Computer Crashes During File Transfers
Leonardo
Wake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, Alaska Icrontian
Not sure if the title describes the problem appropriately, but it's the best I can muster. I am currently slowly working up a CPU overclock on System No. 1, signature below. Experimenting yesterday I had the clock up to about 3200MHz (2400 is default) with everything seemingly stable at full load. Temperatures were high - 65C for the hottest core, but did not seem to inhibiting anything. During this time the DRAM was not overclocked and was set in the middle of its min-max voltage range. I was running two instances of Folding@Home Win SMP, had a couple Firefox browser windows open, email (Outlook) going, and Windows Explorer opened. In the background were running Core Temp, AVG, SpeedFan, and CPU Z.
The stability ended when I attempted to copy a 120MB file (Open Office 2.3 installation .exe) from the computer to another computer on the home network - from my wireless to the router to an ethernet connected computer. The file transferred about 50% and then the screen froze. It could be the operation continued even the screen froze - no action, mouse curser would not respond. Ctrl-alt-Del would not bring the Task Manager up. All the computer fans were running, motherboard LED was lighted, and the hard drives were still apparently spinning. About 20 seconds later the monitor screen went black, but fans, LED, and HDDs seemed still be in normal operation. The computer would not respond to any input, except a hard shutdown. The four-second shutoff time lapse with the off button worked just as it was supposed to.
I rebooted and tried the file transfer again, this time with F@H off and hardware monitors and AVG off as well. Core temperatures were well within accepted limits by any standard and all voltages were at good levels. The same freeze followed by a black screen happened again.
I then rebooted at default CPU speed and the file transfer worked without a hitch.
What might be the problem? I think I determined that it was not heat induced, nor due to overstressing of the PSU: problem occurred even when the computer was close to an idle state with most background stuff turned off, with the CPU and north bridge relatively cool. RAM was never stressed at all during these incidents.
What are some troubleshooting steps I could take? Is it possible the old problems of PCI slot allocation is coming into play? I remember with Abit boards in 99 and 2000 we sometimes had to move PCI cards around to avoid hardware conflicts. Could this still be the case? Presently in this system the expansion cards are as followed: PCI-e video card (Quadro FX 3400 - only moderate power draw), Linksys wireless G card, Rosewill 2-port IDE adaptor w/one PATA hard drive attached. A two port USB bracket is in one of the slots, but the case slot only, as it's connected to a motherboard header.
Could the IDE adapter be causing problems? Should I move the CD/DVD drive to the adapter and put the hard drive on the single IDE motherboard slot?
Should I try all the above?
The stability ended when I attempted to copy a 120MB file (Open Office 2.3 installation .exe) from the computer to another computer on the home network - from my wireless to the router to an ethernet connected computer. The file transferred about 50% and then the screen froze. It could be the operation continued even the screen froze - no action, mouse curser would not respond. Ctrl-alt-Del would not bring the Task Manager up. All the computer fans were running, motherboard LED was lighted, and the hard drives were still apparently spinning. About 20 seconds later the monitor screen went black, but fans, LED, and HDDs seemed still be in normal operation. The computer would not respond to any input, except a hard shutdown. The four-second shutoff time lapse with the off button worked just as it was supposed to.
I rebooted and tried the file transfer again, this time with F@H off and hardware monitors and AVG off as well. Core temperatures were well within accepted limits by any standard and all voltages were at good levels. The same freeze followed by a black screen happened again.
I then rebooted at default CPU speed and the file transfer worked without a hitch.
What might be the problem? I think I determined that it was not heat induced, nor due to overstressing of the PSU: problem occurred even when the computer was close to an idle state with most background stuff turned off, with the CPU and north bridge relatively cool. RAM was never stressed at all during these incidents.
What are some troubleshooting steps I could take? Is it possible the old problems of PCI slot allocation is coming into play? I remember with Abit boards in 99 and 2000 we sometimes had to move PCI cards around to avoid hardware conflicts. Could this still be the case? Presently in this system the expansion cards are as followed: PCI-e video card (Quadro FX 3400 - only moderate power draw), Linksys wireless G card, Rosewill 2-port IDE adaptor w/one PATA hard drive attached. A two port USB bracket is in one of the slots, but the case slot only, as it's connected to a motherboard header.
Could the IDE adapter be causing problems? Should I move the CD/DVD drive to the adapter and put the hard drive on the single IDE motherboard slot?
Should I try all the above?
0
Comments
PCI-e bus was locked at 100 unless I experimented.
I cannot find a PCI bus field anywhere in the BIOS. Either I'm blind or it's not there. If it's not hardware locked and there's no way to manually adjust it, that's truly not good. I've always kept my Asus 775 boards' PCI buses locked at 33.
