EVGA 780i: Wierd RED Alien text on POST

cybereality

[H]F Junkie
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Mar 22, 2008
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I am having some serious issues with my EVGA 780i mainboard. I can only get past the POST one out of ten times and when it fails it does so in a slightly different manner each time. Usually on the last SATA drive the text will be garbled random alien characters (different each time) but this one time the text came out red, which I have never seen before:



Once it gets that messed up text it will hang on that screen for a long time. Usually it will never continue but maybe one out of three times it will pass that screen after about a 60 second wait except then it will hang on the loading windows screen and never actually boot up. If I keep trying eventually it will POST up normally. The strange part is that if I can actually get into Vista (like I said, 10% of the time) then the computer is totally fine. Everything works, I can play DVDs/CDs on both drives, watch HD videos, play music, play demanding games like Crysis while recording with FRAPS, etc. If I leave the computer on it will be fine for a day or two at a time, and then just randomly freeze (and I have to reboot 10 times to get back it). Really annoying. Is the board just fried? What should I do?
 
Have you tried running one stick of memory at a time? Run memtest on each?

Theres a possibility it could be your RAM or your BIOS. I would recommend testing your system memory before i suggest a BIOS update.
 
Have you tried running one stick of memory at a time? Run memtest on each?

I did run memtest, but only with one of my sticks. I should try with each individually. I also had another problem (maybe related) where the BIOS would only recognize 2GB of 4GB of RAM. I swapped the sticks around and basically one of the slots would not work at all. So if I used the other set of slots then both RAM sticks would be recognized.

Theres a possibility it could be your RAM or your BIOS. I would recommend testing your system memory before i suggest a BIOS update.
Too late for that, I already flashed to the latest version P08 and that didn't seem to help at all.
 
The picture helps. Normally when you see that it indicates an issue with that specific device. Usually the drive is bad. (Be it an optical or hard disk drive.)
 
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Good ol' NVIDIA chipsets. Unfortunately, that board probably killed your RAM, is dead, or both.

Maybe I'm just unlucky, but out of 3 EVGA boards I've owned, all 3 have failed spectacularly. I trust EVGA but not NV's chipsets.
 
I had the same problem, sometimes still do when text goes little crazy like this and sometimes drives wont post in BIOS loadup. For me, its bc the SATA connection for my DVD-RW drives is loose. So i wingle the cable to fix it, I just have to get new cabling but too lazy, doesnt happen all the time - just here and there. Hope this helps.
 
yes, its definitely one of the drives, prob the one with the alien text. the cable is cocked, or drive is dying. unplug, then boot.
 
yes, its definitely one of the drives, prob the one with the alien text. the cable is cocked, or drive is dying. unplug, then boot.

this, if there is a drive on that sata port check it's connection, if its connected then disconnect it and see if you boot ok.
 
Ok, so I just unplugged the SATA cable going into my second DVD drive (the one with the weird text). After I did this everything appears to be working fine. I have rebooted at least 10 times and every time it has got through the POST and into Vista no problem. Just to be safe I ran memtest86 with all 4GB and it completed without an error. Hopefully its just that cheap $30 burner that broke and not my mobo.
 
why did people think this was a ram problem?

Cause if all of us knew the right anser all the time the forums would have 3 people as members and I would not be one of them.

But I kinda see your point, video card was my first thought until I saw the screen shot. Was still thinking about it when the drive was mentioned and knew right off that was probably the cause but I had not thought of it yet. Ram would have been down on the list. I think we all just try to be helpful even if taking a shot in the dark.
 
from the pic the only thing that doesnt look normal is sata4. everything else looks fine.
 
why did people think this was a ram problem?

Well the picture helps. Without that his description on the problem was rather vague. Now it makes sense. It looks like whatever is connected to SATA 4 is probably bad. I'd reseat the cables first, then try a new SATA cable and if it still doesn't work, disconnect the device. (Assuming it isn't critical.)
 
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