New machine problems - doing my head in!

[dfawkes]

Hi.

Just put together a new machine and to say I'm having problems is the understatement of the (new) year!

My new components are:

- E6600 w/ Zalman 9500
- GeIL 2x1Gb PC6400 DDR2
- Asus P5B
- HIS X1950XT 256Mb
- WD 320GB SATA drive
- Tagan 530W PSU

I also have an old IDE Maxtor 200Gb drive and DVD-RW connected to the Micron IDE controller. The SATA drive is connected to SATA1.

Basically, my list of problems includes but is not restricted to:

- video corruption, followed by the screen freezing, before blacking out for a second, the machine beeping once and then the screen comes back on and active. Sometimes however this will BSOD complaining about ati2dvag.dll and an infinite loop.
- major hassles trying to get things installed. E.g. when extracting WinXP SP2, it would stop at random files saying they were corrupt, and if it did manage to extract them all then it would complain about being unable to install the catalog and then fail.
- .NET 3.0 crashes halfway through the install
- in fact, lots of things crash halfway through install
- random restarts
- when (re)installing Windows, the SATA partition shows up as unpartitioned (which I'd partitioned during previous Windows installs

I've tried everything I can think of and reinstalled Windows about 20 times now (LOL). I'm completely at a loss as to what to do - I've spent a lot of money and the thing just won't work.

Can anyone offer any advice? Unfortunately this is an entirely new rig as I moved to PCI-E so I don't have access to other graphics cards, memory, etc.

 

[semi-pro waster]

Have you tried running Memtest86? That is worthwhile doing because some of the problems you mention can be related to dodgy Ram, in fact have you tried using just one stick of Ram for troubleshooting purposes?

Does your old Maxtor have an OS installed? i.e. can you boot using that drive and see if the problems are related to the new SATA drive? Failing that have you tried the SATA drive in the other SATA controller just in case that is at fault? Have you tried using different cables?

Sorry for all the questions, there are probably more I haven't thought of yet but the above might help narrow down the cause.

 

[thefishdude]

you can try reseating your ram. the memory sounds like it could be causing issues also check in the bios at what voltage the ram is getting my motherboard defaults ram at 1.8v but ram you have requires 1.9-2.3 soo if its getting to lower volatge could be causing aproblem trying rasing it to 2.0 volts.

you could also try installing windows with only the sata drive installed.

does ,net3 come with *** graphics card or are you downloading that ???

i allways tend to update drivers for motherboard first then do windows updates if there are any then install the gfx.

 

[EffBee]

A lot of your problems seem to involve installs - Faulty hard drive, dodgy data cable to hard drive damaged mobo connection where sata drive plugs in? The same questions need to be asked about your CD/DVD reader as well.

Are you sure all relevant power connectors are plugged into mobo and video card?

DiD you flash your BIOS, if so did you clear the old BIOS settings and configure new ones.

Is everything set at safety settings in BIOS and drivers. Can you get it stable with no optimal settings/overclocking etc.

My gut feeling is screaming memory or power supply.

 

[dfawkes]

Thanks for the replies guys and I think I may have found the cause of my problems.

I ran MemTest86 (I thought I'd already tried that, but I guess I hadn't!) and it failed with about 8 errors on test 7, so you were correct to suspect the memory! I've got an RMA number for it, but I've since tried the machine with just one stick of RAM in and MemTest worked fine with either stick in? So that suggests it's not an issue with the RAM but the motherboard instead?

I've got one stick in and am in Windows at the moment and not having any problems, so it definitely sounds like that was the root of the problem, so I guess I just need to know what to do to fix it?

I've flashed the P5B to the latest BIOS. I've only tried the RAM in slots A1 and B1, so I guess I should try them in A2 and B2 to see if it's just one channel that's the problem?

All settings in BIOS are at default. I wanted to check the RAM timings were correct, but can't seem to find where you adjust them in the BIOS? Would that be a possible cause?

Oh, and I'll also go check the RAM voltage!

 

[Arge]

keep us posted as we really need to get to the bottom of all these geil ram problems.

And iv just ordered sum with my new rig and want it to work !! lol

 

[dfawkes]

I've upped the RAM voltage to 2.1V, tried all different RAM settings and just can't get past MemTest with both sticks no matter what I do.

 

[V|per]

Probably a completely stupid suggestion, but is there a posibility that geil have supplied you with an unmatched pair? It wouldn't be the 1st time it's happened. Try both sticks, but turn off dual ddr... (or something along those lines )