I'm thinking the file transfer-associated freezes/crashes are due to a faulty wireless G card. And here are the troubleshooting steps I took, none of which prevented the file transfer from crashing:
*- DDR kept at stock or lower freqs at SPD during all of this
- boosted PCI-e
- lowered PCI-e
boosted and lowered all mobo voltage settings available: northbridge, south bridge, vCore, vCPU VTT, PCI-e, and CPU GTLRef.
- identical wireless card in another - compared settings and they were the same; file transfer test on other machine worked perfectly
- moved wireless to different PCI slot
- tested file transfer from the second hard drive in the computer to the same destination computers
- removed the PCI-IDE card from the computer
The only thing that seemed to make a difference was boosting the northbridge and PCI-e voltages. The file transfer would still crash, just at 50-75MB later in the transfer.
* The same DRAM allowed a 1200MHz, rock solid stable overclock in it's previous use with a P5WD2 and Pentium D915. I don't think the RAM is faulty, but I admit, I've not run diagnostics on it.
Might not be a solution, but more a diagnostic way. Can you temporarily cable that pc instead of wireless it to the router and see if the filetransfer works?
All your HDDs are ventilated fine, right?
This has got to be a bad motherboard. I'm calling the vendor tomorrow for an exchange (Newegg).
To answer some good questions: the hard drives are very well cooled, each one sitting in front of a 120mm fan (Antec 900 with two 120mm intakes).
Voltages in BIOS are excellent. In Windows, they are very good too.
Mr. Swede, yes, I did test with a Cat 5 cable. Flawless file transfers, unlimited size.
OK, here are other troubleshooting steps and experiments I made, NONE of which fixed the problem:
- reinstalled wireless card drivers
- removed card, installed card from machine that was working perfectly
- removed that card, installed USB wireless adaptor
- uninstalled all IDE, SATA, and add-in PCI-IDE devices, controllers...essentially anything that was possible to uninstall that was motherboard associated, then reinstalled all of it, to include the Intel chipset
- BIOS update
- installed drivers from motherboard CD and fresh ones from Abit's site
- Windows update just in case (no hardware updates)
- performed a WinXP repair installation
To repeat, NONE of the above made any difference.
All of that activity was performed with the clock at default, and voltages only boosted for DRAM.
I have now noticed other problems. If I don't set the PCIE frequency at 105, the screen will flicker every now and then. My monitor and video card are in full working order. They are not causing that. Not only over the network, but there was a crash today also when copying driver files from a CD to the hard drive! There was also a crash copying BIOS files to a floppy! This is nuts.
Oh, did I mention, I also reconfigured the entire system with a spare PSU that I know to be in good working order? That didn't change anything. I could go on and on...
It's time to admit defeat and ask the Egg for an exchange.
Any last minute suggestions before I call for an RMA number?
Calling for RMA today.
Swede, just to clarify, the board's instability (at any clock) cannot be attributed to the home network any more. I've just found too many other instabilities. The system even crashes moving files between local disks, even from HDD to floppy! Besides, two other computers, one with an identical wireless G card, play perfect nice-nice with the router.
There is one other troubleshooting step I'll try tonight - a brand spanking new Corsair 620W PSU. If this doesn't fix the stability, it is definitely a bad motherboard. (but anyways, I'll certainly keep the Corsair! yippee)
Swede & RyanOCZ. I would have loved to have purchased an OCZ PSU, but no one here stocks them, not even CompUSA. This was a rush purchase - no time to wait for an online order.
As it is right now, I have to boost both the south bridge and north bridge voltage almost to maximum to make the computer usable, even at default CPU frequency! I've never had such a headache with any motherboard before.
If it turns out to be me my power supply (made by Seasonic, BTW), I'll give my apologies to Abit in this thread.
Looks like I'll take Newegg up on the RMA, but after this experience I just want a refund, no exchange. Besides, my Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 Rev. 2 is supposed to arrive tomorrow. The new board, the Corsair PSU, and the Q6600 should get along fine. Ought to be a fun weekend. Wish me luck.
Hey, you'll pretty much have my setup now!
Let me know if you end up having drive problems like I am, haha. I reinstalled Vista and I think it's still happening, but I haven't gotten enough time to test it yet. I'm not sure it's the board's fault either, so any input you have will be helpful. Other than this problem, the board's fantastic and OCs like a champ. You should enjoy it.
The IP35-E was definitely the culprit. I'm using all the same hardware (of course, the only exception being the mobo) without a hitch.
MJ, you've got a private message.