What's wrong? HD, MB? Nope! It was the PSU (looks like)!

[Muse]

I have two PCs on a LAN via a D-Link 704p router. They are Rigzilla and Baby Rigzilla in my sig. Rigzilla is giving me problems. It's an Epox 8K7A system. Both systems have Promise Ultra100 TX2 IDE controllers. A couple of years ago I started having sporadic recurrent problems with this Epox box. Sometimes the HDs weren't seen and Windows 2000 wouldn't boot. Several reboots and maybe it would be OK for a while. I called Promise support but they wouldn't replace the controller card. I built my 2nd system (Baby Rigzilla, with an MSI KT3 Ultra2 MB), and decided to buy another Promise card (the same one) because that would allow me to test my theory that the Promise card was bad. If the first Promise card also had problems in the new system, Promise would replace my card - I'd have proof that it was bad. Instead, it turned out that the Epox box had the same problem with the new card and I knew it wasn't the card's fault.

I took the easy way out and simply connected the HDs in the Epox box to the motherboard IDE controllers and those problems went away. I don't use that system too much. The MSI system (Baby Rigzilla) is my day in/day out system. Lately, sometimes the Epox box doesn't boot even though the drives are on the motherboard controllers. A time or two I heard clicking, sounding very like the infamous Click Of Death of the Iomega Zip drives. I figured the boot HD was dieing. After a few retries the system did boot.

This week, I can't get that system to compute at all, if I'm lucky enough to get it to boot. Sometimes when booting I would be told that there were no HDs attached and I should put in a system disk. Other times, the drives were seen and Windows 2000 would boot but I got messages that there were "Unknown Hard Errors" and Windows would shut down before I could do any computing at all. Today, I decided to remove the Epox box's boot drive and put it in my other box to see if it was readable or dead. So far, it's reading fine in that system (this one). What could be my problem? Is that Epox MB defective? It just doesn't seem clear to me what the problem could be and I don't know what to do or try. Thanks for any help here.

 

[mechBgon]

Motherboards can and do die. Before it kicked the bucket, my K7S5A was generating symptoms that I mistook for a failing hard drive. Windows could not install on one of the drives, for example. Maybe grab a nice Asus A7N266-VM/AA for yourself. While they're not the hot new technology, they're affordable and extremely stable/reliable.

The PSU could be going out, too. I see you have a good one, so I'm leaning towards motherboard and/or hard-drive problems.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Motherboards can and do die. Before it kicked the bucket, my K7S5A was generating symptoms that I mistook for a failing hard drive. Windows could not install on one of the drives, for example. Maybe grab a nice Asus A7N266-VM/AA for yourself. While they're not the hot new technology, they're affordable and extremely stable/reliable.

The PSU could be going out, too. I see you have a good one, so I'm leaning towards motherboard and/or hard-drive problems.

Actually, I have to update that system rig. I moved the Antec True430 PSU to my every day system. The troublesome system (Epox MB) has the stock Enlight 300 watt PSU that came in the Enlight case. That hadn't crossed my mind, but I suppose it's possible. I saw 12.66 volts for the 12 volt voltage when booting. Is that out of spec and a possible cause of these problems? OK, I guess the PSU had crossed my mind, but it wasn't on my short list I guess. Thanks.

Edit: I just updated my system rigs.

"While they're not the hot new technology, they're affordable and extremely stable/reliable."

That counts for a LOT. I had a fair number of vexing problems with that Epox system. I have had absolutely no problems with the MSI system that I can recall. I guess that's one reason I made it my day in/day out system. Crazy thing is, most of the time my D-Link 704p router's configuration utility refuses to come up from the MSI system... just the Epox system, and I can't friggin' boot it. I'm due for a DSL upgrade this week and I'm going to need to get into the router configuration utility. I can just see myself being stretched over a chasm.

Concerning that Asus A7N266-VM/AA: Is it fast enough to make it an HTPC? Whoa! It's only got 3 PCI slots. I don't think I can make do with that. That's the rub I have on my MSI MB - it has a modem riser slot and sacrificed a PCI slot. I'm using 'em all.

