Extremely ODD Issues after moving into new apartment. Please Help

D

digitalvynil

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 6, 2005
Messages
143
Hey guys,

I have probably the most rare problem with my computers I've ever had in my 10 years experience building them. I'm an IT Technician, and do computers for a living.

I've never seen anything so bazaar... please bare with me, I really need some of your expertise.

I've had a perfectly working computer that I built myself for the past 2 years

(SPECS)

Abit IP35
e2200 CPU
2GB crucial ballistix RAM
Nvidia 8800GT
Corsair 620hx
SBLive! Audigy Gamer
Windows XP SP3


All of a sudden, a month after I move into my new apartment, my computer starts getting random Data Corruption, and ODD Freezing within Windows. Windows will load, although it stutters even while reading websites.

In the system event viewer, I keep getting error event 11, 9, and 15. All problems relating to errors on the IDE and ATAPI Drives.

From there on, I've spent all of August and September (2 whole months daily) troubleshooting every part of my computer.

- Tried different RAM
- tried different Hard drive/ Sata Cables
- tried the computer with just bare essentials, outside of the case.
- new Bios
- re-seating the CPU


None of that fixed it.

I then borrowed my girlfriends computer... (an entirely different machine, running an old Athlon 64 setup)

Life was great, her computer was working perfectly....

A Week later, THE SAME PROBLEM! Event 9, 11, and 15 in the event viewer.

The computer is randomly freezing in windows (more like hiccups), sometimes it even gets stuck at the POST screen when loading the IDE/ATAPI Drives.

This is just bazaar... and I've come to believe now that it's a power problem in my new apartment. The house is over 100 years old, and the wall socket I'm using is not grounded. (It's only 2 prong, so I'm using a 3 to 2 prong adapter for my surge protector). My surge protector is also telling me the line is not grounded.

I went out and bought a Multimeter to test the voltage, and the lines tested at 125 volts. That seems normal right?

The only thing I can think of is that since the lines are not Grounded, this is causing it to short out the Sata component on both my motherboards? I hope that not the issue. I mean what are the chances it shorts out the same component on two completely different machines?

could switching to a different grounded wall socket get rid of the hiccups and odd behavior I'm experiencing? Or do you think this bad voltage/wiring has damaged my components for good.... Do you think I'll need to replace both motherboards now?

Sorry for the long read and endless amounts of questions, but I'm so frustrated with computers I just want to stop using them all together and get a netbook.

Please someone shine some light on this dark tunnel of Lanlord laziness.

:confused:


- Jordan
 
digitalvynil said:
Please someone shine some light on this dark tunnel of Lanlord laziness.

:confused:


- Jordan
Click to expand...

Its not laziness, it a financial decision. I moved into a house that was built in 1947, and to upgrade just the electrial will cost 20% of the cost of the house, if I did it they way it needs to be done. i cant do it right now, but it will get done.
 
Its not laziness, it a financial decision. I moved into a house that was built in 1947, and to upgrade just the electrial will cost 20% of the cost of the house, if I did it they way it needs to be done. i cant do it right now, but it will get done
Click to expand...

Ok.... thanks for the great advice?....


Anyone have anything useful unlike our friend gwarren007 here?
 
The grounding is the issue, as you have determined on your own. If there is an outlet with a proper ground, you should be able to move it to that outlet and have the issues go away.

Have you done permanent damage to the parts? Most likely, but likely, all you've done is shortened the life of the product, not necessarily killed it. The should be fine until you upgrade next.
 
To eliminate the issue of no ground.

Drive a ground rod and run a #12 awg copper wire to your surge supressor, tear it open and attach to the surge spressors internal ground (green wire) or replace the wall outlet with one with a ground screw and attach it there. You will likely need the owners permission and getting the wire into the building might be problematic depending on which floor you are on. However there are many ways this can be accomplished cheaply and fairly astethically neurtal. Any good building supply (Lowes Home Depot) will have what you need. Driving a good ground rod (6' or better) is a chore depending on soil conditions you may want a hand maul or sledgehammer too.
 
BillParrish said:
To eliminate the issue of no ground.

Drive a ground rod and run a #12 awg copper wire to your surge supressor, tear it open and attach to the surge spressors internal ground (green wire) or replace the wall outlet with one with a ground screw and attach it there. You will likely need the owners permission and getting the wire into the building might be problematic depending on which floor you are on. However there are many ways this can be accomplished cheaply and fairly astethically neurtal. Any good building supply (Lowes Home Depot) will have what you need. Driving a good ground rod (6' or better) is a chore depending on soil conditions you may want a hand maul or sledgehammer too.
Click to expand...

