Black outs

[Rondog]

I've had it, I lack the time and patients to diagnose this myself.

Synptoms:

Random black outs and reboot during gaming (at first): Bolted 120mm fan to card, seemed to work at first, then failed, replaced card, seemed to work at first.

Then it started blacking out at more random times, during the night while downloading.

Replaced PSU. Seemed to work at first, then failed, added 2x 80mm blowholes to the side of the case, worked at first then failed.

Next ideas?

[Wolf2000me]

So every time you try something it seems to work at first. Is that because it takes slightly longer to either black out or BSOD? Does it BSOD at all? If it does and it reboots instantly you might want to uncheck that option so you can read what Bills' blue has to say.

Try priming your CPU, if no prob for a few hours try memtest86 and check the memory.

I don't know about the system but you might want to try to check your caps for any anomalies. Or pull out everything you don't really need and see if it helps. Start with one stick of memory, all non OS hard disks, audio if not onboard of course. Well, you know....

[Rondog]

Black out, no BSOD. Both checked out.

I think i might just claim the board and chip and extended warranties.

[Samuknow]

Just a thought. Electrical contacts become "dirty" in equipment all the time. This usually causes intermittent problems and sometimes failure. Re seating a card should take care of the problem. But what if there is enough contamination that it does not. You could get signal issues and voltage fluctuations. I wonder if tuner or electrical contact cleaner would clean out the AGP and PCI slots on a mobo?

[Rondog]

Beat the hell out of my machine for an hour and a half tonight in CSS and it didnt die, but it rebooted itself last night. Hmm, very strange.

[Samuknow]

Get a stick and wave it in front of it in a threatening manner.

[Wolf2000me]

hehe yeah, maybe some voodoo might help too, or threathen it by looking up some hardware vendors' site ^^

Are you sure it's not a virus causing this? I've had a similar problem because of a virus. Run some online scanners to be sure.

And maybe pull out your PCI(E) and/or AGP cards and vacuum the board somewhat.

[Rondog]

Originally Posted by Wolf2000me

hehe yeah, maybe some voodoo might help too, or threathen it by looking up some hardware vendors' site ^^

Are you sure it's not a virus causing this? I've had a similar problem because of a virus. Run some online scanners to be sure.

And maybe pull out your PCI(E) and/or AGP cards and vacuum the board somewhat.

I went one step better, dismantled the entire thing and went hack with an air compressor. Yes, I held fans still while i did this.

No virus, fresh rebuild.

[Favu]

We were getting actual black outs today - turns out water is running into the walls and down to a switch box. Fricken scary. Damn welsh craftsmanship....

I think it might be the motherboard, it can account for all sorts of wonderful problems. I would try prime 95, to check the CPU and memtest for the RAM. Other than that your actual power could be iffy, also worth checking out.

[Rondog]

Nope, was the same at old house. Problem first began at old house, and my mother has a similarly specced system on the same circuit, and she doesnt experience any of this.

Can prime95 and memtest for hours without fault. However, I remember reading an article by cadaveca which I just remembered:

Can your prime for hours but your system crashes during games? Your northbridge could be over heating

Does anyone disagree?

Favu: That is quite scary, the whole house could have burnt down.

[cloasters]

If you're having blackouts maybe it's time to lay off the alcohol. Aussies have reps as prodigious drinkers but the wear and tear is really rough on you. *BT, DT. No offense intended!

*Been there, done that.


Kidding! Kidding! This is a real bugger of a problem, sorry that you have to deal with such a recalcitrant computer.

[Favu]

Originally Posted by Rondog

Does anyone disagree?

Favu: That is quite scary, the whole house could have burnt down.

Nope, I would definatly stick a fan in the case just to see if you can bodge some extra cooling and if that improves things for you.

And yeah, it wasn't fun. Luckily the circuit breaker works

[Rondog]

Originally Posted by cloasters

If you're having blackouts maybe it's time to lay off the alcohol. Aussies have reps as prodigious drinkers but the wear and tear is really rough on you. *BT, DT. No offense intended!

*Been there, done that.


Kidding! Kidding! This is a real bugger of a problem, sorry that you have to deal with such a recalcitrant computer.

None taken. I was afterall born with a can in my hand. I do come from NSW after all.

[DaveBC]

Entertaining thread On the serious side. I had an AGP board, it was a Gigabyte GA7VAX with a Radeon 9700pro. It would just lose signal for no reason and go black. No matter if it was under load or not. Only way to get the signal back was to restart. Drove me crazy for months because the 9700 pro was the 'card' of its day. I tried windows settings, hardware settings, newer and older drivers/settings, etc. Got a little relief with some AGP settings. I think i used 4xAGP, no Fastwrites, with an older set of VIA 4 in 1 chipset drivers (KT400). I never actually solved the problem completely.

But here is the remarkable part. That same board, processor, and ram is currently still up and running flawlessly with Geforce 2GTs/pro GPU. And has been for four years since. The only thing I can say, pure speculation on my part. Was a chipset incompatibility with the ATI driver. Because that same 9700pro card is fine in its new home. (nforce 2 chipset).

Good Luck please let us know if you get it figured out.

Dave

[Rondog]

Thanks for the tip, however, it was working previously.

[jillsandr]

Hi Hallo
Will you give me five countries fames for tourism?
Thanks a lot

[Wolf2000me]

Originally Posted by jillsandr

Hi Hallo
Will you give me five countries fames for tourism?
Thanks a lot

Are you joking or did you post in the wrong thread? Or are you Chrisbard in disguise?
Which region are you talking about?

Rondog...

If it was working before it surely is a component failing you. In terms of northbridge, that's possible but usually an overheating northbridge causes memory errors which would translate to errors in Prime95, unless the memory controller is not on the northbridge as with Athlon64 setups.
You might want to consider posting your specs

Have you checked the event viewer? It might give you some idea, especially if there are storage related problems.

Think back, as you said it was working before, what you might have changed on your rig that might cause this. Just a single piece of software might do that trick. What are your systems temperatures?

[Rondog]

Athlon 64 3200+ socket 754
Gigabyte K8VT800 Pro
2x512mb generic RAM
Gigabyte 9800 Pro (recently RA'ed)
1x 120GB IDE
1x 320GB SATAII (@ SATAI)
2x side mounted exhaust fans

No new software, recent formatted. CPU tops out at 50 degrees C according to BIOS.

[DaveBC]

Originally Posted by Rondog

Athlon 64 3200+ socket 754
Gigabyte K8VT800 Pro
2x512mb generic RAM
Gigabyte 9800 Pro (recently RA'ed)
1x 120GB IDE
1x 320GB SATAII (@ SATAI)
2x side mounted exhaust fans

No new software, recent formatted. CPU tops out at 50 degrees C according to BIOS.

Do you have another video card that you can experiment with? Like Matrox, or Nvidia?

[Rondog]

Not an AGP. I'm still trying to acquire one. But when this first started, I blamed the video card and got it replaced under warranty, my current card is new.