PC Rebuild just stops 20 mins after boot!

Sawbill · 28 Jan 2007 at 15:02

After over a year of working perfectly my motherboard died. (Actually the part that controlled the SATA disks - corrupting the system disk in the process.) Fortunately, it was still under warrenty so I had it replaced. Somewhat trustingly I spent a few hours rebuilding the PC. It boots up fine. Sits in the BIOS screens OK, where I think I have configured everythinh right.

Then I tried reinstalling the OS (win XP), and it just stopped responding. I tried memtest86+, and the memory is OK, but after ~20 minutes it too just stopped (the wall time stops going up, no response from keyboard). Same with any other diagnostic utility I can boot - works fine for a while and then just stops.

I am at a loss to know what to blame or what to do next. My first guess would be a temperature problem, but nothing feels that warm (the CPU temp never appears higher than 31deg - from BIOS).

Any thoughts?

Setup details are:
Gigabyte 8I915P Duo Pro MB
Pentium 4 3GHz
2x512 MB DDR memory

ghgh · 28 Jan 2007 at 15:05

What are the PSU voltages like in the BIOS for the 3.3v, 5v and 12v rail?

If the voltages look ok then try the system with just one stick of RAM and try both sticks one at a time IMO

Sawbill · 28 Jan 2007 at 18:29

ghgh said:
What are the PSU voltages like in the BIOS for the 3.3v, 5v and 12v rail?

The BIOS says that all voltages are "OK".

ghgh said:
If the voltages look ok then try the system with just one stick of RAM and try both sticks one at a time IMO

That did not work. The first stick ran memtest86+ for 18 mins, the scond stopped after only 3 mins.

I don't know if it makes a difference, but when it stops the screen just stops updating. It does not reboot or anything (as I would expect). Also it does not respond to Ctrl-Alt-Del. The reset switch does work.

Any more ideas?

ghgh · 28 Jan 2007 at 19:01

Running out of ideas unfortunately....it sounds like a faulty motherboard if its not the powersupply but it could still be the memory, do you have a different PC that could be used to test the RAM? It sounds like the memory is very dodgy has it been working in the PC before or has this problem always been around ever since the PC was built? I suspect that the RAM would have to be very faulty, possibly failing to boot the PC sometimes if it locks up in memtest86.

I dont have any more ideas sorry bud.

have you tried with the hard drive disconected and all PCI devices, very unlikely I know but if one of the former are faulty, it could cause a weird problem like you are having.

Sawbill · 28 Jan 2007 at 21:06

The machine was all working fine for over a year, until the motherboard died. I had it replaced and put all the components back in that had been working OK. (Except the disk, as the MB failure took the disk out - or it could have been the other way around.) So a faulty motherboard being sent back to me looks like a possibility.