some REALLY WEIRD ! goings on

Combat squirrel · 13 May 2006 at 13:27

Hey all my spec is:

DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR EXPERT (Bios 12/07/05)
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ @ 2805mhz, 1.52v - XP-120 H/S
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2
Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900XT@XTX 512MB PCI-E x16
SoundBlaster XFI Music
2x74gb Raptors RAID0-System drive
Hitachi 250gb sata2,swap
Max10 300gb Pata,
Max9 80gb Sata,
Samsung 160gb Pata,
Seagate 7200.9 80gb SATA2 swap
external USB2 NEC DVD,
FSP 700Watt PSU

Now the other day I was playing BF2, it crashed, I rebooted and got:

NTLDR is missing, how annoying,

After a couple of weeks messing around and having to boot off an A: drive to make NTLDR work I found out it was my MAX9 harddisk, when its unplugged it works fine, plug it in with windows running system become unstable after ~2 mins.

FINE i thought, seems BF2 crashing screwed my MAX9 sata disk, it is about 3 years old to be fair. I dont get how this drive makes it not boot though, its not a swap file drive or anything, it simply has games on it.

SO ON WITH THE PROBLEMS,

I remove the MAX9 drive completely from my rig, boot up,and all my drives are there (in my computer in windows) apart from the Samsung 160gb Pata, odd I thought, switch off again, switch back on and get a:

MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION error, wtf :confused:

Check all is plugged in, looks fine, boot again and still get the error. Switch off and unplug data and power cable from Samsung drive and now seems to be working fine :confused:

Iv done research and machine check exception errors nearly all relate to a PSU problem, how on earth can it be that ? its a 700WATT FSP, about a month old !, my old 485watt enermax handled the system with a x1800XT 512 in no problems, i only got this 700watt as i thought i was pushing it.

Also its been running a month with all the drives in working fine, what all of a sudden has led to this maddness ? any ideas anyone ?

Combat squirrel · 13 May 2006 at 14:11

Oh and another thing, my voltages are abit low, they were spot on with enermax 485watt, this psu is:

3.3v = 3.28
5v = 4.75
12v = 11.96

Combat squirrel · 13 May 2006 at 14:30

on 485 the pci-e was 18a

700 fsp pci-e is certified 15a but is being recertified 18a apparently

as for the rest of it:

+5V 0.5A 30.0A +-5% 50mV P-P
+12V1 0.0A 15.0A +-5% 120mV P-P
+12V2 0.0A 15.0A +-5% 120mV P-P
+12V3 0.9A 15.0A +-5% 120mV P-P
+12V4 0.1A 15.0A +-5% 120mV P-P
+3.3V 0.8A 36.0A +-5% 50mV P-P
-12V 0.0A 0.5A +-10% 120mV P-P
+5Vsb 0.0A 2.0A +-5% 50mV P-P

(all 15a will read 18a soon apparently)

the 485 watt enermax has lower +5v amps etc on the psu, think it was 28 off top head, but its been working a month so why fail now ?

Combat squirrel · 13 May 2006 at 15:35

hp7909 said:
Question is, what's your system temps - especially hard disk temps?? & could (if its possible) the SATA & or PATA controller be overloading? I'm no expert, but possibly hard disk and or mobo issue? Have you tried with less hard disks?

System temp is:

CPU 25c
NF4 chipset 40c
Harddisks range from 22 to 32C

so i dont think its that, now its not picking up the SATA2 seagate drive :confused:

its just vanished even though plugged in, its been working fine though, whats wrong

Combat squirrel · 13 May 2006 at 18:40

well yes the maxtors gone, but it lastest 3 years.

NOW im getting the machine check error ONLY when the samsung drive is attached, WHY would it do this ? not plugged in works fine, any ideas? what exactly is machine check error ?

Checked M$ website says causes are:

• System bus errors
• Memory errors that may include parity or Error Correction Code (ECC) problems
• Cache errors in the processor or hardware
• Translation Lookaside Buffers (TLB) errors in the processor
• Other CPU-vendor specific detected hardware problems
• Vendor-specific detected hardware problems

However my Maxtor PATA on the same controller works fine :confused:

Ran MEMTEST 86+ works fine, NO errors whatsoever

I suppose in theory 2 harddrives could go at the same time, but a samsung ?

Combat squirrel · 14 May 2006 at 00:33

any clues?

Combat squirrel · 14 May 2006 at 11:39

says theres an error on disk controller harddisk0 yesterday at 12, but thats when i was messing with the dead maxtor, not the samsung (which still dont work)

Combat squirrel · 14 May 2006 at 16:52

trojan698 said:
This may sound obvious, but have you tried reinstalling windows?

well yeah obviously, but thats what im avoiding right now, as got exams on and that, I put the Samsung in a USB2 enclosure for now and its working fine :confused:

, why work on a USB enclosure and not directly plugged in mainboard?

Combat squirrel · 14 May 2006 at 17:40

acharris said:
Hi, a SATA driver problem this sounds like to me, or the SATA controller on-board is failing or the NB is overheating, though unlikely. Also the voltages are fine and not low, as there is a 5% - 10% on figures anyway, depending on how paranoid you are about the voltages in a system.

Anthony

would that apply to the samsung drive though ? as its a PATA harddrive