Need Assist Pegging the Villain Hardware

[lkgadv]

(Rambling Long Disjointed Post Warning)

Oh where to start, I was getting quite a few total shutdowns, some BSODs but mostly the computer just powered off. NTFS event error, the most common in the event log. But were others but I forget, thought I solved it, but alas seems to be creeping back.

The guts are an Epox9NDA3+ motherborad, AMD FX-60,
2 GB Crucial Ballistix pc3200 (1 512x2 rma'd to crucial details below),
Seagate 250gb 1.5gb SATA Boot Drive (100mb page file) 2 partitions, 1st for OS apps, 2nd storage, Kingwin drive rack (this drive is for media music, video etc., 2nd seagate sata boot in another tray for games),
Hitatchi Deskstar IDE HD Master on primary Channel, with page/swap file on the 1st partition formatted fat32 @ 4gb, remainder NTFS storage partitions,
Maxtor IDE slave (storage),
NEC 3550A D/L optical on secondary IDE Channel
-HIS X1950Pro IceQ3 Turbo AGP, powered by that 250w Thermaltake dedicated GPU PSU 5.25 bay dealie :)
-Creative X-fi extrememusic (factory refurb dirt cheap from creative via ebay, gave the trusty Audigy 2zs Plat to son for his home recording studio needs) I had thought the soundcard was the problem, as was after its intsall first started having problems, and lotsa complaints about the x-fi's, should dug deeper than a couple hardware reviews, but it has not been reinstalled this last go around, so is not in the equation.
PC Power and Cooling Silencer 610w (current) 49amp +12v rail, 24pin to MB via 24-20 pin adapter
Thermaltake Purepower 560w (former) 22amp +12v rail

Thought the TT PSU was the problem, a bit long in the tooth, weak 12v rail 22amp, by todays standards, not dual core certified either if not mistaken, and the poweroffs, BSODs problems was having was good bet. The problems sadly not remedied after replacing/upgrading the TT PSU.

I then ran prime95 on each core, blend on 0, small fft on 1, got errors straight away, ran memtest errors in short order, short story 1 pair of the Crucial Ballistix had issues. Prime95 aborted and reported errors with that pair in either dual channel slots. Even managed a sytem self shutoff a couple times. The other pair no problems ran 2 instances of prime95, for oh 10 hours or so in each dual channel dimm slot pair, RMA'd the flaky pair to Crucial, replacements due monday I think. Thought cool that had to be it :) :)..

So squeezed the data on the boot drive to the other drives, zeroed ran seatools (passed), reinstalled windows fresh, partioned the boot drive, am using the nvida mass storage drive from the 5.11 package at F6 (no raid),the MS Pata/IDE driver, and the Gart and Smbus from Squall's 9.35 renix I think it is. The ethernet deal on the board farted out (read somewhere that probably was a driver issue regarding the official nforce drivers, but not concerned enough to mess with, so am using a Linksys pci nic/lan so not using any of the nforce drivers, network etc..drivers at all. AMD dual core driver, MS Dual Core Hotfix, and AMD Dual Core Optimizer installed in the correct order, and correctly. I do not use the cool and quiet deal,as the comp isonly one when listening, viewing, reading and working on my media files, or gaming with the gaming drive tray so feel no need for the feature. have a cobbled from odd spare parts net pc for surfing, email, messaging, chat, driver downloads, patches updates etc.. and piping the cablebox signal to a secondary monitor since the tv died ages ago. My main rig is only on the net for things need to snag that i can't get with the net comp and tranfer to with a flash pen drive

But just got 2 poweroffs today with the PC P&C, while batch testing the lot of rar files with winrar, had shuffled to the sata boot drive's 2nd partition, and recieved the NTFS error on that partion in the event log, XP flagged a checkdisk on the drive both partition on reboot. Using vice versa to mirror these files to the boot drives 2nd partition some 72 odd GB's went w/o a hitch, but testing the mirrored rar files per above well not so hitchless. Is Winrar 3,51 if that matters.

