NF7-S and Random Drive Corruptions - Please help!

Marakith

Marakith

Marakith

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I'm desperate for advice and hope that someone here can help me.

I have had an NF7-S motherboard rig for over 3 years. I recently upgraded to another machine and decided to give the old rig to my mother.


I'm running:
NF7-S (v2)
2x SATA HDDs (not in raid)
GeForce 6800GT
1Gb RAM
All at stock


I reformatted the drive and installed Windows again. This time, I even upgraded to Service Pack 2.


To install Windows, I had to press F6 in order to install some Silicon Image drivers to get the drives recognised. I am NOT running a RAID array, but have found that the only way to get Windows to see the drives is via the Silicon Image driver.


I took the PC over to my mum's house and set it up. One thing that scared me a little was that the PC refused to power up first time. The Mobo LED went faint and died slowly after power was turned on. I checked the cables, saw that nothing noticeable was amiss and tried again. This time it started up.

About at week later, the PC got a Blue Screen of Death. It went into an infinite loop of bootup and reboot. Over and over. The BSOD flashed up so fast you could barely see it, so I got windows (using F8) to allow me to see it and saw: UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME. I fixed it using CHKDSK /R.

Someone advised me that perhaps the drive was on its way out. So I replaced it and reinstalled windows. It failed again with a week. My mum completely lost confidence in the Rig and I setup her old PC again.

I'd like my partner (who lives with me) to use the PC. That way I'm around when the thing goes wrong. So I setup windows again. This time it died after two weeks. My partner uses the PC a lot less than my mum does.

This time, the NTFS.SYS is corrupted. I can't get into recovery console and I can't overwrite the windows install. I always get BSOD when these things start to inspect the system...


I have:

1] Replaced the hard-drive
2] Switched off Quick startup in the BIOS, so that a memory test is
performed on startup. I've noticed that the memory counts up to the
full Gig. then starts again. That's not right, is it?
3] Run Memtest for 8 hours with no reported problems.
4] Installed an SP1 version of windows then upgraded to SP2.
5] Installed a version of windows with SP2 already on it.
6] Considered swapping the PSU. But have been told this probably isn't
the problem.
7] Replaced the cables between the Motherboard and the SATA drives in
case they were faulty.

I'd love to know if there's some sort of monitoring software that can pinpoint the problem, or if this is a known problem with Abit, Silicon Image and Service Pack 2?

Once I feel confident of a strategy to stop this recurring, I'll FDISK the drive and reinstall Windows (for the fifth time now!).

Would be really grateful for your advice.
 
try swapping the psu anyway, its not time consuming todo if you have 1 lyeing about, and after 3 years it may well have been half baked and the move finished it.

tripple ram count - i think a c-mos reset then clear escd (or whatever its called in bios) will stop it, but it doesnt matter - esp as memtest passes fine.

have you checked cpu temps + voltages in the bios?
make sure the northbridge fan still works, my NF7-s fan lasted about a week befor it gave up.
 
Had a lot of issues with those controllers and SATA back in the day when it was new, mostly with RAID but sometimes standalone drives too. What revision (1.2,2.0 etc..) of the board do you have? how old/new is the BIOS? Tried newer drivers?
 
Scanned through the post so nto sure of issue entirely, but I had something liek this before, turned out to be a faulty serial ATA connector on the NF7-S board. Change the port, see if it fixes anything.

If it does get an IDE to Serial ATA adaptor, if you have a 2nd hard drive thats Serial ATA that is.
 
Thanks for all the replies so far.

Mobo is NF7-S v2.0. Bios is version 26 I think. I'll flash to the latest ASAP.

I'm not using RAID. I just seem to have to use the Silicon Image drivers to recognise the drives in the first place.

I might do the PSU, then. There is a shop next door to my office (major PC retailer) selling 400W Jeantech PSUs. These any good?

CPU is cool as a cucumber - will check the Northbridge fan tonight. Not sure if it was still spinning.

When I had the PC myself, I did connect and disconnect the SATA cables from the motherboard many many times. Perhaps I've worn them out. I think there are only 2 SATA ports and I have 2 SATA drives connected already. I could go without the secondary disk for a while as an experiment, I guess...

It would be nice to track the corruption as it happens. Any good software tools I can use to see what is happening more quickly than waiting 2 weeks for a BSOD?

Thanks again!
 
Hello,

Someone somewhere else mentioned changing timings in the BIOS to prevent a timeout.

After a fresh install of windows the other day, I've noticed that the problem keeps coming back even after this change.

I'm now thinking about trying to replace the SATA controller (using a separate card on an IDE slot) - they're quite cheap and less work than replacing the PSU, so logically the best thing for me to try first.

Will I need to reinstall Windows from scratch or should it be OK?

Thanks!
 
Start up windows with your hard disk still connected to the onboard SATA with the pci SATA card installed on the motherboard, in windows install the drivers, remove the hard disk from the onboard controller and onto the PCI card, should be fine.
 
Installed the card - ironically it uses the Silicon Image 3112 chip as well!

Every time I started up Windoze I ran a CHKDSK and every time it reported failures, even after just doing a CHKDSK /R or CHKDSK /F.

So now it looks like perhaps a new PSU is in order, or maybe a sledgehammer..... :mad:
 
Hello,

Short update on this one:

I gave up on the rig entirely.

Then one day I tried to power it up and the PSU had died so I went down the shops and bought a cheapy and installed it.

The rig now runs like a charm - so it must have been the PSU all along.

Thanks for your help!
 
nf7-s v2 was known for sata corruption, the latest bios sorted it out. that was bios 27 i think.
i have a nf7-s v2 board, awsome bit of hardware.
 
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