A8N SLI Premium - severe boot up problems - help needed!

[Dave270164]

Hi,

Back in the summer I built a pc with the following specs:

Athlon 64 3200+
A8N SLI Premium motherboard
1GB, Ballistix BL12864Z503 memory
6800GT 256MB graphics card
530W Tagan 2Force T530-U22 power supply
2 x 160Gb Seagate Barracuda SATA drives

Everything worked fine up until 3 weeks ago when I had trouble restarting windows - I would end up with a black screen with just a flashing cursor in the upper left hand corner and have to shut down windows first in order to boot up again.

A few days later even shutting windows down first and then re-booting met with problems - I would either get that same black screen with the flashing cursor or it would post the first screen of information and then just freeze; very occasionally it would boot up windows as normal.

I found that turning the power supply off for long periods of time (i.e. overnight) resulted in a better chance of windows loading for some strange reason!

I've also found that the date is being reset to Jan 1 2003 on each failed boot up attempt and problems with BIOS. Most of the time when I hit the DEL button to change the settings it just freezes and the few times I've actually managed to get in there it just freezes when I hit the save/exit button.

I've tried re-flashing the bios with versions 1007, 1008 and 1009 but the problem persists. I also tried a windows XP repair several times and it froze at the same spot each time..... I did manage to do a full XP install again - no effect on the problem, and now on the rare occasion that I manage to boot windows up I get a BSOD within the hour.

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Dave

 

[CpuDesigner]

Your power supply may be the source of the problem as you indicate that turning it off for long periods of time increases the probability of booting windows. This symptom would likely indicate a heat related issue with the power supply or other component(s) (assuming other components are powered down similarly).

I'd suggest testing with an alternate known-good power supply as well as inspection of airflow/cooling over components.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Run memtest for several hours, it could also be a ram stick going bad

 

[Mandown]

Finally, someone has the same weird problem!

This is my system:

Athlon AMD 64 3500+
A8N SLI Premium motherboard
ASUS A8N-SLI ACPI BIOS Revision 1001
2024 MB DDR400 Memory
NVidia Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB graphics card
1 x 200Gb Maxtor 6L200S0 SATA drive
460 Watt Silent PSU

I too have trouble restarting windows - I end up with a black screen with just a flashing cursor in the upper left hand corner and have to shut down windows first in order to boot up again. Sometimes I need to do this two or three times; sometimes, when I go to restart it goes to standby. Once or twice I have had a screen which says something like "NVIDIA IDE RAID BIOS verXXX, then "Detecting Array" - nothing happens so I restart until I can finally boot up.

Likewise - shutting windows down first and then re-booting met with problems - I would either get that same black screen with the flashing cursor or it would post the first screen of information (the ASUS A8N SLI screen) and then just freeze; very occasionally it would boot up windows as normal.

I've done a search on A8N SLI problems as I think I can rule out Hard Drive/Windows issues - I am now on to a second HD as the first one eventually became completely inaccessible. Naturally thought it was that causing the problem, sent it back and got a replacement HD, only to find the same thing all over again.

Whilst on the subject of the old HD, ran CHKDSK several times with no probs, but then when it did die, CHKDSK got stuck around 63% then came back with a message about one or more unspecified errors. Whilst there was obviously a problem with the HD, I believe it was caused elsewhere.

Last night, I ran a full Windows Memory Diagnostic overnight (11 full runs) and nothing. I did this after (luckily?) getting 2 error reports after the PC crashed - both were due to RAM error. Have also replaced the cable between drive and motherboard - no change.

Any suggestions on this would be most welcome; I'm sure this problem caused the death of my last HD!

Many thanks

 

[Mandown]

Sorry guys, just realised - its just a standard A8N SLI mobo.

Would this matter?