i5 2500k/P67 nightmare, please help!

My build in my sig was fine, it was a brand new build i did for a friend that had the same issues.

For his build we tried everything, changing hard drives, changing the motherboard, changing the graphics card etc. We installed windows on my working PC using his hard drive and still got the same problem each time - windows would install, but everytime it tried to boot into windows it would simply restart at the windows logo screen. Same place everytime. All the tests came back ok, like what you've done and the only reason im mentioning this is because it appears you have the same problem and have tried the same thing.

I've no idea regarding what voltage i set his machine at to get it to post. My advise is to raise it the smallest amount you can each time. But then the safest way is to try just downclocking the CPU which would mean you wont need to touch the voltages. All i can remember is i thought it was worth underclocking the CPU to see if it was CPU related, as that was the last thing left to RMA. It booted to windows when i downclocked the cpu so then tried upping the voltages, and it booted into windows at stock speeds with no problems since.

So JasonKnights i see what you're getting at, and i agree you definitely shouldn't have to mess about with voltages to get a brand new, hardware compatible pc working, but am 100% sure its how i got my friends working, so i wouldn't rule it out? wouldn't give it to technicians either. What are they going to test that hasn't been done already?

Good luck with your issue.
 
Wow tricky issue. You tried changing SATA cables around? it's what stopped one of my older pcs from booting properly, just used another cable. Different slot too..

I know it may not make a lot of sense, but computers have a mind of their own.

Please note: I am not quite a computer genius :D
 
memtest the ram

i bought corsair xms3 3 times, each time they came with errors on it

bought a 3x2gb xms3 in june 10 1 faulty stick will not boot, another stick will not boot from cold
bought a 2x2gb xms3 in august 10 got errors on it ( result in blue screen)
bought a 2x2gb xms3 in feb 11 got errors on it ( tested them before i even use them)

dont even know why i keep buying them.

edit: I'm sorry you mention you already memtest them
better going to spec savers!
 
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Babyalien said:
I'm bit of an amateur when it comes to overclocking/underclocking. Can you offer any advise as to safe amounts to increase or descrease by as I don't want to go and give it too much and cook the CPU or something. I presume that is what would happen (told you, amateur, lol). The memory runs up to 1.65v but if I remember it was showing as 1.48v in the bios the last time I saw this.

Ste59w, did you have to increase/decrease your voltage for your current i5 build? If so, how much by?
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Right, you should stop overclocking or anything of that nature, the board should be fine with what it deduces, just go into the bios and report back here what the vcore voltage is to confirm it is ok. The ram in Sandybridge is advised to be run at 1.5-1.55v. Where are you reading your ram voltage from - is that in the bios?

There are only a few things left to do before we know what is at fault, as you have already covered the majority. Don't doubt yourself either, if you have tried it once then that's enough.

Come get me when I am back online again, and we can continue
 
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Babyalien said:
Got to the Windows 7 splash screen for the current Windows 7 install....then....blue screen and rebooted. Restarted, only got to the splash screen again and restarted....and so on. Bugger!
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I've scanned this thread briefly so I apologise if I've missed something or if you've already tried this. When I tried to install RAID a few weeks ago, the scenario you described happened. I took out the drives and this continued to happen (with 1 HDD still there). I went into BIOS and changed the RAID option to IDE (which it was before) and that solved the problem. I think I needed to update the firmware/drivers before setting up RAID - I haven't had the time to do this, but I think this was needed to avoid the crashes.

Hope it helps!
 
coldfused said:
I've scanned this thread briefly so I apologise if I've missed something or if you've already tried this. When I tried to install RAID a few weeks ago, the scenario you described happened. I took out the drives and this continued to happen (with 1 HDD still there). I went into BIOS and changed the RAID option to IDE (which it was before) and that solved the problem. I think I needed to update the firmware/drivers before setting up RAID - I haven't had the time to do this, but I think this was needed to avoid the crashes.

