Re: A8N-E locking up
- From: BC <bc@xxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 02:38:56 GMT
Steve Brazelton wrote:
About 2 months ago I assembled a PC for a friend with the following components:
A8N-E Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 1GB(2x512MB) Corsair VS PC3200 DDR memory. XFX 6600GT PCI-E video card NEC 2540A DVD drive WDC 74 GB Raptor 250 GB Seagate SATA drive Cooler Master case Cooler Master 400W Power Supply MS PS2 keyboard Kensington PS2 mouse Dell 17" LCD monitor.
About 10 days ago she called me saying that the system had begun locking up after the second BIOS screen and randomly in winXP. She brought me the system(sans monitor) and I ran Memtest86 for several passes and the respective extended hard disk diagnostic utilities. There were no errors. I then set the system into a 40 second reboot loop in WinXP and ran the system for 16 hours straight without any errors or lockups. I told her I didn't find anything wrong with the system and gave it back to her at her workplace. After running it for a couple hours she called me and said it was still locking up. She brought it back to work(she lives 50 miles away and works about 5 miles away) and I picked it up and again ran the test apps and ran the reboot loop overnight without any errors. I then took it to her workplace and set it up there. I put it into the XP reboot loop and told her to let it run until it locked up. Four hours later she called me and said "Come look". Sure enough the system had locked up. The second BIOS screen was still on the screen and the cursor was blinking in the botton left had corner. And it was completely locked up. Except for a different monitor everything else is the same. What the hell? Site specific errors?
Dear Steve,
bizarre.
Possibly: (?) the keyboard and/or mouse? You didn't mention if she had brought those in too--if you hooked up different ones, or, didn't use them, perhaps some sort of damaged mouse or keyboard cable? (Hate to admit it, but, my son's pet rat chewed on my mouse cable, which caused all sorts of weirdness....didn't lock PC up, but, got frustrating clicking on things, and having cursor fly around randomly....)
Monitor short? If I read your note correctly, sounds like you set it up at her workplace with a monitor different than the one she uses at home--again, some sort of cable issue? I can't believe how expensive DVI cables can be, so, I assume that they are somewhat complex inside....some sort of cable defect? Causes video card to 'crash', and, from that point on, no video output to give error reading, because video card is 'crashed'? (If that is correct, I am playing lotto tomorrow. Similar odds.)
You eliminated wall power as the problem by duplicating it at her work. Unlikely that a commercial building would have flaky grounds or voltage spikes/surges/dips. And, temperature problems: eliminated by your stress tests.
Must be mechanical, i.e. a cable, some connector, (lan cable connection shorting something out? Is she hooking it up correctly? Direct DSL/cable modem connection causing some out of spec voltage that stops boot? Has to be something external to the system you built (awesome, by the way) and, I would eliminate the cables one by one first--and, hook it up to a different monitor at home with the first cable, and, if it happens, use a different cable....
Also, wonder if she has it hooked up to a printer? Sounds like she is pretty computer savvy, having such a nice system, but, might be good to check all physical connections....
HTH,
BC .
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