You COULD do that if you want to waste a lot of time and effort, or you could run the ground wire from a replacement outlet to the nearest cold water pipe (which should already be grounded - you need to make sure though). This is code approved BTW. My entire panel is grounded to incoming cold water lines......keep in mind states vary slightly on the code. I've got plenty of footage of lines in the ground to do the job......a drier climate/ short lines/ plastic sections/ and other issues will change the whole thing, but GENERALLY grounding to the cold line is fine - especially for one outlet.
 
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I was going to recommend the same thing as Monkey. When we were updating the wiring of an old house built in 1962 and changed the wall outlets from 2 to 3 prong, we grounded the outlets to a pipe used for the heating system (the house was water-heated), which was in turn grounded to the incoming water supply. It worked great only required minimal copper wiring since the heated pipe went to every room of the house already, and was up to code.
 
Actually that would be better both for grounding and ease of installation, Where where you guys yesterday ? :D
 
Wow! Thanks for all the great tips guys, really appreciate it.

As I'm not quite up to snuff with my wiring abilities, I'm thinking of running an extension cord from one of my outlets that is grounded. (of course the outlet under my computer desk has to be the select few that isn't grounded.)

What I'd like to know is, is there anyway using my multimeter to test the grounded outlet for 100% ground? I'd like to make sure the grounded outlet is actually grounded (and not just 3 pronged to look like one). What settings would i have to set it on?

I'll report back to you guys after I try my computers on a grounded outlet and let you know if the symptoms disappear or not.

I'm curious to hear from people out there if anyone else has had this same issue. Anyone have any stories about their computer acting wonky from being plugged in to an ungrounded outlet?

thanks guys!

- Digitalvynil
 
digitalvynil said:
What I'd like to know is, is there anyway using my multimeter to test the grounded outlet for 100% ground? I'd like to make sure the grounded outlet is actually grounded (and not just 3 pronged to look like one). What settings would i have to set it on?
Click to expand...

Check the voltage (set DMM to AC!) between a hot wire and the ground. It should be 120 VAC (or 230 VAC here in Europe :p ).
 
Red plug into slot small slot, black plug into ground... or vise vera?

Also, I've checked the voltage on my outlets, and there all a constant 125 volts. That's normal right?

- Digitalvynil
 
digitalvynil said:
Red plug into slot small slot, black plug into ground... or vise vera?

Also, I've checked the voltage on my outlets, and there all a constant 125 volts. That's normal right?

- Digitalvynil
Click to expand...

Red on hot, black on ground, yes. 125 VAC is normal for the US, Canada and various other places in the world :)
 
alright, update... I tried plugging my computer into a 3 prong grounded outlet using a heavy duty extension cord (says my surge protector, who knows how accurate that is though) and it's still a no go.

It took about 5 minutes just for windows to boot up. Now I'm really lost as to what to do next.

I'm thinking both my computers now have defective motherboards... I really hope not though.. I mean how could 2 completely different PC's both get the EXACT same problems?? (Event ID 9, 11, and 15). I really don't understand.

Kinda want to throw this thing out the window.. I'm sure all of you know what i mean :(

The next thing I'm going to try is bringing these computers to a different house where I know the power is good.

I'll report back.

P.S.. What retail store sells those little ground testers. The ones that are only abour 2 or 3" big?

- Digitalvynil
 
Kinda want to throw this thing out the window.. I'm sure all of you know what i mean
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I've only thought about the window throw thing before and I did do it with a live Christmas tree...but I'll bet it's costly and doesn't improve any situation. :)

I'd be trying one on an outlet that's not in your house...that's the next troubleshooting step.

Did you ever look at what the TS codes meant?

If this...
The computer is randomly freezing in windows (more like hiccups), sometimes it even gets stuck at the POST screen when loading the IDE/ATAPI Drives. ]
Click to expand...
actually trashed two machines, I'd be very suprised.
 
Well Hallelujah!!!! I FIXED IT!! :eek:


You'll never guess what it was....ready for this? The IDE Cable!

Here's what happened, (I know it's long but please read, I think you'll enjoy)

I took both computers to my folks house so I could test them using good power sources. Upon plugging them in, they still experienced the slow posting/ windows loading and constant HD accessing. It seemed the power wasn't the problem after all.

But then I noticed something on my main gaming machine... When I was using it at my current apartment with the ungrounded power.. It would ALWAYS freeze in the BIOS when monitoring the system health page (with all the voltages and temps).

However this problem went away at my parents house. The BIOS didn't crash once. So this leads me to believe the ungrounded power was affecting my computer after all... wouldn't you agree?

Finally, not completely happy with the results.. I tried one more thing... and this is where it gets interesting.

knowing that System events 9/11/15 were related to bad cables/hardware... In the past I removed the IDE cable from the 2 CD-ROM's themselves, but still left the other end of the cable plugged into the Motherboard.... This didn't fix anything before, so I figured the IDE cable wasn't the problem.

