Extremely mysterious pc issuse! got any ideas?

[JoshZ]

hey guys lots more ideas so cheers for that lol ill try to cover them all so bare with me!

i have put another 560w psu into my machine. it wasnt a hiper but the brand doesnt really matter because its powering my mates 6600 fine (as did my hiper psu).

ive got my ram on 5-5-5-15-2t which is what was on the stickers so im guessing that should be fine. as for sending it back thats exactly what i want to do but OCuk wont swap it for another model unless its broken (although this maybe a matter for trading standards because the fair trade act does state that even if components were brought individually as long as they were intended to work as one system then it is the consumers right to get the whole lot refunded..problem with that is i dont have the time to waste)..

i will try setting the LDT down to 4 but i think at this point in time i really am just spinning round in circles wasting valuable time and energy.. ill give it one more go.. if i cant get it running tonight Im gonna have to bite the bullet and borrow a bit more cash to buy myself a new mobo and go with that.. as at this point it seems like the simplest solution.. (although its a bit of a gamble isnt it...)

so I was wondering.. Originally i wanted to get the Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650.. can anyone recommend it? Id get something better but £80 is a nasty stretch already with my current monetary situation ..

Rick_Barnes, Im in peckham at the moment so if thats close by to you then it might be good to try some other gear although my housemates pc isnt as high spec as mine i have been able to test my stuff in a couple of other machines. so im not sure it would be worth the journey really.

anyways im gonna trawl through my bios settings again and basically keep flogging this dead horse and see what happens.

cheers again guys
we can only live in hope right?!

 

[Outcast]

Good luck.. And remember..

There's always the BIG HAMMER option that'll fix it !!

It's actually a very satisfying option sometimes !!

 

[Space Monkey]

OK long shot time, the power the PSU is getting. Have you tried a different power cable and a different wall socket in the house?? To be honest it sounds like the motherboard is at falut. I would send it back and get a different model/make

I was thinking the same thing as Zap, I recently had a distress call from my mum when her PC completely died, so I went over and yep it was dead, even took my PSU and still nothing, so, took her pc back to mine so I could look into it a bit more, plugged it in at home and it worked 1st time, and for the last few weeks since, no errors, nothing. She had recently bought a surge protector so Im guessing its to do with the power socket (everything else works on the surge tower, but they arent drawing the same kinda power).

May help?

 

[JoshZ]

ok heres a slight turn up .. i dont know if its indicative of anything but im looking at the event vwr now and its showing one error that stands out to me a bit
'IRQARB: ACPI BIOS does not contain an IRQ for the device in PCI slot 3 function 0'

this never showed up in XP and has only started since i managed to get vista installed.. the only thing is Im only running my 8800 in pcie1.. and nothing else.. would it see pcie1 as pci3?

 

[JoshZ]

yeah that thought actually occured to me at the start zap .. although stupidly i havent tried moving the tower to a different location in the house.. ive got a couple of other things running off the other socket.. my 5.1 etc and ive swapped them all over making sure the tower isnt plugged into an expansion block but i could try moving it in a min.. ive also swapped out the kettle lead with the monitor one which made no diff... ill try moving it upstairs for a bit though it cant hurt at this time.

 

[sithlord]

It wouldnt surprise me if that SATA DVD drive and the hard disk cant run on the same controller causing a controller error.

Have you also tried to elminate most of these things by doing something simple like booting off a USB into linux or windows ?

 

[JoshZ]

I havent tried booting off the usb, but I have tried installing windows with an IDE dvd drive which didn't improve things. I also managed to get them running ok on another model gigabyte board so i don't know that it could be the SATA drives themselves.

I was assured by OCuk that they tested my system with the same brand setup as the one i am running, the second time the motherboard went back to them. I'm guessing if it did have a problem with the two SATA devices they would have thrown up a similar issue :S?

Lol Outcast.. believe me the thought has crossed my mind a few times.. a drop from my 4th floor window might do it some good too

 

[sithlord]

Well I would say you miss diagnosed something its not logical that everything is OK but doesn't work.... retest everything

Good luck.