Hope it helps!
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Sorry, but posts like this are only confusing the issue and not relevant either, at no time has the op been talking about raid. Your issue was probably due to the fact that 1 of the drives had been part of your raid array previously and it's something ive seen happen more than a few times. I can appreciate your trying to help.
 
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Liquid said:
Sorry, but posts like this are only confusing the issue and not relevant either, at no time has the op been talking about raid. Your issue was probably due to the fact that 1 of the drives had been part of your raid array previously and it's something ive seen happen more than a few times. I can appreciate your trying to help.
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I'm merely describing a situation that has occured to me in the past which matches the OP description. I understand the OP did not setup RAID and as you mentioned "1 of the drives had been part of your raid array" which it did not...

I was suggesting to the OP to check the status of his RAID in bios, this may/may-not resolve his issue therefore is relevant to this post in addition to the other posts that were mentioned earlier:

morguk said:
The other time was when the HD was set wrong in the BIOS. The IDE/SATA thing. I think most install as IDE.
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Babyalien said:
In regards to IDE and AHCI- from what I can work out AHCI supports 'hot swapping' so you can connect/disconnect HDD's without shutting the system down but need to install OS to the HDD with the AHCI setting selected via the bios.

I'll make sure I keep you all posted when I try this later.
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as Blue160 says have you actually done a full fresh install with the new components or are you installing windows 7 on your other machine and then swapping the hd to the new machine ?

if you are just swapping the hd after installing on the old machine then do a full fresh install on the new components.
 
Hi there have you sorted the problem out yet? ive just had a similar thing happen to me putting together my new system, it let me install windos but then kept coming up saying error and a code. i figured it out anyway and in the new bios you have to drag over the windows boot manager to "boot device number 1" then your main HDD to "boot device number 2" i did that and its all working a treat now. before i moved windows boot manager icon, the machine kept turning itself on and off. but now faultless! hope this helps?
 
chipps101 said:
as Blue160 says have you actually done a full fresh install with the new components or are you installing windows 7 on your other machine and then swapping the hd to the new machine ?

if you are just swapping the hd after installing on the old machine then do a full fresh install on the new components.
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^^^ yes this +1

i've had similar in the past when using an older hard drive with OS installed, swapped to new build and it would not boot. Nothing wrong with the data as it was working only minutes earlier but, I ended up doing a full reinstall on the new build and it worked a treat.

Other than that I would have gone with the AHCI option as mentioned earlier which is another common problem I see that gives BSOD when trying to boot.
 
Hi again peeps.

Sorry for not updating sooner but been busy trying to get it all up and running.

Thanks for the input you have all contributed and taken the time to help out.

Well a fresh Win7 install worked a treat so set HDD setting in bios to AHCI and installed the OS.

All seemed fine initially, then things started to become a bit sketchy. Programs seemed to take a long time to install, other operations would just hang, then got some random crashes which resulted in having to hold the power button in to shut down/restart. Then, to make matters worse, the drive stopped being recognised by the MB, changed to different Sata 3 port and restarted. Some times this would work but still kept crashing. Then the drive was not shown in the bios.

Updated bios to 1.7 and this helped but now the 2 backup HDD's (1x 500Gb Samsung F3 502HJ, 1x Seagate Barracuda 200Gb) seemed to be confilicting with OS. The drives were shown, but the system would crash when transferring data from 1 backup drive to another.

I have now reinstalled in IDE mode within the bios. All seems fine with the WD Caviar Blue 500Gb Win7 is installed on and things are running smooth and fast.

I have now tried to connect up the Samsung F3 backup drive but get the 'clicking' sound on startup that appears to be synonymous with the F3's and the P67 chipset but the drive is not shown/registering in Win7 despite being connected to one of the 6Gb SATA ports.

Any thoughts???

I know you can flash the firmware on the F3 but 1) do not know if this will help, 2) do not know how the hell to do this and 3) do not want to brick the drive as there is around 450Gb of data on there.

Any help will again be greatly appreciated.
 
