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System issues all over...help!

B

BigBrownPimpsta

n00b
Joined
Apr 17, 2012
Messages
6
Hi guys,

I've been a lurker on this site for 10+ years and an old member of Hardware Heaven/DH which some might know me from. I have an extremely annoying issue and needed some help on what could be wrong so I will explain my issue in great detail.

First my system setup is as follows:

Q6600 2.4 GHz (Stock)
ASUS P5Q-E
4GB OCZ Platinum DDR2-800 5-5-15
Corsair HX620W
ASUS GeForce GTX460 768MB
2x150GB WD Velociraptors in RAID-0
2x Seagate Baracudas 640GB
X-Fi XtremeMusic

For a year almost now I have been complaining about degraded performance from my system, and getting little "hiccups" when loading up applications like IE or Outlook, or 1080p MKVs lagging a little here and there. Then it started turning into random lockups when gaming, so I did my quarterly dusting/repasting, which brought no improvements. So I broke my RAID, wrote zeros to the drive, did drive tests, memtest86 a few weeks ago and still got random crashing. I was finding that the older GeForce drivers from October kept stuff stable, but newer drivers triggered system lockups. Upgraded the drivers later, it stopped and then reappared again. It was on and off...

So I dug deeper and deeper into this problem this week. I have no idea what the hell is going on and its more frustrating everyday. This is what has happened now:

The crashes got so ridiculously annoying, I ended up breaking the raid again (reimaged with Acronis beforehand this time) and tried to restore (won't restore RAID image to AHCI single drive, mistake made). Wrote zeros to one drive, reinstalled Windows, some games and all drivers. Then boom, everytime I played a sound the system locked up. It's worth noting my X-Fi Support pack required 2 installs before it worked and for no reason my nVidia driver (296.10) crashed randomly in Windows, before this constant locking up.

I took an image of the 1 drive, setup my other Velociraptor, booted up no sound worked so I reinstalled and same lock up issue. Also it's worth noting that my weird choppy system issue occurs when using my out of warranty drive. A little annoying, but not acceptable. The locking up can occur even if the system is idle or shutting down. Also when changing my surround modes upon the first bootup, my system was lagging heavily for a minute and played no sound.

The only way I'm now running a stable system is when I now disable my sound card in device manager. So this brings the question: what is f**ked up for me? Is it my PSU? The system has run fine under load, ran a movie with no sound enabled. Is it my X-Fi finally crapping out? It is just over 6 years old. Or is it my board? Also, I think one Velociraptor is definitely messed up if its giving me these "hiccups" when under some load. The other doesn't behave like this.

My BIOS is latest version, X-Fi driver is the X-Fi Support Pack 2.5. The PSU is about 3 years old but hasn't acted too odd. Corsairs are pretty tough and I don't OC. Thanks for the help, I know HardForum guys know their stuff in and out!

Edit - added a quick screencap from BlueScreenView

http://i.imgur.com/FJYRj.png
 
So wait, the weird choppy system issue occurs when using a particular drive? For now, leave that drive completely disconnected and don't bother with your RAID array.

So the system is completely absolutely 100% stable now that the X-Fi sound card is disabled and the troublesome drive disconnected?
 
Either drive I use with the same image causes the crash in single mode (AHCI). This was occurring with RAID0 as well. The difference that occurs is that I find one drive acts a little choppy with or without the sound driver enabled in device manager.

So to clarify, I might have 2 different issues apparent. Basically I am not sure if I should jump out and buy a new X-Fi and ditch the drives for an SSD... The crashing behavior has changed in the last few months is what concerns me.
 
Try doing a fresh install of Windows on a known working drive to rule out the image being the issue.

As for the sound card, remove it from the PC, and see if the PC is stable then. In addition, see if you can test that sound card in another PC to fully rule it out as being an issue.
 
Fresh installs were done actually yesterday forgot to mention, I just got tired and imaged it with the existing issue. Testing the card somewhere else is a good idea, just don't have another system or friend closeby so will have to check.
 
So a fresh install on a known working drive doesn't exhibit the issues you're experiencing with the Raptors?
 
Ok let me explain again in more detail.... Did it on one drive which was in warranty (I bought a few us ago), the performance issue was not apparent. I always suspected my boards raid controller was messed up, but seems fine. The lockups occurred, so I wrote zeros to the out of warranty drive. Reset it up. Worked fine except it has the small hiccups. So I thought hey let's reimage the other one and slap it on here. Screw formatting it before reimaging... And still got lockups with the X-fi enabled plus this slight hiccup.

Hope that clears it up, no hard drive diagnostic program reports issues. They also both sound the same. A year or two ago I did experience my raid configuration fail once or twice without warning.
 
Another weird bug that is gone after switching back to AHCI: mouse lag with both of my cordless mice. All cordless mice lagged but corded is fine. I thought it was something causing interference near the computer, but since going back to AHCI I don't experience it with my Microsoft 6000. I'm awaiting rma of my g700 to test again.

Its all really odd lol
 
I'm sorry but I'm still having a hard time following you on the hard drive issue: So the in-warranty VRaptor drive still had the same hiccup/lockup issues even with the fresh install of Windows as the out of warranty VRaptor drive?
 
No Dan... It only experiences the lockup with the x-Fi enabled. The hiccup is SEPERATE and bearable. I mention it all to see if there is any further diagnostics (beyond the usual wd and hd tach) I can do to find determine if the out of warrnty drive is bad.

Summary of my attempts:
1. raid 0 = lockups and hiccups/performance
2. Velociraptor 1 (in warranty) in AHCI = system lockup
3. Velociraptor 2 (out of warranty) in AHCI with fresh install = hiccups/performance (did not try to install x-Fi)
4. Velociraptor 2 (out of warranty in AHCI) with Image of Velociraptor 1 = lockups AND hiccups/performance.

Sorry if it's a mess, getting sleepy and typing on the iPad!
 
Try the out of warranty drive on a different system with a trial install of Windows to confirm whether or not it has issues.

But considering your testing, it does sound like the out of warranty drive is indeed defective if the in-warranty drive doesn't have hiccups.
 
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