Need help troubleshooting SFF PC
adarryl
No Man Stands So Tall As When He Stoops To Help a Child. Icrontian
I am troubleshooting a SFF PC that is experiencing occasional disk boot failures, hard lockups requiring reset and occasional failure to detect the SATA drive during POST. Here are the specs:
· Ultra Microfly SFF case w 430 watt T-Take power supply
· MSI K8NGM2-L 939 motherboard
· AMD X2 Opteron 180 Denmark
· 2 X 512 Corsair XMS PC3200 DDR
· Seagate 80G SATA2 HD
· EVGA 7950GT PCIe video card
· Lite-On DVD-CDRW combo drive + Sony FD
· Win XP Home Ed. SP3
Memtest 86+ shows no errors with RAM, SeaTools shows no errors or faults with the hard drive, and power supply tests good with my Zalman tester. Video card temps are comfortable at 50-55 degrees. CPU is running at 38-45 degrees depending on load.
Once or twice the BIOS failed to detect or show the SATA HD so I replaced the SATA cable. Hard freezes continue anyway. The sys might run fine for a half hour or longer gaming then hard freeze just surfing the web. At other times it just might not boot with DISK BOOT FAILURE listed during POST. I am running out of ideas here. This pc has run flawlessly until just a couple of days ago. No newly installed hardware or software.
Any help appreciated. THX!
· Ultra Microfly SFF case w 430 watt T-Take power supply
· MSI K8NGM2-L 939 motherboard
· AMD X2 Opteron 180 Denmark
· 2 X 512 Corsair XMS PC3200 DDR
· Seagate 80G SATA2 HD
· EVGA 7950GT PCIe video card
· Lite-On DVD-CDRW combo drive + Sony FD
· Win XP Home Ed. SP3
Memtest 86+ shows no errors with RAM, SeaTools shows no errors or faults with the hard drive, and power supply tests good with my Zalman tester. Video card temps are comfortable at 50-55 degrees. CPU is running at 38-45 degrees depending on load.
Once or twice the BIOS failed to detect or show the SATA HD so I replaced the SATA cable. Hard freezes continue anyway. The sys might run fine for a half hour or longer gaming then hard freeze just surfing the web. At other times it just might not boot with DISK BOOT FAILURE listed during POST. I am running out of ideas here. This pc has run flawlessly until just a couple of days ago. No newly installed hardware or software.
Any help appreciated. THX!
0
Comments
Run Checkdisk on C:\ partition. Ensure to check both boxes: "Automatically fix..." and "Scan for and attempt recovery..." Odds are that will fix the problems your computer is currently experiencing.
430w, assuming its a decent quality unit, is just fine for a system with that configuration. I should even have power to spare. If he had a quad core CPU overclocked with a 4870X2 or two 8800GTs in SLI, then yes, he'd need a more powerful PSU.
The Windows XP Checkdisk utility and tool is very good. It has rescued several of my systems on more than one occasion form unexplainable problems, including boot issues.
And to Buddy J, I am using the stock heatpipe cooler that came with the Opty. It idles at 36 and hits 38-45 depending on load.
Thanks to all for your replies!