Strange problem.

[RMF]

Hi guys,

Lately i have been having a very strange problem with my pc which i can't figure out at all. The problem started somewhere around a month ago when a friend of mine gave me a copy of windows xp with sp1 which was different to the old xp pro i used that didn't have sp1 included so i'm not sure if the problem is related to that or not.

Basically what happens is that after a fresh install everything works perfectly for about a day or 2, and then everything starts to go downhill. It usually starts with my DVD burner slowing down during burns and generally fucking up my dvd's. It will start burning normally, but as the disc gets on a little bit the timer will stop and the bruning process slows right down to what seems like even slower than 1x. It's usually not long after this happens that my internet explorer stops working properly. My drop down address list will not open and will crash IE, and the same happens if i try to open my favourites window.

Shortly after this happens, my dvd burner will not work at all anymore, IE won't open at all and my start menu fails to open aswell which can usually be rectified by rebooting my system, but only for a couple of minutes and then i can't open anything again :loco:

As i said at the begining of the post, a format of my C drive and a reinstall fixes all of these problems and it all works perfectly again for a little while...and then it happens all over again. I've also tested my burner for a few days in my girlfriends machine and it works without any problems whatsoever thankfully so it can't be that, thats causing the problem.

I think that today i'll go back to installing my old version of XP to see if it helps, but any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance to anyone who responds.


System:
Asus A7V333 MOBO
XP 3000+ CPU
768MB CORSAIR XMS PC2700
RADEON 9800 PRO
WD800JB SE HDD
WD1200JB SE HDD
PIONEER A06 DVD +/- RW
LITEON DVD ROM

[kryyst]

Sounds like a mest up cd though as to the exact problem hard to say. I'd go back to your old version for sure.

[Cyclonite]

I have a legit copy of WinXP with SP1 and for some reason when I install it, all drives detect as SCSI. This prevents Nero from working with my burner, as it attempts to run some sort of SCSI command and screws up at about 11%.

I went back to my old copy of WinXP and installed SP1 afterward and it's fine, but I don't know why it did that.

Just thought I'd say I had some issues with WinXP with SP1 streamlined as well. Sorry I couldn't help you. :)

[RMF]

I have a legit copy of WinXP with SP1 and for some reason when I install it, all drives detect as SCSI. This prevents Nero from working with my burner, as it attempts to run some sort of SCSI command and screws up at about 11%.

I went back to my old copy of WinXP and installed SP1 afterward and it's fine, but I don't know why it did that.

Just thought I'd say I had some issues with WinXP with SP1 streamlined as well. Sorry I couldn't help you. :)Thanks for the input guys. I'm now running on my old version of xp after formatting this morning, so now i guess it's just a matter of waiting to see if the same problem developes again, although i think it should be alright now.

[RMF]

Well guys the problem i had all those months ago has come back again. After my last post the problem returned a couple of days later, so i took my DVD burner back to the shop and it was replaced with a Pioneer 107 which seemed to work fine again, but a couple of weeks ago my new burner started doing the same thing as the old one. In any burning program that i might be using, the countdown timer will stop moving when burning a DVD but my % will go up very slowly in the taskbar, then the timer will start again and the burn will take more than twice as long as it should do to complete and will also result in data corruption on the dvd :(

I'm at the end of my tether with this problem now, especially as now i know that it isn't the burner itself but i just dont know what else it could be. I've tried switching my ide cables out, unplugging my dvd-rom drive the lot, but nothing has helped and the problem persists even after a reinstall of XP (which used to seem to fix it for a while). Any new ideas would be appreciated as at this point i have more coasters lying around from bad burns than i would like.


Thanks in advance to anyone who replies.

[citrixmeta]

have u tried changing IDE cables? are you using rounded cables? if so change them to regular cables for testing.

have you tried changing dvd media, the dvd media you are burning on might not be all that great?

[kryyst]

Is your only problem that the DVD burner is slowing down or is your whole system slowing down? Also are you getting your IE crashes and the other problems again?

What speed are you burning DVD's at it could be that you are trying to record them faster then your computer can handle it and it's causing buffer over run errors.

[RMF]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I've changed IDE cables and i don't use cheap media. Also my pc is well capable of burning at 8x and beyond as it's certainly no slouch. I've also been burning DVD's for 2 and a half years now with no problems untill this happened so it's got nothing to do with the speed of my HDD's or anything.

Everything else seems fine with my system. ATTO still reports read and write speeds of 40MB/sec + on all of my drives/partitions so thats not the problem.

Is it possible that it could be a faulty IDE channel on my motherboard? I still haven't tried connecting my burner up to my primary IDE, but i'll give that a go later on today when i've got time.

[citrixmeta]

well, i wouldnt say that.

have you done the following..

1- bios update on ur mobo
2- chipset driver update (via or Nvidia)
3- patched up the software being used to burn.

[RMF]

Yeah i did update my bios a while back, but i've since gone back to the previous revision to see if it would help, but unfortunately it didn't make any difference.

[kryyst]

you may want to do a ram(memory) test.

[RMF]

you may want to do a ram(memory) test.Ok mate, i ran memtest for a few hours and completed 3 passes. It did pick up 2 errors on the first pass but didn't pick them up on the 2nd or 3rd. I've attached an image of the errors so you can have a look at it as im clueless as to what it means.http://forums.livemotogp.com/uploads/post-7-1086446739.jpg

[RMF]

Sorry about the size of the pic.

[kryyst]

Could have just been a fluke that it failed on the first pass. Or there could actually be a problem. Try testing both sticks seperately and see what happens. It's a pain but it's all about the trouble shooting.

[RMF]

There are 3 sticks unfortunately, so testing them all individually in the hope that it picks up the same error again will be a pain in the ass...lol. I dont really have time to do it today, but i do have time to whip that piece of shit motherboard out and put na spare one i have in. So i think i'll give that a try instead.

[RMF]

Ok problem solved.

I put the burner along with the HDD i burn dvd's from into my girlfriends pc to test it out and everything i burned worked fine. Yesterday i went out and bought a new motherboard for my pc and now it works fine here aswell, so the problem must have been with my motherboard all along.

Thanks for the help anyway guys.

[kryyst]

well there you go. Probably some issue with the ide channel or a memmory bank causing data corruption at high usage.