Going crazy with customer computer. WTF could this be
primesuspect
Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
This system has been one of those "curses"... It has been in my shop like 5 times. Each time, something was shot. PSU, two bad hard drives, new motherboard, etc. You name it.
The customer is a very close friend, so he's understanding, but this is pushing my limits of sanity as well.
It's back in the shop. Windows will suddenly crash with "unknown hard error"... Then, when you reboot it, SOMETIMES the BIOS is reset to defaults. Sometimes it isn't.
SOMETIMES, when you turn it on, it won't get past the IDE detection, other times it just flies on by and boots up no problemo.
CMOS battery you think, right? No. I replaced the CMOS battery with a known good one and it still does it.
PSU is brand new. Motherboard is brand new. Mobo is a Soyo DRAGON ultra platinum edition. PSU is an Antec SL400.
I admit that it seems like the mobo. However, the poor guy JUST BOUGHT a mobo for it three months ago (this soyo) and I hate to have to tell him to buy another one. Any other ideas?
The customer is a very close friend, so he's understanding, but this is pushing my limits of sanity as well.
It's back in the shop. Windows will suddenly crash with "unknown hard error"... Then, when you reboot it, SOMETIMES the BIOS is reset to defaults. Sometimes it isn't.
SOMETIMES, when you turn it on, it won't get past the IDE detection, other times it just flies on by and boots up no problemo.
CMOS battery you think, right? No. I replaced the CMOS battery with a known good one and it still does it.
PSU is brand new. Motherboard is brand new. Mobo is a Soyo DRAGON ultra platinum edition. PSU is an Antec SL400.
I admit that it seems like the mobo. However, the poor guy JUST BOUGHT a mobo for it three months ago (this soyo) and I hate to have to tell him to buy another one. Any other ideas?
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Comments
fortunately, I happen to have an almost identical mobo laying around... I'll give it a shot. fsck.
... grr..
some 40% is owned by PC CHIPS for gods sake lol
grabbed a meter and the wall current was fluctuating wildly between 80 and 140. But even on something less extreme I have seen copiers and big lasers drag down a outlet for example when they hit their warmup cycle or a space heater under someones desk etc... Or some big appliance cycleing on...that would pull down the current enough that stuff was not blacking out but browning out. It just dipped enough that things would run hot or out of spec. Thats why I now run everything in my house off huge Tripp-Lite voltage regulators. They are cheap as heck and I love them to death.
Just another weird possibility.
Tex
Who'd your friend cheese off anyways? Some geek Voodoo high priestess?
Seriously though I'd suspect that either they've got the computer plugged into a socket that has loose wires, a bad ground (intermittent) or they've got service problems like Tex suggested and if that's not it get that case in to an exorcist soon.
I do not plug machines straight into walls. Too much bad stuff there.
My hunch is either mobo or hdd. You have run memtest right?
In either case it could easily be related to bad power.
Tex, could we get some linkage for the Tripp-Lites you referred to?
Like this one.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=32830&item=5722314312&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW
They are not UPS's but 90 percent of the UPS's don't stabilize voltages they just look for a drop big enough to switch to battery backup. These handle minor blips like if the lights blink for a second but they lock the output voltage perfectly and it never varies.
I have a 1800 and a 1000 that I power all my hardware to the racks into. Only robs computer is to far away and I should buy one more for her really. I think I paid like 20 bucks for the little one and 40 bucks for the big one. But a 1800 watt will power a good bit of crap. Maybe I'm just on a lucky roll but I quit buying Antec and enermax PSU's and been buying big cheap 550 or 600 watt ones and since I switched to the regulaters over two years ago I have not had even a cheap psu fail either. I burned through two 100 buck antecs and two 100 buck enermaxs in teh previosu year.. I think it realy helps your psu's to get good clean power and despite what most people think a UPS usually does not do that. The expensive ones will because your basicaly always convert the wall power to battery and back so it it comes out clean that way but a normal UPS doesnt do much for stabilizing the wall power. It just tries to jump to battery fast enough that you don't crash if the power drops low enough. A $200 ups doesnt help much at all usualy for a power problem unless your losing all power.
Tex
However, i am also in the boat of people who think it's a bad mobo. soyo sucks...and so does there rma policy.....i had a soyo p3 mobo that worked perfectly until i switched it into another case and then it died mysteriously and nothing was heard from it ever again...
tex---good idea on the voltage regulators! i never thought of that, i always thought a ups was sufficient....
Board default was 2.5
I bumped the voltage to 2.6 - rock solid.
It doesn't even make sense for it to only be providing 2.5 with all 3 slots populated!