SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - OT: Help needed,my system becomes unstable

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Quote:

Originally Posted by porphy

Hi Sky

I'm no expert in these matters, but don't you think it sounds as if when you cold start the comp, your PSU is not up to it. When the components in it get warm, it stabilizes and runs fine and therefore cope with full load use. This also fits with the behaviour that it restarts just fine after some use.
HDD failures usally go with clicking sound and the drives spinning, but you don't seem to get that and the HDD should show problems when working, not only at boot I guess. I still think your PSU is dying, but perhaps a slow death. Not a heartattack like mine. ;) But it's hard to know for sure without changing parts around, it sounds as if you will have solved the puzzle soon though.
You could take the PSU to the shop and let them measure the output. I did that to be sure it was the psu that had gone out. Connecting a new PSU is'nt that hard as long you have documentation on your motherboard layout. From this you can figure it out, no doubt. Just check if the connector to motherboard is ATX 2.0, most PSU have a adapter if you run a older motherboard. The ppl in the shop should sort that out for you.

Good thought, I think that is a realistic possebility. Now that you say it I remember that some weeks ago the fan in the PSU did made some kind of noise. I needed to repeatedly shake it a bit in order to get it running smoothly again. Since it has not come back, I forgot about it completely.

I keep that one in mind, thanks.

I recalled the type of PSU wrong, anyway. It is no 350W, but a 420W device. I think I mixed it up with the PSU in my former system.

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/2139/img07938xa.jpg

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skybird

I have no battery backup. the talk above was only about that small Lithium cell that motherboards are used to be equipped with. We also have absolutely stable power lines over here, no blinking, no blackouts or brownouts, nothing.

1. That battery doesn't matter. You can even run computers without that battery, but you'll probably have to reset the time and other BIOS settings on every cold boot.

2. You mean you do not have any obvious instability. That you cannot easily see the instability doesn't mean there are no brief errors, or slow fluctuations. (i.e. errors that occur to fast or to slow to be obvious without measuring equipment)

3. It is possible for a power supply circuit to be more stable at high load than at low load. But I have never worked on any PC switching PSU, and there must be many different designs out there, so it's impossible to say if this would be the case for your system, and I don't know if there is a type of damage that will cause such instability when a PSU in good condition would not fail.

That's a very clean CPU case for someone who runs a tower fan in the rear.

I have to clean my entire case at least once a month or every two months, I always wanted to switch to liquid cooling just to be able to weld shut my case and stop any dust from getting in but the entire liquid system is too much of a hassle and the risk far too great.

Do you put air-filters in your tower fan or do you live in a negative-pressure vacuum sealed enviroment?

No, i just clean it regularly and take care when doing so. When you run an open tower and put a vent near to it, you really need to have an eye on the dust level :)

Hi Sky,

I was wondering if you could post a dxdiag file and your complete systems specs?

It might help to see what the OS is saying about your computer.

Sounds like you should be good on the PSU capacity. Whether or not its operating w/in specs would only be guessable if your motherboard has SM bus and monitoring utlility can function.

I don't think cooling is suspect either, considering the open case. However, open case does present the potential for ESD. Do you have an animal in the house? Electro static discharge (ESD) can wack components so schell wie einnen Blitz und Tod Schlag. Most technicians work with wrist straps. However, this is not absolutely necessary if one grounds themselves by touching the chassis (with PSU still plugged into mains) prior to disconnecting unit from mains and touching any components withing system (and being very carefull while working on the system no to suffle feet on carpet). Touching running water stream from faucet is also good way to ground oneself (do this if you have to walk away from workaread and system is apart). Only handle board components by holding board at PCB edges (do not touch surface mounted components). Its o.k. to touch anything inside box while its running provided one drains any accumulated charge before so doing by touching the chassis first (PSU must be plugged into mains for this to be effective though). Never remove/insert anything from system board while its plugged in (or running).

All identical shaped plugs coming from PSU should have identical rated power specs. Although a bad contact within some connectors could be at fault.

Do you have a HDD utility, such as Norton Disk Doctor? I'd run it (or the Windows equivalent scandisk) and see if it finds any major problems.

Your problem strikes me as electrical, in that morning sickness seems to be the main problem. Also, at idle computer components may cool sufficiently to break contact.

