Help with mysterious crashes...

Diggsy

Diggsy

Diggsy

Soldato
Joined
31 Aug 2007
Posts
4,854
Guys, I need your help or advice here. My system is as per my sig.

I am having a strange problem lately with mysterious crashes. My system will be ticking along nicely, then all of a sudden it just restarts. No BSOD, no lockups, nothing. It just seems to turn itself off and back on again.

System log etc doesn't show anything unusual, except I keep seing ftdisk and disk errors randomly, but they are listed as coming from my data (D) drive, not my System Raid (C).

Now, I have tried playing around with voltage settings etc in the bios and it still happens. The really strange thing though is that it is so random. I got one tonight, but that was the first for almost a week.

I have no idea what is going on. The only thing I can think of is my PSU (Tagan TG480-U01) but surely that would show other symptoms?

I can run Prime95 Small FFT's for hours and it doesn't cause the issue. I can also loop 3dMark06 over and over again. It seems to happen more when I am just browsing the web or something else that doesn't use many resources. Really weird.

For info I am running XP Pro fully updated. My temps are 40c on the hottest core idle, rising to 65c while Priming.

I would appreciate any help and/or advice. I have been building/tweaking for coming on 10 years now and this is the 1st I have been really stumped.:confused:
 
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To be honest with you I haven't ran it long enough at default to know! :D I just assumed that when it will Prime all day long and run everything else I chuck at it at 3ghz that it was stable, but obviously there is something not quite right.

I guess I could try it at default settings, but given how random the crashes are, it might not help me much, especially as I will quickly get the itch to bump it up again!

One thing I did notice the last time I had the case side off arranging some cables was that the heatspreader on one of my RAM modules appears to be bowed in the middle a little, meaning that one small section isn't making good contact with the chips. I wonder if maybe that chip is overheating? Could that cause the restarts? Maybe i'll run Memtest and see what happens, or is there anything else that will generate loads of heat on my RAM, preferably within Windows?
 
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Yeah, all well connected. I actually had the whole thing apart a week or so ago to reseat the North/South/PWM Heatsink because the PWM temps were aweful! I checked all the connections then and they are spot on.

Hmmm, just a thought, maybe my North/Southbridge is overheating since I reseated them? Would that be a possible cause of restarts, or would they cause lockups first? I don't think they are the problem as I checked that I had good contact before re-applying the paste, but you never know!

I also used Ceramique, so it's not as if it was rubbish paste. And my PWM temps are 30c lower than before, so it's unlikely.

EDIT: To help diagnosis, here's what my voltages are set at....

CPU - 1.31v
CPU VTT - 1.3v
RAM - 1.95v
Northbridge - 1.4v
Southbridge - 1.55v
HTT - 1.25v

Watching uGuru at load, my CPU dips to 1.26v, everything else is pretty much rock solid. 12v line never goes below 11.94v. Maybe the CPU just needs more juice? But why doesn't it crash in Prime etc???

Also memory is currently running at 5-5-5-15 2T, until I figure out what the issue is.

C1E and Speedstep are both enabled.
 
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Diggsy said:
C1E and Speedstep are both enabled.
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while you're trying to figure out the problem i'd disable them, don't need them messing about while you're trying to figure out the problem.

you mentioned the dent on the memory, have you tried running without it ?
 
Yeah, will try disabling them. And no I haven't tried without the RAM, but I might slap a fan over it and see how it goes. Thanks for the help thus far.
 
Seems to be fine again today, without making any changes, but unfortunately that doesn't mean it's stable, because the crashes are so random. Ordered a OCZ XTC Memory Cooler and gonna slap that over my memory and see if it helps.

I guess it could also be that I am not giving the Northbridge enough voltage. I have read that running 4x 1gb can really tax the Northbridge. Perhaps if I still get random crashes I will up it another notch. There's a 40mm fan on there and on the PWM's, so cooling should be fine.
 
Okay, just got another crash tonight. This time on reboot it decided it needed to run diskcheck, which found and had to repair some errors. Now I am guessing these errors were caused by the sudden power loss, would I be right?

I have now taken my RAM back to 2.0v to see if it helps stabilize things.

I am also gonna boost the Northbridge to 1.5v and see how it goes. The really weird thing is it almost always happens when browsing. I have yet to have it happen while gaming. Could it maybe be the C1E or Speedstep?

This is becoming a major headscratcher. I would appreciate any input you guys have.
 
yeah the crash could well cause the check disk run.

agree that it seems odd it doesnt happen when gaming, but does when browsing, obvious thing is that speedstep etc is dropping a voltage that is too low for the system to run.

set the system to default speeds but you're current voltages, then run with c1e/speedstep disabled.
 
Thanks again for your advice. Yeah that sounds like a distinct possibility. Going to try that the next time I reboot, probably later today. Hopefully it will stabilise things. Only problem is that if it does, then my chip will run a lot hotter at idle. But I would rather have it stable than cool to be fair.

I guess it's just going to be a case of trial and error with a few settings until I find the mystery cause.
 
can;t see it on you're spec, what psu are you using ?

tbh i'm not aware of many settings that are likely to cause problems when you browse but not when you game.
 
Tagan TG480-U01, the older and IMO better of the Tagans, before they started splitting the rails.

I know it could be at fault, but given that it's flawless at full load, I doubt it. Might change it soon anyway as I am sure it has to work almost at max with this setup at full load.
 
Odd, getting the EXACT same problem, Although my PC is a little more dated than yours :p

Athlon 4400/2Gb OCZ3200/1900xt, I have a feeling my poor old FSP PSU is on its last legs, shame its served me well but I dont get paid till Friday and I want to play Portal. :(:(
 
You could try going Right Click on my computer>Properties>Advanced>Start up and recovery... and then untick the box that says automatically restart. That should hopefully leave up a BSOD if there is one. My friends machine rebooted whenever disks where inserted etc and never displayed a BSOD until we unticked that box.

Hopefully that might help you discover the issue. :)
 
mattbill said:
You could try going Right Click on my computer>Properties>Advanced>Start up and recovery... and then untick the box that says automatically restart. That should hopefully leave up a BSOD if there is one. My friends machine rebooted whenever disks where inserted etc and never displayed a BSOD until we unticked that box.

Hopefully that might help you discover the issue. :)
Click to expand...


Yeah, funny I had forgot to do that, thanks. Will see what happens, although IIRC it should write an entry to the system log too, which I haven't seen.
 
I don't think it will write anything into the Event viewer unless it was an application or something software wise. Like the a reboot I had the other day about some Dr.Watson thing, later I found it was something within the XP OS <-- that would mention in the log. But if its not app or system error i dont think it does. My friend who is was getting the random reboots, it didnt show anything in the viewer. Although I could be wrong lol.
 
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