Edit2 I just realized I do have another PSU I can swap for the current one. I think it's 1/2 decent, too. I'll give it a try and see if the problems disappear. If they don't, I guess I have to finger the MB.

 

[mechBgon]

The A7N266-VM/AA takes up to a 2400+ and up to two memory modules. Its MCP-D southbridge is the predecessor to the nForce2 MCP-T southbridge and has the same high-performance audio processors, including Dolby Interactive Content Encoding and dual S/PDIF output jacks (both laser and coax). And of course it has onboard NIC and onboard video (plus an AGP Pro 4X slot). I'd say it's powerful enough to be an HTPC, yeah

The reason I'll say it's extremely stable and reliable is that I maintain a business fleet with 30 of them, as well as having owned two of them myself (one for home, one for work). There are plenty of nForce2 boards for similar price, and I got one myself (Shuttle AN35N Ultra), so that's another option. We are getting another half-dozen A7N266-VM/AA's soon.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
The A7N266-VM/AA takes up to a 2400+ and up to two memory modules. Its MCP-D southbridge is the predecessor to the nForce2 MCP-T southbridge and has the same high-performance audio processors, including Dolby Interactive Content Encoding and dual S/PDIF output jacks (both laser and coax). And of course it has onboard NIC and onboard video (plus an AGP Pro 4X slot). I'd say it's powerful enough to be an HTPC, yeah

The reason I'll say it's extremely stable and reliable is that I maintain a business fleet with 30 of them, as well as having owned two of them myself (one for home, one for work). There are plenty of nForce2 boards for similar price, and I got one myself (Shuttle AN35N Ultra), so that's another option. We are getting another half-dozen A7N266-VM/AA's soon.

Don't know if the Asus is a good choice for me, maybe the Shuttle. Reasons are that I already have a 2nd video card. Besides my main system's geforce4 ti4600 128 MB card, I have an MSI geforce2 Pro 64 MB DDR videocard. Also, I have two excellent soundcards: Hercules GTXP and Santa Cruz Turtle Beach. Gonna swap out the GTXP from the problem box and put in the Santa Cruz when I get around to it. I also have extra NICs, so I don't need all that extra nForce MB stuff. The number of PCI slots, on the other hand, is kind of important to me. Granted, with onboard sound and video you don't need a lot of slots, but I have two Promise IDE PCI controllers, and also two Winfast PCI TV cards. I probably don't need the TV cards in both, I admit. In an HTPC I'd probably want an HDTV PCI tuner card.

Anyway, I'm going to swap the power supply out with an extra I have - it's an L&C A350ATX PSU, that I drilled extra ventilation holes in and swapped out the fan for a quiet panaflo. It seemed to work fine when I was using it before I got my Antec Tru430. If the problem persists, well it could be a lot of things I guess, but the motherboard will be highly suspect. I guess it could be something as simple as a bad cable, maybe one of the IDE cables.

 

[Muse]

Swapped out the PSU this morning and fired up the machine. First time, I got a blank blue screen - light blue, not the dreaded BSOD. "Saving Settings..." was displayed and every 20 seconds or so it seemed to reload that screen. I hit the reset button and next boot it got to a dialog where it said userinit.exe failed to load. Blank blue screen - no content at all except the mouse cursor. Control-alt-delete showed that Windows had lots of processes running and one of my startup applications. Reset button again, and the 3rd time was the charm. This time, at least, it seemed to load completely fine.

Verdict? I think it must have been the PSU. Stuff got scrambled from so many errant boots with the faulty PSU. Lucky I had a spare. I'd forgotten about it and was going to order another and then I remembered I had that spare. I'm knocking on wood. I've had lots of HDs, but not one failure. I always seem to upgrade before failure.

120 mb
220 mb
410mb
1 gb
1.2 gb
40 gb
60 gb
60 gb
80 gb
80 gb
80 gb
120 gb

Not one failure. Knock on wood...