Cleared the system event log, and ran a full chdsk on the boot and storage partion..no errors reported, no bad sectors etc..

Data seems intact, tried testing the rars again in smaller groups rather than all at once, was going fine, then the poweroff again, no BSOD, just shut off. No NTFS error in the event log this time. But am reluctant to really mess with, alot of the data is still on another drive, but deleted alot also, so need to hopefully get the deleted file back to a storage drive from the iffy one.

Trouble shooting afterwards...40 passes memtest all tests selected..no errors, as I type running prime95 on each core as per above...just starting the 4 series/set and no issues so far..though the core running the blend is hitting as high as 55c or so, the other around 50c...expected better from a thermalright xp-90c, with a 65cfm 92mm fan :(, maybe is the Zalman ZM-STG1 Super Thermal Grease, though the comparison reviews I read to Artic Silver 5..was rated pretty much equal and seperating the HS from the CPU a bit easier...I reset the HS when I swapped psu's..as the core temps running prime 95 in the tests prior were around the same

I had a mbr/pt/ft corruption on my media storage drive several months ago, so had to buy a recovery drive large enough, formatted fat32, after a couple hundred hours recovered probably 99.9%if not all of the extensive mp3 (ripped all my cd's (now gone) we talking like somewhat complete tull, young, csny, marley, tosh, ziggy, sabbath, allman bros, hawkwind, nektar, bad company, free, springsteen, bad religion, anti-flag, angelic upstarts, clash, woody guthrie, phil ochs too much to list, and a mess of pdfs, doc and rtf files etc., etc., and files names were not salvaged, the recovered files were 12345,6,7,8....luckily they were mostly grouped correctly in folders. So have been spending much time, going through identifying, naming, retagging, and copying to an external, then archiving with 10% recovery records with winrar, to back up to dvd/cdr when can afford the media (looking at 400+ gb or so) the rar files testing above are a portion of the finished recovered files. The intention to burn as efficiently spacewise as much as i can to the optical media I have to make room. Aside from problem boot drive am sorta just enough free space on all drives and partitions that diskeeper goes not complain. So have a couple copies of alot of stuff, plus rar archives of.

After the HD corruption and long tedious and still ongoing recovery, am loath to delete anything till sfaely backed up to optical media, but with these crashes am paranoid to even burn anything, worried a crash/shutdown could corrupt one or more drives, Though could pull the power on all but the boot, but tis a pain, and I wanna figure out what the hades is going on, but am stumped.

I am thinking may be the Seagate SATA boot drive is defective, am not gonna experiment with the gaming drive as well have heavily modded Morrowind GOTY install..data file is oh 7gb and took ages to get all the mods to work togther, a heavily modded Oblivion install, a modded out NWN 1 install with a bunch of community mods in various stages of completion, and some other games...have attention issues so bop around alot from game to game, mod to mod, and disabled, largely stuck in the apt on a fixed income...so if not is the media drive, that leaves the mobo..using the gaming drive as a guinea pig is just not an option heheh.

I really need to peg the exact issue, as don't have the funds really to just keep buying parts and seeing if, or to pay UPS or Fedex to pickup the HD or Mobo for rma if either is not the issue..blew off my meds, doctor, balanced diet, to snag the new PSU, and had been doing that over the past few months to build my gaming/media comp..already outdated sniff. And to build each of my sons a comp. I can't risk such anymore with the depression, ptsd, etc..things can get pretty dangerous for one's continued existence lol. Sides the boys call from time to time for counsel, and would like to see the oldest make union electrician, apprenticeship strats Sept I think if he gets in, and the younger achieve his goal of fireman/emt..bout midway through the college courses, and starts riding in an ambulance this Sept.for the emt portion..wanna claw along long nuff to at least see 'em achieve their goals and know they are standing on their own and on their way :)

Prime95 is just going into the 7th pass..no shutowns..... so either the mb nfoce sata controller 01, 02. Think 03, 04 run off a diff chip, PHY or something? may not work as have no nforce raid drivers installed and raid disabled in bios, or the seagate? A Sata cable maybe, though have tried a couple diff ones..and are pricey when ya gotta order online and pay shipping.

