there is no videocard or memory but at least the PSU doesn't short out. As soon as I plug the 8 pin power cable back in to the motherboard, the PSU shorts out again.....

This is a different motherboard than it originally happened on....

could the CPU be bad? I can't remember the last CPU I had that went bad...especially in 4 months.

Bill

 

[mpilchfamily]

There is actually one other possible cause for the system powering itself off.

If the PSU is dieing or inadiquate to support the system it will shut down like that. There is also a chance that if the PSU did die that it damaged the system. Which may be why your still having problems even with a new PSU.

 

[mechBgon]

As a fact-finding step, do you have any old leftover PCI-E video cards you could try in there, to help narrow down the list of suspects? Heck, or even a regular PCI video card.

The arcing incidents still sound like major Bad News. Can you pin down the location of that? :camera:s?

Also, I was looking at the Asus P5Q info at Asus's site. They make a lot of variants of P5Q, but assuming you have the actual P5Q vanilla, I see there's a BIOS update aimed at improving compatibility with "certain Yorkfield C1 stepping CPUs," which I believe could include your Q9550. If you can get it to boot reliably, it could be worth updating the BIOS for that reason.

 

[bstout1]

thanks for the replys....I felt sure it was still and electical problem and since I can't check that myself, I took it to my local Fry's Electronics (I bought most of the stuff there) and they tested everything.

the CPU is fine.

The memory is fine.

The PSU drops the output on the 5 volt rail after a few minutes but otherwise was ok.

the motherboard won't boot! He said it's a bad board and just needs to be replaced.

I will exchange the board and try again, seeing what happens after a few hours ...I suspect it will happen again but I am also very jaded right now.

I am going to RMA my old MSI board and see if I can get it working again.

I will take original PSU in to Fry's later today too...maybe they can see if it has a problem.

Thanks. I will make sure I give a final verdict after I get the new Mobo.

 

[bstout1]

Well, as I suspected....

I took back my motherboard and power supply and got brand new ones. I even had the woman at Fry's boot the motherboard to prove to me it worked before I drove back and forth again..

so, I bring the new stuff home, plug it all in on a anti-static pad on my desk and boot 'er up. It POSTs, I disable the unnecessary hardware, boot to windows (from my last installation), it updates a few drivers and runs fine.

I shut down b/c it hadn't recognized my usb mouse (it's running through a PS/2 KVM system...sometimes doesn't get recognized) and when I try to reboot, I get NOTHING!!!!

the fan on the PSU spins fraction of a turn and then nothing....the led's on the MB stay lit but I can't restart. I turn off the PSU, try again, and again, and again, each time only gettting the slightest wimper of an initiation from the PSU before going dead.

At this point the only untested part of the set up is the video cards....I don't dare put them in my "work" computer for fear they will destroy it.

Has anyone ever heard of a video card(s) frying a motherboard.

I have now gone through 3 motherboards, new harddrive, new memory, 3 PSUs and still can't get the f*cking thing to even post after one of these catastrophic failures.

any ideas?

 

[Gustavus]

"Has anyone ever heard of a video card(s) frying a motherboard."

I can first hand tell you a video card can fry a motherboard. My favorite machine built on an IC7 G motherboard had run a Prescott overclocked to 3.8 GHz for months -- would run Prime95 overnight with no errors -- was killed by a video card. I bought a ATI X1600 to replace the older 9600 Pro on it and it killed the motherboard. I have verified by swapping into other running machines that the CPU, the memory etc. are all good, and have tried three power supplies -- including a brand new OCZ 600 watt supply, so the only thing left is the motherboard. I have tried other known good memory, other CPU's etc. The video card clearly is what killed the machine. I am now watching for a replacement motherboard on e-Bay.

 

[bstout1]

thanks for the input. I am convinced that is the problem too. I am not sure that the power supply is enough to support all the hardware, and it might have fried the videocards and then the subsequent MBs. I have since bought a new system and it seems to be ok.