New monster system = monster headache / help is required

I

INFINITE

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 22, 2004
Messages
189
Hello all,

My system:

Lian Li Silver Aluminum ATX Full Tower Case With Transparent Side Panel, Model "PC-75" -RETAIL
ASUS "P5AD2-E Premium" i925XE Chipset Motherboard For Intel LGA 775 CPU -RETAIL
Intel LGA775 Pentium 4 550 3.4 GHz, 800MHz FSB, 1MB L2 Cache, Hyper Threading Technology - Retail
2 - 1gb sticks of OCZ Platinum Enhanced Bandwidth Revision 2 Limited Edition 240-Pin 1GB DDR2 PC2-4200 - Retail
Mitsumi Black 1.44MB 3.5inch Floppy Disk Drive, Model D359M3D/D359M3B, OEM
4 - Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive, Model WD360GD, OEM Drive Only
Plextor 16X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW SATA Drive, Model PX-716SA/SW, Retail
eVGA nVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT Video Card, 256MB GDDR3, 256-Bit, Dual DVI/TV-Out, PCI-Express, Model "256-P2-N376-AX" -RETAIL
PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 510 Express/SLI PSU

Ok now the problem. I have the four drives setup as RAID 10. Everything seems fine and dandy within the raid controller setup / bios. Boot off my Windows XP sp2 professional cd, I hit "S" to specify third party RAID driver, pop in the disk I made from the motherboard disk for the SiI SATA RAID controller. That seems to install fine. The system continues to copy files, you can see the drive light flash. Then once the files are copied the system is about to load windows and flip to the splash screen. However, before it does that it blue screens BSOD and gives me that ambiguious error about "did you recently install any hardware or hard drive..." blah blah blah. Regardless of installing the SiI RAID driver this happens.

The only thing I can think of that I haven't tried yet...is formatting each drive individually before creating the RAID. Would that really make any difference though?

Thanks everyone in advance. I would sincerely appreciate any help regarding this. I'm itching to start gaming!

-Jason
 
First. Have you run Memtest86 to check for memory errors.
It the first thing I aways run on a new system before trying to install Windoze.

Second. Try running WD's data lifeguard diagnostic.
From this you can check that all your drives are ok and also do a "zero fill" format to wipe then clean.


Luck.......:D
 
Tigerbiten said:
First. Have you run Memtest86 to check for memory errors.
Click to expand...
Memory would be my guess also
If its not, when your at the partition selection screen during install, can you create and delete partitions ok? If not look for problems with the drives or the controller,
 
Thanks for the advice. I'll look for memtest and give it a run thru the paces.

In regards to the partitioning, it won't even get that far. I get the first basic windows install screen where it copies / caches files and then before the next screen when it should ask for drive, path, patition info it BSOD's.

Also, does it matter which banks these chips are installed? I read in the manual it mentions keep like pairs in the same banks. I installed both 1gb chips into the farthest left two slots (nearest the cpu)...which were labeled slots 0 and 1 respectively in the manual.
 
Well I was excited to try these diags when I got home. First time I fired it up today and it wouldn't detect the SATA CDROM for whatever reason. So I double check the settings in the bios and the PC just powers off by itself. WTF?

I attempt to power it back on and much to my disappointment the box won't even post now :(

I unplugged everything, took the board out, took the processor out, ensured everything was plugged in and screwed down securely. Unplugged the power and data for all the drives and cdrom.

No beeps, nothing.

Took the memory out and powered it on and it'll give me an error beep sequence for that. So I'm thinking the processor is toast. I never even attempted to overclock this thing yet. I'm positive the heatsink was on securely too because I checked the temp several times when it was at least posting. CPU temp never went over 125F / 55C.

Anyone else want to agree / disagree with me on this problem being with the cpu? Or perhaps a bad mobo?

Damn this is VERY disappointing...especially after dropping all this coin.
 
I know what it feels like when the new toys dont work :mad: I do know your pain
Usually, if its a fried CPU you wont get any beeps at all ever.
You said it beeped at you after you took out the memory, but still had the CPU in, correct?
So I'd bet the processor is just fine and I'd suspect that memory big time now.
It sounds like you doing correct trouble shooting, disconnect everything add things back in one at a time.
Keep going- Try different memory.
If you dont have any or can borrow any, try just one stick of memory you have, try it in each slot, try the other stick and so on....
Good luck !
 
I don't know about the ASUS P5AD2-E Premium but for my ABIT AA8XE if you have 2 sticks of ram you put it in the 1st and the 3rd slot because it is DDR2. Might want to check in your manual. Just food for thought.
 
maybe try updating the bios for the board, this happened on a raidless setup i had a few months back.
 
Thanks again for the posts.

I have the rest of the week off work so I have some time to really sit and think about this.

Yes, when I got it to beep, I had the cpu installed and video card but nothing else (no memory, no drives connected etc.)

This morning I cleared the CMOS it posted ONCE. I immediately hit DEL to get into the BIOS, but once it reached the detecting IDE drives screen I got flashing cursor and NOTHING again. It would not post again after that.

I'm going to try just one stick of memory, one then the other. Hopefully worst case scenario just one of them is bad.

I also have a tech call into Asus.

Regarding flashing the BIOS...I know there is a newer BIOS out there, but I can't even get this thing to post long enough for me to flash it.

Sad part is, since this is my first new system in quite some time I have no spare parts (that are up to date) to swap out and try to narrow down the possibilities.
 
OOOOOOH PRAISE GOD!

I got it to post! Took both sticks of memory out and powered it on to ensure it would still give me the error beeps and it did.

Put one stick back in the yellow slot nearest the cpu and it posted and I got into the BIOS again.

So I'm running that memtest program mentioned earlier here from the ISO bootable cdrom image I got from their site.

Now the true test, if it passes, will it load windows or not o_O
 
TADA

Installed one stick, ran memtest for 9hrs, passed over and over.

Uninstalled that stick and installed the other in the same slot, locked up the moment memtest came up on the screen.

RMA in progess now at newegg.

With the good stick in, it installed XP just fine.

Just a shame, with the price of OCZ's memory every stick should be tested before it goes out the door.

Thanks everyone, especially regarding memtest.
 
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