This is a bit of a follow on from this old thread.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17521795
but i'll give a quick run down
I built this machine in December of last year
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
NF4 SLI-DR EXPERT (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard
G.Skill 2GB DDR HZ PC4000 (2x1GB) CAS3 Dual Channel Kit
Zalman CNPS9500-LED Aero Flower (Socket 939/754/478/775) CPU Cooler
BFG GeForce 7800 GTX OC 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)
Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache
Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache
OcUK Value Floppy Drive
NEC ND4550 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black)
Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Silver Aluminium Midi-Tower Case
Enermax Noisetaker 600W EG701AX-VE(W) SFMA ATX2.0 SLI Compliant PSU
I started having crashing problems from the start, machine would work fine for hours then suddenly crash, the sound would go crazy for about 10-20 seconds then the machien would restart, though sometimes it would just instantly restart.
I put an Audigy 2 card from my old PC to see if this would solve the problem but it's still the same.
On recommendation from another thread i changed the boot option from dual core to single core and saw a massive increase in reliabilty. Though i had a problem that when i 1st turned the PC on and played a game it would crash within 5 minutes but once the machine restarted it would work fine. So when i turned the PC on i would instantly restart it, doing this i no longer had any crashing problems.
I used this method for months with very few problems, machine worked for days/weeks without a crash, until 2 weeks ago.
I've seen a steady increase in crashes, no matter what i do.
Last night my machine crashed while watching a trailer in Quicktime, when i restarted it, it kept constantly crashing.
Long story short, after messing around in safe mode i finally got it to stop crashing, but now certain devices fail to start, my firewire, network, sound card to name a few. I've tried uninstalling, reinstalling etc. with no success.
Believing it was a software problem i tried to use my Win64 partition, which i rarly use, but it has exactually the same problem, the same devices fail to start up.
Next step i tried was pysically removing the sound card and reseting the bios but that didn't help, i even tried reinstalling windows but setup stops at the "Setup is now starting Windows" message.
I don't think it's the RAM, i run a memtest on that months ago when i had all the crashing problems and it passed everytime, but when i get a chance tonight, i'll run anaother. So i think i'm looking at the motherboard/CPU/graphics card as the problem, unfortunatly i don't have replacement parts for any of those. The old machine i'm using at home now is an older AMD model and uses a AGP card.
Any ideas on what i can do to test these remaining parts?
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17521795
but i'll give a quick run down
I built this machine in December of last year
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
NF4 SLI-DR EXPERT (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard
G.Skill 2GB DDR HZ PC4000 (2x1GB) CAS3 Dual Channel Kit
Zalman CNPS9500-LED Aero Flower (Socket 939/754/478/775) CPU Cooler
BFG GeForce 7800 GTX OC 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)
Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache
Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache
OcUK Value Floppy Drive
NEC ND4550 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black)
Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Silver Aluminium Midi-Tower Case
Enermax Noisetaker 600W EG701AX-VE(W) SFMA ATX2.0 SLI Compliant PSU
I started having crashing problems from the start, machine would work fine for hours then suddenly crash, the sound would go crazy for about 10-20 seconds then the machien would restart, though sometimes it would just instantly restart.
I put an Audigy 2 card from my old PC to see if this would solve the problem but it's still the same.
On recommendation from another thread i changed the boot option from dual core to single core and saw a massive increase in reliabilty. Though i had a problem that when i 1st turned the PC on and played a game it would crash within 5 minutes but once the machine restarted it would work fine. So when i turned the PC on i would instantly restart it, doing this i no longer had any crashing problems.
I used this method for months with very few problems, machine worked for days/weeks without a crash, until 2 weeks ago.
I've seen a steady increase in crashes, no matter what i do.
Last night my machine crashed while watching a trailer in Quicktime, when i restarted it, it kept constantly crashing.
Long story short, after messing around in safe mode i finally got it to stop crashing, but now certain devices fail to start, my firewire, network, sound card to name a few. I've tried uninstalling, reinstalling etc. with no success.
Believing it was a software problem i tried to use my Win64 partition, which i rarly use, but it has exactually the same problem, the same devices fail to start up.
Next step i tried was pysically removing the sound card and reseting the bios but that didn't help, i even tried reinstalling windows but setup stops at the "Setup is now starting Windows" message.
I don't think it's the RAM, i run a memtest on that months ago when i had all the crashing problems and it passed everytime, but when i get a chance tonight, i'll run anaother. So i think i'm looking at the motherboard/CPU/graphics card as the problem, unfortunatly i don't have replacement parts for any of those. The old machine i'm using at home now is an older AMD model and uses a AGP card.
Any ideas on what i can do to test these remaining parts?