Ok, quick update. I have tried to Seagate drive and no probs whatsoever so the issue seems to be with the Samsung drive. Damn thing. Need to work out how best to get the data from it now if I wanna try flashing it without losing all the data as I have ran out of spare SATA drives. Cannot therefore link it to the old setup to retrieve data.
 
u say the drive is not recognised in the bios? are u sure its not recognised in the bios or could it be that its not recognised in windows and command prompt?

i say this because it could be possible that the formatting of the drive has screwed up from ntfs to raw format, rendering the drive unreadable in that state but repairable. however i'd still be expecting to see the drive in bios in that state.

if you have the board and drive configured in ide mode (how does this work with no ide connectors these days?), i dont know sandybridge yet as i am awaiting delivery of my board tomorrow but, in the older boards there were higher compatibility settings such as 'ide+sata', and i think also might be called 'enhanced ide mode' or 'compatibility mode' somewhere in the bios settings. it might not be the case but it may be worth seeing if these settings are still in there with the newer tech.

if the settings are in the bios, save the settings and reboot before looking for find the drive to allow the changes to save and then function correctly.
 
I've had this issue with windows blue screening on the splash screen before. Like others I found I was able to install Windows and get it to boot if I removed one of the sticks. After installing I'd get random bluescreens with both sticks installed. Ran Memtest on the numerous times and it all checked out fine.

I tried some bog standard Crucial DDR3 and the system is 100% stable now. A bit weird considering the memory passed Memtest.
 
Um, thanks for the input guys but as I have mentioned previously,the memory is fine, memtest showed no errors and the fresh install of the OS is fine, no BSOD anymore and stable under Prime95 with stock values. I have even been able to set the memory from the default setting of 1333mhz to the correct speed of 1600mhz. I set it to IDE as this AHCI seemed sketchy but upon reflection this may have been due to the Samsung F3 conflict I now appear to have. I'm not too concerned that I have now installed under IDE rather than AHCI as AHCI seems to mainly benefit you if you are using a Raid configuration as read times are slightly quicker or if you need 'hot swapping' support (not a major thing) or if you want NCQ, all of which seems (from looking on Google) to suggest this mainly benefits you if you are using a Sata 3 HDD running at their 6Gb/s.

The issue I now have is deffinately to do with the F3 HDD I have, apart from that all is fine and dandy.
 
I've had the issue of hard drives not appearing within Windows 7. Think it's a fairly common issue. You need to assign it a new drive letter in disk management.

Have you tried this?
 
Mattbill, no I admit I haven't tried that one. The main problem is though, apart from the drive not physically showing, is that as soon as the Samsung F3 is connected the system takes ages to boot, and I mean about 5 mins. Then when actually in Win7 the whole system is sluggish/non-responsive and I have to try and force open programs to close via Ctrl/Alt/Del but most of the time I have to shut the system down via holding the power button down so in my opinion it must be something to do with the drive itself, firmware maybe but can't try updating firmware until I have pulled the data and put on to another drive first.

Loving the Integra in the sig by the way, I'm a big old school Type R Honda fan. (off topic I know)
 
Ah I see! What port number you connecting this F3 to on the mobo? Think they're labelled 0-5... from what I remember about this Sandybridge motherboard issue that has come about, sata ports 2-5 can degrade. Do you know which number you have connected this F3 drive upto?

Off topic: I love the old school type R's too... unfortunately had to sell that ITR as it was costing too much to sort. Shame though as they are great cars!
 
mukhs11, the PSU in an Antec TruePower 650W so more than enough and besides, I would not think an extra HDD connected would sap enough power to create the issue I have as there are more power hungry components I had ran for a short time on just a Corsair CX400W (until upgraded to the TP650W).

mattbill, I am ensuring the HDD's are only connected to the 6Gb/s ports as these are the ports that are unaffected by the Intel 6-Series Chipset issue so safe to have HDD's connected here and not gradually degrade. Ironically, I have read that the 'clicking' issue with the Samsung F3 can be avoided by connecting the drive the the 3Gb/s ports which is not practical due to the degradation potential. I did try connecting to the 3Gb/s port though but no change/same issues.
 
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