 

[Amnesia]

take it to your friends house and use all his parts and just your motherboard.....if it doesnt work then the motherboard is knackered ..if it works then add component at a time to see where it fails.

it shouldnt really be that hard to find whats causing the fault

 

[JoshZ]

but I've RMA'd it twice once with whatever ocuk use by default and once with what i am told was my setup ... if the motherboard was faulty then they would have spotted it.. unless you are suggesting that they are trying to con me lol.. ill try mounting the whole lot on my mates mobo again just to see what that does but it worked ok last time.

 

[Amnesia]

who knows what tests ocuk did....and what equipment they used...im not saying they dont know how to test but everyone can make mistakes ..even them.

i remember taking a zx spectrum to a computer shop for repairs as it kept resetting ...they would keep it for 2 weeks then i would pick it up ...then the next day i would take it back...carried on for what seemed like forever(abt 2 months)....in the end i got a simple 'oh we are sorry it was a loose chip'.

im suggesting you test the motherboard with your friends computer to rule out a faulty motherboard.........then add 1 component at a time of your own to see what is causing the problem.

if it all works with a full installion of an OS then run it without drivers then add 1 driver at a time to see where its going wrong.

ts a long slow pain in the backside process but sometimes it has to be done

 

[JoshZ]

well i can stick some pieces in while im trying the other hardware, but im probably just gonna bite the bullet now and get that asus board instead. Whatever the problem is i think the motherboard is definitely at the heart of the reboots and i cant afford to waste time on this anymore. :S ill test it out again and then either try and get a refund or sell it or something.

 

[Richie P]

Why 650i?

If you're spending £80 then it really should be on a decent P35 mobo IMO.

If you're harbouring expectations of SLI in the future, the cost of the extra card, plus the cost of the better PSU needed will totally offset the potential performance increase - it always pays to get the best single gfx card you can afford.

 

[JoshZ]

actually thats a pretty good call i may just do that for the time being .. im not planning no getting a second card for a while anyway a single 8800 and the q6600 does what i need it to. can you recommend one?............

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>UPDATE DIAGNOSIS SUCCESSFUL >> finally :S

ok so we ran through it slowly on my mates pc.. hooked it all up and hey after an hour and a half of screwing around it finally revealed itself.. it was indeed the power supply.. which just serves to make me feel even more foolish.. my hunch is it had enough juice at the start to appear to work normally but has degraded to show its true colours over the past 3 weeks.. it all started when i booted the new machine for the first time and it kept misfiring like an old peugeot. when i realised my housemate was telling me fibs and his psu is actually 480 w instead of the 600 that he claimed i snatched out my power hungry video card and ran it off the onboard vga with his power supply and bingo it works.. the video was drawing a bit too much for us to see the results properly without removing the 8800..

so all that remains is to get myself a new PSU.. this time obviously i wont be going with Hiper i dont particularly want to spend more than 60£ if i have to .. anyone got some reccomendations? will a good 600w be enough this time? it still seems low now that i know my Graphics unit is pulling 400w by itself (or at least thats what the packet says) ... any tips would be greatly appreciated!

* i feel like i may need to prepare myself for a flaming lol ...

 

[JoshZ]

righto. resolution .. got myself a OCZ GameXStream 700w in the post.. finally my headaches are over !! cheers for all the tips and support guys!

 

[Uhtred]

Glad you got it sorted!

 

[Wiggins]

righto. resolution .. got myself a OCZ GameXStream 700w in the post.. finally my headaches are over !! cheers for all the tips and support guys!

Excellent

With time and effort, the rewards do tend to be at the end of the tunnel

Glad to hear you got to the bottom of it.

 

[Rroff]

I hope it is the problem and solution - I know just how frustrating this can be...

 

[Selekt0r]

\o/

Glad you got it sorted.

I'm about to embark on a build this afternoon and I'm hoping it goes a little more smoothly than the fun and games you've had with yours...

 

[neocon]

i just bought an antec neo 500w modular psu for £60

nice psu