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Had a power outage, help

N

nsfx

n00b
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
38
Over the weekend, my area had a series of power outages. I wasn't home during these outages, but I was told that the electricity turned on and off about 10 or 15 times throughout the day.

When I came home, my machines seemed okay and I was initially relieved. However, after using my newest (and most expensive) machine for about an hour, it hard locked (unable to move mouse) and I had to do a cold restart. When I rebooted, it wasn't able to find a primary SATA drive. Suspecting a bad SATA port, I switched the HDD to use another slot, and it worked fine. For the sake of curiosity, I moved the HDD back to the original slot (SATA 1), and it magically worked again. Weird. Before booting back into the o.s., I decided to run memtest, which immediately found a bad address. I let it run for 20 minutes or so and it raised over a hundred flags on this single memory address.

Fortunately it seems that OCZ will RMA the DIMMs without a hassle, but the weird SATA issue has me worried about my motherboard (an ASUS P5E). Does this sound like a possible motherboard issue? Unfortunately I don't have any other machines that will accept this type of RAM (PC6400), but is it at all likely that a faulty motherboard is causing memtest to report errors in RAM falsely? Any recommended diagnostic tests I can run, etc? Also would like to hear some recommendations on how to prevent this from happening in the first place. (I'm currently using an APC surge protector.)

Thank you!
 
that is odd. i wouldn't suspect any damage when being hooked up to an APC surge protector. old or new? warranty may pay for RAM or mobo. in any case... were you oc'ing? how new is your recent build? possible the outages were a coincidence?
 
Surge Protector protects from over voltage, not from power outages. The worst kind are when the power turns off and on quickly, that can destroy your equipment much easier.
You should be running an APC UPS.
 
Sounds like your Ram or motherboard is faulty which can cause the problems you saw.
Dont worry until you get the new ram as until you can test further, its not possible to know if it is fixed or has more faults.
 
Thanks guys. Hopefully the new RAM will pass in memtest. I'm also considering getting a UPS at this point.
 
"Surge Protector protects from over voltage, not from power outages. The worst kind are when the power turns off and on quickly, that can destroy your equipment much easier.
You should be running an APC UPS."

Yes it's a very good time to buy a UPS this time of year with lightning and brownouts.
 
What do you guys recommend in terms of specs for UPSes? I took a quick look through the sticky, but I'm completely lost and don't know where to start. Any information would be nice.
 
I have run 1250VA Battery backups, but of late I went to a Tripp-Lite LC 2400 Line Conditioner that I picked up at Buy.com,(220 bones earlier in the year). It is rated 2400 watts Continuous if hooked up to a 20amp outlet/breaker etc of which it is. I like it much better than what I used to use.

Larry
 
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