However, me being pretty much out of answers at this point with the good power still not fixing things... I figured what the hell, let me pull the IDE Cable off the motherboard and out of the PC completely.

Well wouldn't ya know! Both computers posted right up, and Windows loaded up in seconds...No more stuttering in windows, no more Errors in the system viewer... Fuckin A I fixed it!


Now for some questions to you all..

what I want to know is... How in the hell did bad power screw up my IDE cables on BOTH Machines? what are the chances of that....

Also, how would having the IDE cable plugged into the motherboard just hanging (not plugged into anything) cause major problems like that? So odd!

And finally, do you think the bad power just fried the IDE cables, or the actual IDE controllers on both machines? what an Odd problem... Perhaps the bad power went though the same rails on the power supplies that control the IDE controller? or perhaps IDE is old tech and the cables don't deal with bad electric current very well? who knows!!?


Thanks so much for your help guys! Now I can get on with my life. I think I'm getting that upgrade itch... scratch.. ATI 5850.. scratch ;)

:D
 
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IDE isn't self-terminated and generally it's a miracle the bloody thing even works unlike a SCSI-style setup with terminators and device IDs (a PITA, but it's designed to work). Having a loose IDE cable dangle around with only one side connected to the mainboard will make it act like a really bad RF receiver, messing up a lot of things. This is why the last connector on an IDE cable is called the 'master', as it at least terminates the end of the IDE cable and stops it from causing bad interference, echoes and such. The 'slave' connector in the center should therefore be used only after the master position has already been used for best results, though modern IDE devices have become less picky than in the past.

In short: be glad SATA is an option :p
 
Glad you got it figured out, but as someone else said, get a good UPS. That'll help "condition" the incoming power, moreso than some cheezy $10 "surge protector".

Our house is 100 years old, and the power lines coming in are also ancient. We get hit with power outages and surges umpteen times a year. When that happens, you definitely want the chance to be able to shut down properly without issue.
 
Cool!

Still, get your grounding together and instead of a new video card get a decent UPS. ;)
 
ok update #3.... After pulling out the IDE cables on both machines, I thought I had fixed the problem. As it turns out... I didn't completely fix the errors on my Gaming Machine. It's so odd though because It was working flawlessly for the entire weekend, I was playing games and everything... then all of a sudden the problems came back. (does that give a clue to what might be causing this?) I'm still getting laggy Windows operation (with system event errors "Driver detected an error on device harddisk 0"). This computer does however POST extremely fast now. (used to take almost 2-3 minutes)

My girlfriends old Athlon 64 PC works perfectly now though. No windows lag, no slow posts.. perfection (for now, and hopefully permanently).


Back to my Gaming machine.. Now that I have my computers hooked up to a grounded outlet (with a heavy duty extension cable) the power shouldn't be the problem. The only other thing I can think of, is that all these problems started happening around the same time I installed a rather large heatsink on my machine, the Xigmatek S1283 (but why would the Athlon 64 machine all of a sudden get the same problems, I didn't touch that machine at all... just thinking out loud).

The way I have the Xigmatek installed is by only using the Intel plastic push-pins. Is it possible this might be causing the motherboard to bend slightly... and this could be causing things to malfunction? or possibly it's not installed 100% correctly... my temps are fine (30 idle, 44 load) I bought the metal back-plate just recently, and plan on installing that next weekend when I have some time to take my whole machine apart.


lastly, you guys recommend getting a UPS or voltage Stabilizer?

Does a UPS do both the jobs (regulate and backup, or just backup?)

Here's what I was looking at:


Voltage Stabilizer:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842107125


UPS Backup:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842102032


To be honest, I don't really think I need a UPS.... and the Voltage Stabilizers are about half the price and much smaller in size. However, if you guys think a UPS is a MUCH better option I will go with a UPS. Most importantly I just want clean power going to my electronics.

If anyone has other ideas on voltage stabilizers or UPS, and know of better deals/brands.... please let me know.

thanks for your time people! It's very appreciated.

- Digitalvynil
 
For UPSs I always go with APC. Their UPSs have both backup and regulation and the warranty is quite good. Definitely a safe bet.
 
To be honest, I don't really think I need a UPS....
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Most don't until they realize that little 5 sec blackout just fried my PS/MB/whatever. ;)

I'm not sure how long that UPS in your link will last with or without your monitor but maybe someone else can do a few quick calculations.

There are UPS fanboys the same as anything else but they're all the same to me and I believe I've owned every consumer brand. :)

Look for something on sale or get refurbs.

I haven't gotten a bad refurb yet!
 
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