GA-P35C-DS3R Won't Post Naturally!

To be honest, I don't know whether my issues were entirely down to the motherboard. The issues seem to be fixed (for now) but I don't know why or how. It may relapse at any point again which doesn't fill me with confidence.

In the end, I discovered 1GB of faulty ballistix memory which was sitting in slot two. So I guess it was a blessing in disguise although it didn't feel like it at the time!

silent, I don't have any IDE kit so can't offer you any real guidance.

z
 
silent said:
are these giga problems with rev 1.1 boards as my rev 2 seems fine. only issue is it will not pick up or read my slave IDE hdd. the sata one it picks up fine.

i wanna sell it but need to format it first. any suggestions?

i have disconnected the sata one and put ide to master or only drive but still no joy. running bios F4
Click to expand...

Have you tried changing the IDE/Sata settings in the bios?
 
yes i tried a few things but all seemed fine. correct settings etc. strange thing is the drive boots up but vista doesn't see it nor the bios. i will try a different ide cable tonight as that may be a problem. the one is brand new that im using at mo. came with the mobo.
 
Actually, come to think of it, I did have an issue when I installed Vista when I had both my sata drives plugged in. Vista didn't find any hard drives so I couldn't install it. In the end, I just unplugged one drive and vista found a hard disk and installed ok. I then plugged my other hard disk back in and formatted it within vista.

Never did work out what that was all about.

z
 
zpos said:
Actually, come to think of it, I did have an issue when I installed Vista when I had both my sata drives plugged in. Vista didn't find any hard drives so I couldn't install it. In the end, I just unplugged one drive and vista found a hard disk and installed ok. I then plugged my other hard disk back in and formatted it within vista.

Never did work out what that was all about.

z
Click to expand...

thats exactly what happened with me as well. it picked up my blank partitioned sata drive but wouldn't instal vista and kept saying it was a non windows drive. after formatting again it picked it up and installed. still didn't pick my ide drive up though. didn't get chance to play last night so will try tonight.
 
zpos said:
Actually, come to think of it, I did have an issue when I installed Vista when I had both my sata drives plugged in. Vista didn't find any hard drives so I couldn't install it. In the end, I just unplugged one drive and vista found a hard disk and installed ok. I then plugged my other hard disk back in and formatted it within vista.

Never did work out what that was all about.

z
Click to expand...

I had similar issues creating a raid0 on Vista but after going to drive options and installing the correct raid drivers off my USB pen it worked perfectly?
 
I'm not running it any raid mode. Just pure and simple (but obviously not simple enough for vista!).

Just for the record, PC has been stable. Mind you, haven't shut it down yet!

Have RMA'd the RAM so am only running on 2Gb.

z
 
I have managed to get OS installed back into my system after reloading optimised defaults in bios f2, upping ram voltage to correct settings as per the spd 2.3v in CPU-Z and similarly to Zpos, disabling the power saving settings.

I was able to run memtest86 for over 8 hours without a single error, then managed to run Orthos for over 6 hours without error before the CPU1 returned an error. Now whenever I try running Orthos again, with no settings changed, CPU1 fails within a matter of 3-5 seconds!

So, is the CPU faulty with a damaged core? Or is this still some mobo related wierdness??

Guess I need to seek an RMA of the chip? It is an E6750 btw running completely at stock speed of 2.66ghz.

Cheers :)
 
Hi Benm, it might be worth running a cpu test using another application just to be sure. I used everest to hammer my cpu overnight. There are probably other apps out there which do a similar thing.

Two apps reporting the same issue with the core probably means a cpu issue.

z

PS No idea why disabling the power saving options worked for both you and me!
 
aye cheers Zpos - will get Everest and run that as well then. Am a little concerned that the core which fails in orthos now keeps changing from test to test - sometimes #1 sometimes #0 but will let you know. Have an RMA number for chip now in any case so will get it returned over weeked I reckon.

Good luck with yours ;)
 
well after the machine appeared to die once again I got an RMA for the CPU as OC's suggested that the chip was likely at fault.

Now the chip is coming back to me, delivered on Monday 10th, with I believe no faults found - won't know for sure until a parcel arrives but I have horrid feeling it is just going to be a box with a chip in and no explanation of what tests they ran, using what kit with what results etc - I may be wrong and apologies to the OC testers in advance if they send me back something intelligible alongside the chip.

Assuming that the chip comes back with zero errors found, I guess I am then back to the mobo being at fault seeing as how Memtest86 reported no errors at all on the ram. What's the betting if I get an RMA on the mobo that it also comes back zero errors found?

I am fast losing my sanity over this setup - all appeared fine then zap! nothing works or goes wrong the same way twice....

