random lockups

Tiberius

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 6, 2007
Messages
1,110
Hello all,

I'm having some problems with my PC and I'm hoping that somebody can give me some ideas.

My pc was having random crashing in some games and it was just acting odd. Sometimes when I would turn it on, it would just sit there for 30-45 seconds and then the USB devices would power up then the memory count would start. I figured it was time for a reformat and reloading of the OS. I figured I would give Vista another look.

I decided to put my DFI Lanparty CFX3200 on my server and put the ASRock 939DualSATA since it was a bit smaller and it would fit better on my Antec 900.

When I put the DFI on my server case, it acted normal. I have Windows XP on that PC, it recognized the hardware and that was it.

Using the ASrock, I started to install Vista. It blue screened a few times. I figured that maybe the ULI chipset on that board didnt like Vista. To test things out, I grabbed my daughter's NF4 Ultra motherboard and the Vista install crapped out too. I figured that maybe one of my ram sticks went bad so I downloaded the memtest86+ bootable iso and made a cd. I went through 7 512mb ddr sticks and memtest would reboot after a few seconds. There's no way that they are all bad since I put them on other PCs and they work fine.

I took everything appart...and put it back together (using the ASRock mb). Using 4 512mb ddr sticks (2 matching sets) I decided to install Vista. This time it went thru, I downloaded SP1, the latest Nvidia driver for my card (8800GT). I even installed a game and it ran fine for 5 minutes. I went to bed and this morning the PC would just freeze. It boots fine into Vista but it just hard locks. I'm have speed fan running and it does not over heat (antec 900 and zalman 9500). I'm not overclocking it right now; also, I'm booting into a 500GB raid 0 volume.

I checked the event manager and saw these errors that stuck out...

Kernel-Processor-Power

Some processor performance power management features have been disabled due to a known firmware problem. Check with the computer manufacturer for updated firmware.

I downloaded the MS Windows Memory diagnosting, burned the ISO and booted off it. t ran multiple passes with no memory erorrs. Memtest never gave me an error, it just rebooted.

Could it be my CPU? So far the only components I haven't swapped out are the CPU, video card and PSU (cooler master 500 sli).

Sorry for the long post but I would appreciate any input.

edit:not sure if it will help but I did a complete system report using everest on the PC. I didn't freeze doing that, it froze just browsing through a folder afterwards.

Link to report
 
So it froze with another PSU. I put in an old TI4200 and the 500w PSU back in the case....and it froze.
Memtest86 still reboots with the ti4200 in place and MS mem test says its fine.

recap:

tried 3 different motherboards (NF4 Ultra, ASRock 939DualSATA and a DFI Lanparty CFX3200)
7 different ddr sticks
2 video cards (8800GT and TI4200)
2 PSU's (Thermaltake 420w and a Coolermaster 500w)
Memtest reboots everytime I try to run it, the Windows Memtest goes thru fine.

The last two components that I havent swapped - the CPU and the case
 
Figured I update what happened (although I fixed it a while ago). It turned out to be the cheap-o $10 multi-card reader connecting to one of the USB ports on the motherboard. (and yeah...its a slow day at work)
 
Thanks for the update. I never would have guessed that, though my first suggestion would have been to disconnect all non-essential parts.
 
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