ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe AMD Athlon 64 CPU NVidia 7600 GT Video Card 1 x 40 GB WD IDE HDD (Operating System) 1 x 320 GB SeaGate SATA HDD (Storage) 2 x 1GB sticks of Corsair RAM Antec NEO HE550 PSU Windows XP SP2 My computer is having some major issues. Over the past 6 months to a year I've had random problems with it... Blue screen of death, CMOS errors, can't detect hdd with operating system, freezing. Sometimes it stays black after the Windows Loading screen for 15 minutes before loading. Most recently, I reinstalled XP again; everything seemed to be fine. Next day, monitor turned off after 20 min (setup this way), but then would not come back. It kept saying no video or something like that. The lights on mobo were green and fans were spinning. I checked monitor connection in back and it was fine. Had to hard reset, but it came back on with the delay after Windows Loading screen. It also freezes up completely (can't move mouse pointer or anything) when just running something as simple as Firefox. In task manager, CPU Usage is at 100% a lot of the time when these problems arise. -I've run memTest (Passed 7 times with no errors, running both sticks together and each on its own) -Hot CPU Tester passed with no problems -Everest for 12 hours and Prime95 for 8 hours back to back (No errors) -Tested all hdd using the diagnostic tools from their websites -Changed CMOS battery -Tested with a different PSU (No change) -Tested voltage on original PSU (all within range) -Checked mobo for any broken or oozing parts (nothing found) Any ideas?...Thank you.
If you have a spare PCI audio card, try using that instead of the onboard audio. Bad onboard audio will cause the cpu to be at 100 percent with no other programs running. It happened to me before. Since you reinstalled windows, your problem is definite hardware related. Windows xp is usually very reliable. You can isolate a driver problem by trying to bootup with a linux livecd and see if you have any problems under the linux environment. Next maybe try a different vga card and lan card. Also try disconnecting the sata drive and see if that has an effect. I've encounter problems where a sata drive would cause my computer to hang/crash. Make sure your IDE drive is set as master (not cable select) and not connected to another master drive. You can try doing a chkdsk c: /f on the boot drive. A corrupt drive will sometimes still bootup but be very sluggish. Worst case scenario the motherboard could be bad, but usually you would get input/output errors and a bad motherboard usually won't let you reinstall windows because of read errors.
I will give some of those a try... About your last comment regarding the motherboard, I did have some problems installing XP. It would just finish installing, but then on the first automatic restart I would get a bsod and have to start over. I would also get error messages during the part where setup was coping files. They would be errors such as "driver.cab could not be copied, skip or retry". If skipped, another would come up, then another. Finally, after a few tries at reinstalling it worked. Now I'm here...
Okay, I haven't been able to get another video or audio card to try yet, but I did try and disconnect the SATA drive. First this happened though... Yesterday I had a lot of problems with it freezing...more than usual. -It would freeze if I tried to burn a DIVX disc (it just would never get passed "preparing to burn") -It would freeze when I was extracting a file with WinRAR (would start and after a min freeze). When I say freeze on these occasions I could still move the mouse and get into task manager but I couldn't open anything else. Ending a process in task manager wouldn't work either. Also, it wasn't showing up to 100% usage like it did before, it was within normal ranges even with the freezing issues. So I did the manual reset and it wouldn't load...just get passed the windows logo screen and stay black. I tried with three different sticks of ram with same problem. I then disconnected the SATA drive, leaving only the IDE hdd with the OS on it and it loaded fine. So that can pretty much rule out the RAM right? Since it didn't work with any of 3 sticks and they all passed memTEst...?
try another sata port on the motherboard to see if still does it. also try that drive in another pc to see if it is the drive or sata controller on motherboard that is causing the problem.
I tried another SATA port and the PC still won't load unless the SATA drive is disconnected. I also tried loading LINUX, but that also wouldn't load unless the SATA drive was disconnected. I would get this error in LINUX with the SATA drive connected: Searching for puppy files in computer disk drives...DONE CPU 0: Machine check exception on: 0000000000000004 CPU 0: Bank 4: 3200000000070F0F Kernal Panic - Not syncing: CPU context corrupted Linux loaded fine with just IDE hdd attached. I also tried hooking the SATA hdd up to another PC which I just installed windows on.(Syntac s651 MOBO, 512 MB RAM, onboard video, Intel P4) I hooked it up to a PCI to SATA vt6421 card. This computer wouldn't load windows either with the SATA drive attached except for one time. If I load the OS and then attach the drive it will show up in "My computer" but when you try to get into it, it says: E:\ is not accessible. The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. I ran SeaGate diagnostics with this drive and it passed with flying colors, but it appears like it is something with the drive. The only thing in common with the two PCs is WinXP and both have the OS on an IDE drive. The SeaGate SATA is a storage device. Could it just be a conflict between an IDE drive and a SATA drive and that's causing all these problems? Thank you for the help...
as long as boot sequence has ide as boot drive then there is a problem with the sata drive itself. have you tried another sata cable?
I tried a couple more sata cables...still same problem. I was able to somehow get the computer started with the drive attached. I ran SeaGate Tools again to see what it would say...it passed all the tests a month ago. This time it failed all the tests, so it's definitely the hdd. It's still under warranty so that's nice... I have another WD hdd that just went bad a month or so before the SeaGate. It failed the WD diagnostics...Is there something that could be causing my harddrives to fail, such as other hardware, or am I just one of those unlucky people that lose two harddrives at the same time?
The WD was sata too. Actually, yes they were on the same port SATA1. The WD had the OS and was on SATA1 and the Seagate was storage on SATA2. When the WD went bad I hooked up a backup IDE hdd and used for OS and connected the Seagate into SATA1. And the Seagate passed all the diagnostic tests when it was still in SATA2, before I switched it. So what does that mean? I don't really know too much about motherboards...is the sata controller bad and that is killing my hdd's? Does that mean it's time for a new mobo? Thank you for all the help.
motherboard might be bad as 2 different makes of hd's have gone bad in same port. when get replacement drive, stick it into sata2 not sata1 to see what happens. had a problem with a customer's computer that ended up was bad sata controller tho did no damage to sata drives at all. board just went off of warranty when i finally found the problem. replaced sata hd with ide & no problem since.