Disconnect each and every component from motherboard and reconnect/reinsert (component connections can get loose over time).
Run disk scan utility
disconnect unit from mains, remove CMOS battery, replace CMOS battery 5 minutes later, reconnect PSU to mains
run memory test utility
reflash BIOS (after initial flash, be sure to load default configuration, and then configure with system specific configuration). You could check to see if a more recent BIOS version is available and flash that, but I've seen flakey system problems disappear by merely reflashing the very same original BIOS. Why would a BIOS flash go bad? Uh, ESD? Dunno. Happens. I recently had my system unplugged from mains for three days. When I plugged it back in all sorts of strange issue cropped up during boot. After much head scrathing I figured the system was 6 years old, so I ran out and bought a new CMOS battery. That helped enourmously, but ultimately also had to reflash the BIOS before all the bugs got shaken out.
If all that fails to pinpoint/resolve the problem, I'd strongly suspect failure of a controller on the motherboard.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skybird

I recalled the type of PSU wrong, anyway. It is no 350W, but a 420W device. I think I mixed it up with the PSU in my former system.

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/2139/img07938xa.jpg

Notice it only has 15 Amps on the +12 - not good.

I have 42 amps on quad 12 volt rails.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skybird

Thanks to all.

However, you cannot explain why the system so far is stable when being under full working load, both CPU and graphics card. It should be then when too instabile power supply shows the most obvious, since then the demand is the highest, CPU, graphics, RAM, and sound.

I now have the symptom - currently the only one - that when I started the system yesterdy and today morning, the LED indicating HD activity is on for 1.5 - 2 minutes, while the screen remains pitchblack and nothing happens, the monitor even switches back to standby mode. Then, all of a sudden, booting begins, monitor goes on, with the Windows loading screen, without displaying the usual BIOS screens. When I switch off immediately after that, and try to reboot, it is the same. However, when the system has run let'S say an hour or so, for longer time, and components are a bit warm, rebooting is done in the usual way, and reliable, and fast. Booting a really cold system= long time, rebooting a warm system (including power switchoff)= short loading time. I also have an old graphics board inserted now, which ran fine since 1.5 years, and before that in an older system. So far no effect from that change. I will put the new card back in, and run it and the fan with a separate AC from an old system for some days.

but somehow I have a feeling now that it neither is overheating, nor power supply. I just came back from town minutes agho, and have asked in the store where I bought the components and let them built the tower. The guys there are both freindly and good on their matter. They said that due to the circumstances of having a stable system even when maximum instability should be expected (full working load), the AC probably is not the problem (as long as it has no erratically appearing problem with broken internal hardware). And according to my description of how the system it set up (open, ventilator), overheating would be a surprise to be the cause of problems. Remains: motherboard problem, RAM problem, HD problem, soundcard problem (the latter I do not take seriously into account).

My tip is the harddrive now, the thing was very hot two days ago (it used to be cold, since it get's it'S share from the ventilator, and directly), at one, as described somewhere above. I could imagine that it received some kind of damage from that. But overall heat problems I cannot imagine to be the source of problems, the tower simply is too open and receives too much fresh air from a separate ventilator.
Will exchange the HD sometime this weekend, and let the system running all day for the time being.

I have no battery backup. the talk above was only about that small Lithium cell that motherboards are used to be equipped with. We also have absolutely stable power lines over here, no blinking, no blackouts or brownouts, nothing.

Never have built a system by hand myself, only decided on components, and let other do it. I can chnage a sound or graphics board or RAM bars, but a motherboard and all cables and AC - still quite impresses me.

Assuming I try a new AC - and I will not invest that money as long as it is not safe to say it is the AC causing the problem - could I trust in that if connecting connectors really matches by form, that the according device really gets the voltage and ampere it needs, then? Or do different power supplies in those many cables of a AC nevertheless sometimes have the same plugs?

One more thing here - my mother in laws system started experincing similar things as you type here. The HD LED would just come on and hang the system forever, but it would eventually come back in her case. This again was a PSU issue, but was a Shuttle if you know what that is. Replaced the PSU with same model - fixed all the issues and works fine. PSU's go bad over time.

-S

PS. Run Seatools to see how the HD is operating. You can find it on Seagates site. If it reports everything is OK (like it did with my mother in laws system since I also thought bad HD) then it is not your HD.

PPS. Windows XP is very resilient to cracshing in circumstances like this by the way.