So lads and lassies, what should i do next to nail the culprit..is there a better HD diagnostic free or full feature trial than seatools to eliminate the drive, how would I eliminate the mb w/o having to buy another drive, rma it etc...

And sorry for being so yakkity, hopefully, more entertaining than annoying..being the prior sorta loon, is better than being of the latter stripe :) just head gets full, tangents, been off me meds, and being stuck in the crib 24/7 don't help much lol.

Thanks Much in advance

[halutzparilla]

first let me welcome you if i havn't ... second that reminded me of my bad old days with my p3 800mhz comp...
hear is what in my mind right now:
1. Possibility of hardware incompatibility (check mobo, ram, and all drivers for compatibility issues)
2. there is some loose screws somewhere in there... (yup sometimes no matter how exp we are, we tend to forget some loose lever/sccrews/drivers, that needed to be attached properly)
3. if not the two above... someone else can think of a soltn in here...

and btw why you use too much partition? why not use one disk as a system and the other for storage, if i read your post correct, you got three HDD?!?

good luck on your problems...

[gvblake22]

WOW, lots of data loss and recovery goin' on here!
I would check the temperatures of the rest of your system and make sure things are all in check (primarily your chipset temperatures). Sometimes there is a monitoring utility that comes with the motherboard. If not, you can always gently touch the chipset heatsink with your finger (make sure you discharge yourself on a doorknob or something first to avoid static shock). If it is finger melting hot and you can't touch it for more than a few seconds before you want to scream, then I would look into getting a better chipset cooler or adding another case fan in that area to help with cooling.

[Elysium]

Haha, or get a GeminII..................





(I'm not a fanboi!!)

[Quakindude]

I understand all of your frustrations and concerns. I also sympathize with you. Having said that, I'm not going to read through all of your concerns about about your MP3's and so on.

If you want detailed help, please list your symptoms and errors without all the other info. Not trying to be a jerk or anything bro, but there aren't many folks with the patience to read through all of that and come out with a clear idea of your issues. So far, the biggest thing I've gotten out of it, from skimming, is sudden power off problems.

[simple_inhibition]

are you having system start up issues as well? does it turn on with no problems, or does it sometimes not turn on, or start for a second and then turn off?

[lkgadv]

Sorry 'bout that, my longwinded shite.. :) So here goes attempting to be short and concise w/o tangents.

Yes system was just shutting down, bsods like 4-5 weeks back. NTFS errors turned up in the event log, though not always. Zeroed, reformatted fresh install...fine for a bit, then started acting up again.

Thought aging TT Pure Power 22amp +12 rail, most likely. So just recently replaced with pc-power cooling silencer 610 49amp +12v it is just powering the board, drives, fans, been using a TT 250w dedicated GPU drivebay PSU for the HIS X1950Pro. with both psu's

I reset the cpu HS, when I changed out psu units. Also zeroed drive again, reformatted and started fresh., fine for a bit then shutdowns again. Between prime95 and memtest determined had a flaking pair of Crucial Ballistix modules..rma'd replacements due on Monday. Thought that had to be it, zeroed drive, started fresh again, but had a shut down while batch testing some 70gb of rar files with winrar. Restarted, and tested the rars in smaller batches..encountered shut down after oh 10 mins of that. Was not monitoring NB temps, did not have speedfan installed, or knew which temp reading was the NB if I had.

Ran 30 passes of memtest on the remaining gig of ballistix mem, no errors. Ran prime95 on each core for over 12 hours w/o a hitch. Coretemp logged no higher than 55c on the cpu cores during that time, ambient temp has been like 39-40c here the last few days think safe to say not a cpu or memory problem.

Finally figured which reading in speed fan was reporting the northbridge. With ambient of 40c cores idle at 39-41c or so, the NB been 46c pretty steady idling. Now I have some data to move off the boot drives 2nd partion, b4 really stressing the NB, but just searching and testing a couple rar's to see if speedfan could read the NB and which temp reading it be, she went up to 48c.

