Going crazy with customer computer. WTF could this be

primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
edited October 2004 in Hardware
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?

Comments

  • edited September 2004
    Could RMA the mobo.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    Soyo does have a rather tarnished name. It's a second tier manufacturer for a reason.
  • ClutchClutch North Carolina New
    edited September 2004
    Brian I know you hate to hear it but I would go with the motherboard being bad, and since it is a Soyo, that makes me think it's the motherboard even more. I would see if you can RMA that puppy for him. Do you have a motherboard you can swap out as a test?
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    damnit

    fortunately, I happen to have an almost identical mobo laying around... I'll give it a shot. fsck.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    If the swapped mobo works well, maybe you should just let him keep it. You could order a new BIOS from BadFlash.com and re-use the mobo for some other project. Of course, I'd give RMA a chance.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    The thing is, I just RMA'd a damn soyo - it had bad caps and they actually charged me for it! (it being my fault that they used penny-pinching, defective caps, of course)
    ... grr..
  • ClutchClutch North Carolina New
    edited September 2004
    I have been there Brian. Ego had a Soyo motherboard about 3 years ago that was dead, I tried to RMA it for him and they tried to charge me for it, bad business in my book. Needless to say I didn't pay to have it RMA'd.
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited September 2004
    Thrax wrote:
    Soyo does have a rather tarnished name. It's a second tier manufacturer for a reason.

    some 40% is owned by PC CHIPS for gods sake lol
  • MediaManMediaMan Powered by loose parts.
    edited September 2004
    I would say that it would be the motherboard. All signs in the magic 8 ball point to yes.
  • EMTEMT Seattle, WA Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    Could be the hard disk. I had a Quantum in its slow dying throes a couple years back, it gave me Unknown Hard Error pretty often till I RMAed.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited September 2004
    Something to consider, not that it helps you now but often when you see a repeated pattern of failures even if its differant parts there could be something in his environment thats causing the faulures. The electric company lost a big transformer near my house and over the course of about three weeks I fried like 4 systems in my house. One wasnt mine either. Was going nuts with broken stuff everywhere and my neighber was over and he was having some strange probs with two tv's and Robin pops toast in the toaster and the lights dimmed in the house. Went Oh Sheet.

    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
  • edited September 2004
    Personally I think his case is cursed, yes...cursed. If you think about it you've replaced just about everything else and it still eats parts and the only thing that hasn't been changed is the case.
    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. :D
  • edited September 2004
    Since it is a Soyo board, I'll have to go with that being the most likely culprit too but Tex does have a very valid point about the power at his house. If it's all over the place and not steady, it could very well be frying components. Swap the mobo out and also have your friend invest in a meter and monitor the voltages where he plugs his computer in for a while too, to make sure that his problems aren't also electrical in nature too.
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    No meter, just a beefy UPS.
    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.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    I agree with the guys above. The most likely immediate culprit is the motherboard. But the most likely culprit for the string of mechanical failures is bad power. Is your customer/friend using a good UPS that does power regulation too, or just a power-strip?

    Tex, could we get some linkage for the Tripp-Lites you referred to?
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited September 2004
    I buy Tripp-lite voltage regulaters on eBay.

    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
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    Thanks, Tex! :thumbsup:
  • rykoryko new york
    edited September 2004
    I feel that the customer needs to check his house/apartment for bad wiring and wierd voltages or a bad circuit breaker box....there are just too many things that have failed for it to be all coincidence.

    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....
  • JustinJustin Atlanta
    edited September 2004
    I think I'll be looking into that, I lose power all the time and 'twould be nice to see some regulation...
  • edited September 2004
    i know how u feel..i am also a technician. i see my customer pc just get wierd problems. he had bring his pc along here about 6 times. i test his board, its ok and all the way down to everything. except one the power supply. it just get odds problems. u try to install a new power suply and see. and make sure the ide cable is totally function. the harddisk is free of virus.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    Well guys, it turned out to be RAM voltage. I was using board defaults. All three slots are populated with kingston valueram 512mb modules for a total of 1.5gb.

    Board default was 2.5

    I bumped the voltage to 2.6 - rock solid. :-/
  • edited October 2004
    Glad you figured it out, Brian. I would have never thought of that though as I always set my ram voltage higher than 2.5 because some mobos undervolt the ram, especially when multiple ram slots are being used. I usually set them at 2.7v myself.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    Well guys, it turned out to be RAM voltage. I was using board defaults. All three slots are populated with kingston valueram 512mb modules for a total of 1.5gb.

    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!
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