If I find myself needing to purchase a new motherboard, what would people recommend to pair with an apparently 'working as intended' E6750, 2GB OCZ PC2-8500 DDR2 1066MHz ram?

I have looked at the Abit IP35 boards but notice that their ddr2 speeds are only upto 800Mhz - would that cause a problem with the faster ram I have?

Am feeling stuck in a sliding-block puzzle nightmare - any advice appreciated folks :)
 
It's happened again!

Ok, after months of stability, I've had the issue again except I cannot recover it.

Basically, my son hit the sleep button on the keyboard yesterday while the PC was on. This put the PC into some kind of hibernation mode.

After clicking and hitting the keyboard, I was unable to revive the PC so hit the power on and off button.

The PC came on, halted and then switched off. It then came on again, beeped and then nothing. It was similar to when the PC has some kind of bios issue and then retries to revert to default settings.

I've replaced the battery, jumpered the cmos. The only way I can get some kind of reaction out of it is to remove the power on the graphics card which causes the speaker to screech.

I also get beeps if I remove all memory.

Apart from that, zilch.

Anyone have any ideas as its doing my nut in.

z
 
What I had to do i to take out the battery from the motherboard (pain as it meant removing the graphics card) then I left it overnight without the mains cable in. Plugging it in in the morning and refitting the battery, along with one stick of memory, allowed it to boot.

Whilst maybe 10 minutes or so without a battery might be sufficient I just gave up at that point and went to bed :D

Fingers crossed it might help you...?
 
Cheers for that advice. I left the battery out when I left for work this morning but the power cable was still in. Anyway, no difference.

I've now unplugged the power chord and will give it a whirl later on. If I knew it was definetly the motherboard, I'd have RMA'd it. All I want is some beeps to indicate where the issue but all I'm getting is the silent treatment.. damn thing. Maybe I need to show it some love one valentines day?

z
 
Ok, some developments.

I cranked out the 1gb memory chips out of slots 3 and 4 and put one of them into slot 1. Don't ask me why I did this, call it a hunch.

Anyway, the PC kicked into life and prompted me which bios configuration options to boot up with (last known, etc.).

It then went all the way into Vista. I've now shutdown and put another 1gb in and rebooted. Vista sorta struggled and the monitor went off. I wasn't paying attention so I'm not sure what happened. I rebooted and went all the way into vista.

I'm now running memtest to see if it brings up anything. What I really should be doing is backing up my data!

Anyway, I've no idea what's going on. Is it dodgy memory (again) or something else. I hope something isn't killing my memory every few months.

I've also just noticed that there are some new bios's out there for the motherboard. I'm still on the F7 bios.

Further news as and when I get it.

z
 

Ok, looks like a memory chip issue. Have tried the 4 x 1Gb in the 4 ddr2 slots and this is what I get.

The 1234 below is the slot no. excluding the ddr3 (slot 1 being the closest to the cpu). abcd uniquely identifies a memory chip. A blank in a column indicates slot empty.

1 2 3 4 Outcome
------- -------------
a b c - Nothing
a b - d Beeps
a b d - Beeps
a d - - Nothing
a c - - Nothing
c - - - Nothing
d - - - Nothing
- d - - Nothing
- c - - Nothing
- - - c Nothing
- - b - Boots up ok
- - - b Boots up ok
- - a - Boots up ok
- - a b Boots up ok
c - a b Nothing
- c a b Nothing
d c a b Nothing
d c - - Nothing
a b - - Ok


Based on the above, it looks like chips 'c' and 'd' are giving me trouble as I'm unable to boot if I have them in any configuration.

I also had to revert to disabling the CPU power saving within the bios to maintain stability in vista.

As I can't boot using the above suspicious chips, I am unable to run a memtest against them.

Have I missed anything?

z
 
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Not sure if anyone is following my saga with the pc but the competitor has confirmed that the memory is faulty.

So, either I'm dead unlucky or I've managed to kill 3 sticks of ballistix ram.. doesn't really instill much confidence.

z
 
For some reason my Father in Laws board, of the same type, continually had unlucky issues with Ballistix memory. Eventually he got the same type as me, in sig, and all has been well for him since.

Not sure why that happened for him though.

The only good thing was that Crucial were pretty quick with the returns etc... But it was a pain having to keep going through memory as he did.
 
Well I got my replacement RAM today and everything is fine.

If it is some kind of compatibility issue, surely it wouldn't just kill the memory sticks. Unless it is some kind of black widow?

I'll keep an eye on things - still have around 5mths warranty left on the sticks.

Am half tempted to flash the bios with the new firmware. Except I ain't that brave.

z
 
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