The HD's are all well within specified temp ranges, middle of operating temp specification at hottest usually. The sata boot, and ide with my dedicated swap/page fat32 partion are in aluminum racks, with internal cooling. The other two drives are cooled by a 120mm fan, (Cooler Master Stacker STC-101 Case) also another 120mm front intake, 85cfm 80mm side panel intake, though side panel is off atm, so overall system cooling probably not an issue, ambient temp might go up 1c with panel on if that..from what I have noticed in the past.

Forgot to mention ran seatools on the boot drive first 2nd time I wiped/zeroed because of this problem, reported no issues, is only like 3-4 months old, is a ST3250623NS SATA 1, should that matter.

All this time thought was installing required sata drivers at f6, learned nope is the nforce storage driver everyone has complained about. Have no idea if could be 'hind this issue? Good results with the version 6.95 in Squall's 11.15 unified remix I hear.

Seems narrowed to the nforce storage driver, NB temp or a flaky mb and or hd? All I can deduce anyway, So seeking counsel from those who know way more than me..how best to proceed with troubleshooting

@connections etc..first thing checked, and tripled checked when assembling, with my mucked up brain chemistry triple checking a must haha, am still amazed i have never spaced the thermal coumpound lol.

@startup/boot question: nope she boots up fine, did shut down after a few hours sitting doing nothing, when this issue 1st appeared a few weeks ago, has not done that since, probably the bad mem modules there, psu perhaps, but has been replaced. Have had the stall in the boot screens a couple times,but seems that is just a epox quirk or so have read, and has happned maybe 2-3x in the approx year have been using the board.

Quakingdude, am the bloke who had the housefire, talked a bit when the community held the raffle for you, asked if you knew Charlie and his wife Angie, who were stationed there when the Tornado hit. I can yakkity, typy..due to relocating to where I know no one after the fire, well my friend here she checked by her own hand a couple years back, and have been pretty much apt. bound for that long..so yup can talk other humans' ears of, or text their eyes blind when the opportunity presents itself...again sorry 'bout that, Companero.

Hope the rebuilding is going well, and the Insurance Company has not been trying to mess ya 'round.

[Quakindude]

My situation at home is going very well thank you. Can't complain at all. Will make an update post about it here soon.

It isn't long winded shite bro. I just need it compressed and to the point. In my forums experience, if you take more than 10 lines to describe your problems, you will get very little help.

I would like to ensure the maximum amount of help is obtained for you.

As to your problem, it sounds a LOT like a corrupted mobo chipset driver issue. Whatever copy of it you have, trash it and download the newest set.

I assume you're using Windows XP. You need to have at least SP1 to use these chipset drivers. That mobo of yours is based on the very long in the tooth Nforce3 chipset. Download the chipset drivers from here.

If you have Win 2000, get them here.

No matter what Epox has on its website for drivers, use the ones supplied by Nvidia.

If that doesn't work, you may have a grounding problem. Have you recently done anything physically to the guts of the computer just prior to these problems occurring?

[lkgadv]

Glad to hear things are going smoothly post disaster.

(Driver packages on hand at the end of the post, have read the nf 4 ide/sata/storage drivers supposed to work great with nf 3, good reports on Squall' unified remixes also)

Ok as for the drivers, may have used the floppy from the 5.10 package at f6, for some reason often when I use the driver floopy I made, later is unreadable. But looking at the version numbers between 5.10 & 5.11, the IDE/SATA, SMbus, and GART Drivers look 2b the same.

I always go right to nividia, ati etc..for drivers, when learned needed to flash the bios on this Epox, went straight there for the lastest utility, in fact the cd that came with the board was broken out for the first time yesterday for the monitoring utilty to see if would report the northbridge.

