My system is unstable. Is it the bios update, or memory or other?

K

Kazatan

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Ok i'll try and get as much system info in here as i can :-))


I have builta new system using these components:

MSI K8T Neo-FIS2R,
AMD Athlon 64 3200+,
Corsair 1GB DDR XMS3200LLPT TwinX CAS2 (2 x 512mb sticks),
1 60gb hd, 1 new 160gb 8mg cache (ata 133)
GForce 4 ti 4800 SE,
Sound Blaster Audigy 2,
Windows XP (Fresh Install),
QTEC Dual Fan Gold 400W PSU (im sorry but i dont know the max amps its not on their website :biggthumbsdown:)

Now it worked, and was stable (with FSB OCed to 210) until just yesterday, now there are a few things which happened before i got the first crash. But first this is the nature of the crash:

It appears to happen whilst playing games, ive crashed whilst playing counterstrike, rainbow six 3 but i cant think of a time its crashed just on the desktop. It takes up to half an hour, and seems completely random in its timing. The screen just freezes, sound all stops and the only way to do anything again is to press the little shiny restart button.

Now onto my guessed reasons:

The first thing i did was overclock the FSB a little further, i used the MSI core center utility and let it run on auto, everything went well i was overclocking in 3 mhz jumps. until i got to 219, at this point the monitor went into power saving mode and the system had hung. the reset switch didnt work so had to hold down the power button untilit turned off. At the reload i went into bios and it had been set back to 200FSB, so i left it there.
Later on that day (day b4 yesterday (18th feb)) i used the MSI live update utility to flash the bios to 1.20, it flashed fine and after i reset all the CMOS settings it booted fine too. It ran stable for a few hours even when playing the games mentioned above, until suddenly in CS it hung. Now it hangs quickly in Rainbow Six 3, but not always so quickly in CounterStrike.

I read on this forum about changing the timings on the ram because this might be the problem, i changed in bios the trcd setting from auto to "3CLK" but this hasnt helped :undecided:

Absolutely any suggestions would be appreciated,

thanks, dan :confused2:.
 
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Bas is running a different motherboard. I've not noticed many people switch back once they've gone to BIOS 1.20 on the K8T, but it's worth a try. I've never heard of problems flashing back to old BIOS versions - you should be OK.
 
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LOL Bas! I've just finally noticed what your avatar is all about! All these weeks I'd been wondering about the story behind a guy hitting an exploding Intel egg whilst standing in a pile of mud next to a TV with a wobbling dog turd on top!

:mad:
 
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its happened with bios 1.1 too fs

evul little bu**er this crash is.


my system is in the exact same state as it was b4 there were any problems at all, it went for a week without a crash. but now going back to that same system it doesnt work :nooo:
 
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So, did you test with other memory yet?
Have you tried formatting the harddisk with a Win98-boot-disk to see if it has problems?

Bad-sectors can cause this.....
Corsair can cause this....
 
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ive run the windows tests on my hard disk that find bad sectors and it couldnt find any, and i havent tried ram yet because i havent got hold of any to try yet. Surely tho, if it was RAM it would crash in other such ram intensive games, such as Championship manager, or when i run burn-in-test on the ram.
 
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I have seen this with another guy too....
He had Corsair too, he then tried another brand and it still was unstable....
So he tried another brand again....still not believing it....
Only the third brand of ram ran without a single problem....
His system with the Corsair ram would run stable for 2 day's then the next rubbish would start again....
Memtest didn't reveal any problems at all...memtest is a good tool, but can't detect all problems....
Funny thing was, the first Corsair was RMA's and Corsair replaced it with the same ram saying the older was bad, the new sticks run fine.....
Testing the first set of Corsair in a P4 would run just fine....
 
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So far it happens only during games, right? Does everthing else work well? What are your system temps? When everything worked fine was the case open, and then after you buttoned up the case the problems began? Just some questions to ask yourself. I had the same problem, I got everything together, but left the case open out on the floor in case I needed to change anything. As soon as I put the cover on and put the case in my desk I was getting all of the problems your were having, including the running the wrong memtest. I was conviced it was my memory. I saw you got a new PSU but which one? (I may have missed that) Maybe your GFX card fan has stopped working. Good luck.
 
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You can run a search on my posts on this site (e.g. here) if you wish to trace my two-month journey to stability and I have a couple of helpful posts over at Corsair, notably this one. However, I will attempt to write a short summary as I hope to help you in your troubleshooting.

Initially, which I had forgotten until recently, I had a tough go at installing Windows XP and thought that I had not built my system properly. After getting Windows XP installed, by taking out one of the memory modules I think :confused:, I then proceeded down a road paved with issues which I will list so you might identify:

CRC errors
BSOD
Prime95 failures (rounding errors)
Memtest+ errors (using the test that includes BIOS testing)
Crashing during 3d Games
Hanging during various activities
Corrupt files
Corrupt downloads (even from sites such as microsoft.com)

What I did first was buy a different PSU which I am still glad I did. That didn't solve the problem so I concluded that it was my HD, the Maxtor 120GB, so I RMA'd it. Still had the same problems. I had tried to sell my Corsair RAM as I thought there wasn't anything wrong with it. However, the person I was going to sell it to ended up finding errors on his non-athlon64 rig. So, in the end, I tried some other RAM that worked even though it was DDR333. I tried all the tests and everything seemed to check out. I then RMA'd my Corsair and received it back last week and it is all stable, fast and I am very happy. Corsair had told me that their production tests do not last longer than 24 hours and that one of my modules failed after they retested it using further testing.

My thinking is that there is a really good chance that it is NOT your board. Secondly, it is likely NOT your PSU since you have that sweet Enermax. :biggthumbsup: Next off, I seriously doubt it's your CPU as it would be a fairly noticeable issue. It IS weird that you didn't get errors before and get them now. I would make sure that you have properly flashed to BIOS 1.20 and that you have cleared your board's CMOS by resetting the jumper. Oh, and most importantly, you should get another module of RAM and test your system - this is IMPERATIVE. Also, go ahead and consider getting the RMA process going for your Corsair as the Winbond CH-5 IC are running low and becoming hard to come by. Not unlike their better manufactured and better performing predecessor, the BH-5, which ceased production altogether last September.

And yes, I am the one Bas is referring to. :mad:
 
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