Another Punk who wrongly thought he could build a PC from scratch with no experience.

chobits

chobits

chobits

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Joined
11 Jan 2008
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15
this is my spec (everything is new)

case Lian Li PC-P60
cpu Q6600
cpu cooler Noctua NH-U12P
motherboard Asus Striker II Extreme
gpu Asus 9800 GX2
ram OCZ 4GB DDR3 (2x2GB)
hdd WD Raptor X 150GB (x2)
optical standard CD-DVDRW
psu Corsair TX 750W
os Vista Premium 64bit

all connections are fine, triple checked and so on. now for some reason i couldn't finish the installation process of vista. the system would freeze before installation would finish, i tried taking out one of the memory sticks which left me with 2GB RAM, and that worked. vista installed fully. I had no idea vista couldnt install with 4GB of RAM? maybe it can on other setups?

anyway started downloading all the updates installing them, drivers for the mobo and gpu etc... and added the 2GB stick to the system and it recognized it, no probs. so everything was up to date. installed steam, played it for a little while then the problems started happening, at first i could play source for an hour or so and then the system would blue screen, saying 'a problem has been detected and windows has shut down to prevent damage to your computer', it went on to mention stuff on a memory check, this happened a few times, not only when playing source but while i was surfing or browsing. i first thought the problem was the game but i guess its a hardware problem, now when i try and use vista it might only work for up to 30min or less and it freezes, mouse doesnt move, ctrl, alt, del doesnt work, have to hold power button to turn it off. ive tried formatting the hard drives, reinstalling vista again and again, but the system still freezes after a short while. no more blue screens, just freezing

i think its the memory, ive tried using memtest to check whether i have a bad memory stick but i cant get the program to work? ive tried booting it from a disc, tried booting it from a usb key, that doesnt work either.

could it be the mobo, the hard drive......

hope i havent missed anything out

this is my first time building a PC, i dont know much about this stuff :(

also my idle cpu temp was around 50celsius, i took everything apart and added more thermal paste, but havent had the chance to check the temp since, cos the system is freezing so early on after boot up that i dont have a chance to install the temp reading program, the graphics card was 60-65 celsius at idle which is normal for this card.

i also noticed some weird memory readings in the task manager, under the performance tab, in the memory section theres total, cached and free, well when the system first starts up theres total 4GB, cached maybe 1GB (cant really remember), free 2GB or more. as time went on gradually all the free memory went to the cached memory. i have no idea what this means...
 
i placed a thin strip across the middle of the cpu and placed the heatsink on top, i doubt i put too much but theres no way of me checking. cos i also reinstalled vista b4 checking the temps, and now i cant install the temp reader program cos vista freezes a few minutes after turning on
 
temps are in the bios also, anyway a blue screen usually is a driver conflict. first i would check your network driver, since the thing in common with 2 of the crashes you had was that you were online.
 
The first thing i would do is try to boot your PC without it being connected to the internet or LAN in any way be it cable or USB/Express router.

If this doesnt change anything then check timings/volt on your ram sticks, go to BIOS and set them to those.

Also make sure the PC Cooler fan is connected to the motherboard correctly / in the right pin ( is it working anyways ? ).
And check the temps in BIOS , if those are fine then it might be a software related problem.
 
Check to make sure the RAM is on the correct voltage in BIOS as sometimes motherboards set it too low which causes instability.

The CPU temps are not good, clean off all the thermal paste properly and then re-apply using the recommended methods which can be found on Arctic silvers website.
 
done all you said phoenix and it seemed to work without the internet connected & changing the memory timings, the system didnt freeze for a whole hour. thats not bad considering it usually takes 5-10min to freeze up..

hmm forgot to check the temps in the bios, ill do it 2mrw, after i get back from work.

maybe you can only install vista 64bit with 2GB of memory when its DDR3?

i think it is set to 1T, when i was browsing the bios i had the option to change it to 2T i think? ill check again 2mrw. is 1T bad?
 
So you said it was 1hr without net, did you connect to internet before it freezed again? Or when did that happen ( what did you do at this point ).

Also are you sure that the copy of your Vista is 100% stable ? Because it might be the system problem also.

Few more things to try:
Leave the PC just in BIOS for 1-2hrs and see if it resets or not and also try to do that in windows, just leave on idle and check.

Yes set it to 2T, also make sure that you have enough voltage ( it should be written on your sticks ).

Maybe get ubuntu live cd and work from this for few hrs, if nothing happens then you at least know it might be more software related.
 
You sure you took off the pci metal slot covers so the graphics exaust air can get out? Sounds silly, but my brother forgot too! ...doosh.
 
Like other posters, i've installed Vista64 with no problems and 4GB RAM.

It is probably worth you taking out 2GB again and seeing if the system runs stable without it and take it from there. Yes it will be a bit slower but you need to rule out the memory. You could also swap the memory around and see if that makes the system more or less stable than before?
 
This sounds very similar the problems I had with the 64-bit version of Vista when I installed it just after it was released. I never did get to the bottom of the problem but my best guess was that the 64-bit motherboard drivers were unstable.

Have you tried installing either the 32-bit version of Vista or XP?
 
Put the ram in single channel mode not dual. Try different ram slots. My past 3 PC's all where unstabble with dual channel ram. More the slots about so its single and everything stable.


"as time went on gradually all the free memory went to the cached memory. i have no idea what this means..."
Thats normal Vista is just makeing good use of your ram.
 
figured out what the problem was....

the motherboard (Asus Striker II Extreme) has all settings to auto, including the memory timings and voltage. the bios had my memory timings as 6-5-5-20, when it should have been 6-5-5-18. i couldnt see what the voltage was because the bios just said auto, so i changed it manually to 1.86. it should have been 1.85, but i could only change the voltage in increments of 2. i figured 1.86 is better than 1.84. so anyways reinstalled vista under these new bios settings and updated all the drivers and windows including SP1. havent run into a problem yet, so fingers crossed it wont crash when i start playing games.

typically another problem has arised, im using the software that came with the bios driver cd, a program called asus suite i think, anyway it checks the temps for the cpu, its 45 celsius at idle. maybe the program is giving a wrong reading?? which other program could i use to check the temp, an easy program please :)

at work at the mo so gonna reply later tonight :))
 
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