Anyhoo, here is what I am running :
IDE/SATA: 5.10.2600.446 assume .446=4.46? 6/3/2004
PCI System Manaement (SMbus): 4.5.7.0 6/8/2006 (9.35 remix)
AGP Host to PCI Bridge (GART): 4.4.0.0 4/27/2004 (9.35 remix)

I am running XP Home SP2 fully updated, have yet to update the DX to the June 2007 release. Need some clarification, especially because installed the same Epox board in my younger son's rig, he uses for home studio recording, and plays Oblivion and Morrowind (lotsa drive accessing ging on there)...can't recall which floppy I used for him at f6, if is a corrupt driver well he may be calling soon, so need to be clear to walk him through over the phone.

My actual XP install disc if SP1, but have slipstreamed SP2 and is what I used, this last fresh install. Questions follow:

With SP2
1) No need for driver install at f6 unless raid drivers are needed (son nor I use raid, and raid is disabled in our MB's bios), the storage driver listed below raid driver here is in fact the ide driver that many have had issues with and skip when installing the chipset drivers system will see sata drives, and drives larger than 137Gb, after installation finishes and boots into windows?

a)The native nforce chip storage controller is recognized by SP2, system will run with the Default MS Drivers? (was uncertain so installed the nvidia storage driver @ f6)

Do need or want to bother with nvidia storage drivers at all?

2) Do not need to reinstall Windows XP SP2, to uninstall/update the Storage, GART and SMBus drivers, just remove via add/remove programs?

Will run both driver sweeper and driver cleaner pro 2b sure they have been obliterated.

3) Suspect because the storage drivers were installed at f6, will have to uninstall via device manager prior to running any driver cleaning applications?

@ Northbridge temps, so my temps here are fine? idles around 45-46c with ambient temps of 39-40c, has gone as high as 58c batch testing some 70gb or rar files.

Here is something interesting, I disconnected the power to all hd's except the Boot SATA, so as to avoid corruption should things go awry. Batch testing all 70+ GBs of rar files on the second partition twice, not a hitch, max NB temp 55C, this shut down the system day of my OP. I did not notice in course of scoping things...indexing was enabled in drive properties on the boot drive's second partition, so turned it off, and indexing is one of the first services I disable after installing XP, connected to the problem perhaps?

Now am also wondeing if maybe one of the other drives using the NB chip might be getty wonky and causing a problem, even though they were not being accessed? well the Hitatchi Deskstar Master ide, has a dedicated swap/page file partition as the first partition.., the maxtor slave is just a storage drive, and was not being accessed during the shutdowns.

In process of downloading Hitachi's HD Diagnostic, read somewhere will work on all makes of drives, and some consider it superior to segates, wd's and maxtors diagnostic utilities, have those on hand already Any third party HD diagnostics that may prove useful in finding the shutdown gremlin?

The WD SATA (used as the destination drive, for the recovery after that nasty hd corruption awhile back, is on a Vantec UGT-200 PCI SATA Host Card.

The external 500 gb (segate) in a Galaxy METAL GEAR 3507UEP-Black enclosure, also powered down, but connects via 1394 and the MB's VIA 1394 chip.

These were also disconnected when made it through the massive rar batch tests, whether on/off are these in the equation at all?

@"you may have a grounding problem". Have you recently done anything physically to the guts of the computer just prior to these problems

Should be no issue, did pull the MB to redo the cpu heatsink when I changed PSU's, all the MB mount holes were used, so s/b no needed ground to chassis missing there.

The wiring is out of date in this apt., outlets not grounded...but did ground myself..using heavy duty extension cable..to the ground of an industrial grade ac six outlet extension deal...to the heating system steam pipe..feeds from landlord's house underground to the rental units, best I can do, also have a backup/surge unit with AVR 'tween the comps and the ac outlet.

Driver Packages On Hand:

5.10

* Audio driver 4.42 (WHQL)
* Audio utilities 4.44
* Ethernet driver 4.42 (WHQL)
* GART driver 4.36 (WHQL)
* Memory controller driver 3.38 (WHQL)
* SMBus driver 4.04 (WHQL)
* Installer 4.46
* IDE NVIDIA driver 4.46 (WHQL)

5.11

# Audio driver version 4.42 (WHQL)
# Audio utility version 4.44
# Win2K ethernet driver version 4.16 (WHQL)
# WinXP ethernet driver version 4.16 (WHQL)
# Ethernet NRM driver version 4.82 (WHQL)
# Network management tools version 4.88
# GART driver version 4.36 (WHQL)
# Memory controller driver version 3.38 (WHQL)
# SMBus driver version 4.04 (WHQL)
# Installer version 4.46
# IDE driver version 4.46 (WHQL)

nForce4/500 series - Windows 2000/XP .

