Help me Diagnose my Problem

Mysteria · 2 Jul 2007 at 07:22

Recently my system has been locking up, rebooting and getting BSOD's whilst playing games and sometimes just in windows, I was also experiencing a few graphical anomilies, during gaming and windows use i would experiance a breif screen flash on my primary monitor like an overlay of a different screen that only appeared for a split second.
I decided to narrow down the problem so i began by running memtest86 for a couple of hours with no problems, thinking it may be a faulty drive I used a self booting HD Diagnostic utility which found no errors, I removed all non Essential hardware from the system (Sound card, NIC, Raid HD's & optical Drive) but the problem persisted.

I decided to do a fresh install of windows but now as soon as the installation gets to the Loading windows dialog the system hangs (2 or 3 mins from the start of the install) now the system will no longer boot past the part where it should load the GUI.

SYSTEM SPEC:
ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe
AMD A64 X2 4200+
Connect3D x1900XTX 512Mb
2Gb Crucial Balistix RAM
320Gb Western Digital Caviar HD ATA-100
2x80GB SATA drives Raid0
Corsair HX 520W PSU
Audigy 4 soundcard
Linksys WIFI PCI card
2x Optical Drives

Mysteria · 2 Jul 2007 at 16:04

As i stated in my last paragraph the system will now no longer boot in to the GUI of either the installation or the OS and even hangs on Ubuntu booted from CD.

As for Temps of the CPU I have never had a problem the system is well cooled 3x 120mm Fans, Idle temp is 38-44C Load is about 50-55c Ambient temp around 25-30c.

Voltage Fluctuations, (Unable to test under load)
VCORE: 1.391 -1.393
3.3V: 3.212 - 3.228
5V: 5.004V - 5.032
12V: 12.107V - stable

Mysteria · 2 Jul 2007 at 19:01

the system hangs with no error message the screen just sits there

Mysteria · 4 Jul 2007 at 18:33

Admiral Huddy said:
ok, when you say hang.. do you get any message. If the GUI part of the boot is stalling then there's normally a problem with the NTDLT file.

See if you can get your hands on boot disk from XP then copy the NTDLR, NTDETECT and BOOT.INI file onto your C: drive, then try again. You'll have to do this via DOS or the recovery console.

Done still the same,

however, you mention Ubuntu which is Linux which I've no idea about - sorry.

NP

You temps look fine.. I'm wondering if there is a problem with that HDD.. I know you said this has been checked but I had a HDD failure brought into me last week.. HDD diagnostics showed no errors but there was. It was replaced and everything was fine.

Hard Drive is brand new, did a complete reinstall when I installed it just over a month ago.

It might be worth grabbing a copy of UBCD from somewhere. Boot from this.. It's got a handful of useful tools which I swear by.

Thanks for the tip, downloaded this and ran through most of the diagnostics apps with no apparent errors although the system did reboot itself twice on different tests, which ran fine previously.

Since I started this thread I RMA'd my graphics card OCUK tested it and found no problems with it, so my next line of thinking is my PSU, I know there are only a few cases of this PSU failing on the forums but its the next logical step. My GF's brother has a spare relatively new Enermax 550W PSU of which he is lending me to test at the weekend, so until then thanks for your help.

Mysteria · 6 Jul 2007 at 19:25

Tried the PSU and managed to finish the re-install of windows, booted to windows but crashed just a few mins later with BSOD. IRQL_NOTLESS_OR_EQUAL was the error. Now it won't boot into windows just as before.
Tried another hard drive with previous install of XP that also failed.

So PSU changed, HD changed and OCUK tested GFX-still same problem. Ideas? Please.

Mysteria · 6 Jul 2007 at 21:53

Tried that just after making previous post-tried both sticks (one at a time) with both HD's that have windows installed. Couldn't boot into Safe Mode any time. And tried different RAM slots. Still dead.

Mysteria · 7 Jul 2007 at 18:37

Bit of an update, I installed an older processor A64 3500+ and the system booted in safe mode once then wouldnt boot at all again, with the systems persisting throughout the hardware changes the only common factor that i can see is the motherboard.

I have only one problem with replacing the motherboard and thats the data that i have on my raid array, How would i go about recovering this. would the array be compatible with another chipset etc...