Having Trouble WIth Crashing

nheather

nheather

nheather

Associate
Joined
19 May 2004
Posts
1,053
Location
Horsham, West Sussex
It has happened to me twice now - and is a little worrying.

In trying to overclock my computer I have experienced two crashes - both have resulted in boot errors.

The crashes are accompanied by brief blue screens with some sort of dump on them.

The computer then immediately reboots before you read anything and then fails with the message

DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

On the first occasion I reinstalled windows. I now have the problem again and was wondering what to do.

Obviously, I could reinstall windows but

(i) Is there something else I could try
(ii) Anyone else seen this - makes me nervous about using the system if everytime it crashes I am going to have to re-install everything
(iii) Why is it doing this - I have experienced loads of crashes with previous machines and they have required no more than a reboot.

Details
=====
Asus AN8-E
AMD64 3700
Geil Value RAM (2 x 1GB)
Segate Barracuda 160GB PATA (E-IDE)

Cheers,

Nigel
 
I've just managed to fix it - if you are interested .....

Powered off PC
Powered off PSU (using switch on PSU or unplug)
Power on PSU
Turn on PC
Boots fine

The crash must cause the HDD to get in a weird state and needs to be completely powered off to reset.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
Crashing because of RAM.. the BSOD you see is the system trying to dump the RAM to the HDD... then it shuts down.

This means the HDD is mid-write and needs all power to it cut (so it's arm resets to it's resting position).

Hence your problem and they way you've fixed it..


hope this helps some :)
 
Not sure about the RAM.

In both cases the RAM was not being pushed hard (200MHz and 204MHz) and I have had it running at 225MHz on a 12 hour memtest without any problems.

The CPU was running high in both cases 2.75GHz and 2.86GHz.

I more inclined to think its the PSU - I am running an Enermax 350W PSU in the hope that I don't need to upgrade the PSU. The Enermax has been a good PSU and actually has good specs (better 12V rating than some 450W supplies I have seen) but I agree that it is probably right on the edge of its capability.

My system

Asus A8N-E
Athlon64 3700+
Geil Value RAM (2 x 1GB)
Radeon X1800 XT
Seagate Barracuda 160GB HDD
LG DVD Writer
Floppy Drive
Case Fan
Arctic Freezer 64 Pro CPU fan

Cheers,

Nigel
 
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