* Audio Driver (v4.65) "WHQL"
* Audio Utility (v4.51)
* Ethernet Driver (v50.25) "WHQL"
* Network Management Tools (v50.19)
* SMBus Driver (v4.57) "WHQL"
* Installer (v4.89)
* WinXP IDE SataRAID Driver (v6.66) "WHQL"
* WinXP IDE SataIDE Driver (v6.66) "WHQL"
* WinXP RAIDTOOL Application (v6.63)

REMIXES: (Squall's)

nForce 9.35 Unified Remix (x32)

Audio driver version 4.65 (custom whql)
Audio utility version 4.51
Ethernet PreNRM driver 4.71 nforce2 (stable beta)(fixes throughput bsod)
Ethernet NRM driver version 60.15 nforce 3/4 (customised beta)
Network management tools version 60.18
GART driver 4.40 (stable beta)
Memory controller driver 4.40 (stable beta)
SMBus driver version 4.57 (WHQL)
Installer version 5.10
SATA RAID driver version 6.67 (customised WHQL)
IDE driver version 6.67 (nforce 2,3 and 4) (customised WHQL)
RAIDTOOL application version 6.73

Nforce Unified Remix 11.15

Audio driver version 4.66 (custom vista driver)
Audio utility version 4.51
Ethernet PreNRM driver 5.38 nforce2/3 with prenrm (new leaked beta)(stable, fixes throughput and device uninstal bsod)
Ethernet NRM driver version 60.24 nforce 3/4/5/6 and maybe 7 (customised WHQL)
Network management tools version 60.26
Network test utility version 5.38 (leaked PreNRM build - also came with NRM 5.38 but left NRM 60.24 as its compatible)
GART driver 4.40 (stable beta)
Memory controller driver 4.40 (stable beta)
SMBus driver version 4.60 (modified Vista WHQL)
SMU driver 1.23 (for vista) - no mainboards have come out which require this.. but they might soon
Installer version 5.40
SATA RAID driver version 6.95 (customised WHQL)
IDE driver version 6.95 (nforce 2,3,4,5,6 and in the future 7) (customised WHQL)
RAIDTOOL application version 6.95 (Win2k)(MediaShield)
RAIDTOOL application version 6.95 (WinXP)(Sedona)

[lkgadv]

Well outta frustration, oblterated the Windows Install, fresh intall now off a sliptreamed SP2 disc. So the question regarding sata drivers at f6 with SP2 has been answered. Nope not needed. EDIT: 7/11 1:48 PM CST SMBus driver needed, or else get system disk boot error, once a ide hd is brought online :)

Edit Again: SMBus driver utilzed from squall's unified remix 11.15 4.60 (modified Vista WHQL)
rather than the official 5.11 SMBus driver version 4.04 (WHQL)

No windows updates, nforce installs yet except SMBus needed to get ide drives going running with the MS storage drivers, am batch testing the 70gb of rars on the boot drives 2nd partition, see if will still shutdown.

All the past travails, in posts above that were probably too long, even when I stuck to the meat of things.

So am starting over, with assistance hopefully, starting from a fresh install, can keep replies short, as won't be explaining what has been done, tried etc..no more novellas haha.

Worried the MB may need to be rma'd, but may of be something else..just unsure how to proceed with a step by step to rule the mb out.

Hopefully will be alot easier with a Virgin XP SP2 install..my posts/replies much shorter at anyrate.

The creative x-fi is not currently installed, nor the graphics drivers,Nforce GART, Storage Linksys network adapter drivers.

Virgin XP Home SP1 with SP2 slipstreamed into it.
Thanks everyne for you patience and input thus far