Odd Problem

M

mellotron

n00b
Joined
Dec 27, 2007
Messages
19
To begin, I've had the same problem occur in both windows and while attempting to install linux so I believe this to either be a firmware or hardware problem.

Now as to the problem itself. Nothing to the system has been modified since I built it two months ago and this problem just appeared today. Randomly, usually 1-20 minutes after the system has been powered up the system will freeze, my dvd-rw drive will make a clicking noise with the LED blinking momentarily. Also my display goes black for about 20 seconds and then the system will reboot itself.

My system specs are as follows:

Antec 500W Earthwatts PSU
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R v2.0
Core 2 Quad Q6600 rev G0
OCZ 2x1GB Reaper HPC PC-6400 Ram
eVGA 8800GT
WD 500GB SATA II
WD 160GB ATA133 (Pulled from old system ~ 2 years old)
Lite-On 16x DVD-RW (PATA) (Pulled from old system ~ 2 years old)

Now since my dvd burner was making a clicking noise I've unplugged the 160GB HDD and the burner as they are on the same channel and so far I've been able to make this post without the machine making a repeat performance. My initial thoughts were the ram but memtest86+ v1.7 did two passes without an error so I'm pretty sure the ram is good. I am also currently testing the CPU by running Prime95 and this seems to be going fairly well (30 mins without error, its not much but hopeful).
If this is indeed the hard drive/burner/IDE controller that's misbehaving, what could cause such unusual symptoms?

Thanks in advance.
 
A hard drive in need of repair/replacement, a faulty DVD drive, a faulty IDE cable, wrongly set drive select jumpers finally telling you off.... ;)

Has your machine remained stable since you removed those drives?
 
Yeah it does seem to be stable, its just really bugging me that the display goes black along with the burner locking up. Scared me at first, last thing I want to do is have to RMA something. Oh well, its better to replace something cheap than something expensive so I'm gonna try another IDE cable and see if I can narrow down the problem.
 
I've had so many of those cause problems.
It seems the wire strands can get cut and(/or what remains of) the wire rides up the connector and at times loses its connection.
As the drive/cable heat up and things move, it can trigger a bad connection perhaps just for a moment.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top