Hey all, I go by Bacinator. I'm an active duty Electronics Technician, been in the Navy for 9 years. This is probably the 8th or so rig I've built, and it's been giving me a load of problems since I built it last october. The problems seem to wax & wane over time (sometimes they happen multiple times a day, sometimes not for weeks), but it's gotten bad again and I've decided to give it another go at figuring out wth is wrong.
The three most consistent symptoms are:
1. Jpegs occassionally appear corrupted, though the files are fine. Here is an example of the exact same picture taken from my signature file from another forum, one is corrupted, and a week later it's fine:
http://mappage.net/images/badpic.jpg
http://mappage.net/images/goodpic.jpg
I had an AMD 64 3000+, and this happened. I heard it happened to old AMD chips, so thinking it may be the chip, I upgraded to a 64 X2 4200+ a couple months ago, and I still have the problem randomly, about 1 in every 50 or so pictures viewed on the web, or even as thumbnails on my hard drive. It's so weird. Those screenshots are from last February BTW, so again I've had this problem for a while now.
2. Failures. I don't know how to word it other than that. Stuff just fails. I tried downloading Matrix Online trial from fileplanet about 10 times (a huge download mind you), and every time I went to install, I had a 'catastrophic failure' at the same point. I download on my laptop, it works fine. I download on my old rig with an Asus A7N8X Deluxe in it, and it works fine. Well, it's happening again. I tried to download the new Vanguard Beta, and it kept failing the download every few minutes. It took days to download 20 gigs, because I had to reset it every few megs. I'd choose view details, which is essentially a log, and it kept saying whatever file killed the download, that "the uncompressed file size does not match the server file size", in other words, what I was extracted didn't match. So I'd download it a few times, and I would get random file sizes. It wasn't even consistently wrong, except for that it kept being wrong on certain files.
Well, I got invited to another Beta, the Battlfield 2142 one, this week, and SSDD. I download the 1.2gig file, go to install it, and it fails at the exact same spot every time. So I can't install that either.
3. BSOD. I get BSOD's for random reasons. I can't think of any off the top of my head at the moment, but 9 times out of 10 when I start windows back up, it says 'failure caused by a device driver'. Well which one dammit? A couple BSOD's I recognized as being IP related, and it turns out that when I turned on my A7N8X system, and it started sending DHCP requests, it would literally crash my machine!!! How's that for fricken odd? I work in an IT shop in the networks section, and everyone at work agreed that it shouldn't be possible. Well it is. I turned off DHCP on both machines, and walla, I've not gotten those BSOD's in quite a while. But I still get random device error BSODS. Some of them are STOP 0x00000001 errors, some are (I'm guessing now) IRQ Less than or not equal to blah blah blah.
I've got my A+, Net+, most of the requirements for CCNA, I'm a tech, and I've been working in a computer networks shop for a government agency for 4 years now, and I have no idea what the freaken deal is with this machine.
Could it be the power supply? Sure... Doubtful to produce errors so consitent when they randomly occur (how's that for an oxymoron!). BTW, I'm using a 600W EPower PSU from Microcenter.
Could it be memory? Well, I'm not overclocking, so the voltages and timings are at their default. I've also changed memory, as my wife has some Kingston crap that went bad in her rig, so I bought some Corsair Twin-x for myself, and slapped the Patriot ram in hers. My symptoms were there before the swap and are still there now.
Noise from fans & extra crap? I doubt it, for the same reasons as the PSU.
An actual device? I don't have much plugged in. USB Keyboard, mouse, KVM switch, 17-1 memory card reader, and a set of headphones. All of those things came after the problems started except the KVM, but the KVM uses PS2 ports, so I don't see how it could cause the problems either.
Soundcard? Audio is on board, no seperate soundcard.
Drives? 1 IDE DVD burner, 1 floppy drive, 1 SATA drive on the Silicon Image drivers, 2 raid-0 drives on the NVRaid drivers. Could the SATA or Raid drivers be causing it? Possibly. Tho how the heck do I proove it? The single Sata is the C:\, and if something was wrong with that drive or the drivers, I suppose that could explain corruption, such as in temporary internet files, or page file extractions... But would it crash installs at the same point every time?
Chipset? I don't know how to troubleshoot the north or south bridges. Can you?
That's it, thats everything in the rig. A co-worker suggests a reformat, but I don't know if that'll solve it. I have not reformatted since building the computer last october, but I don't know that I need to either.
I also believe I've gotten most if not all of the current drivers off of Asus's site. Everything should be up to date, including the A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo bios running on v1016 chipset drivers.
Any help or insight which can be offered would be most greatly appreciated.
v/r
Bacinator
AMD X2 4200+
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
600W EPower PSU
Albatron 7800 GTX
2GB Corsair Twin-x DDR 400
2 250gb SATA II Raid 0
1 250gb SATA I
1 DVD-RW Burner
The three most consistent symptoms are:
1. Jpegs occassionally appear corrupted, though the files are fine. Here is an example of the exact same picture taken from my signature file from another forum, one is corrupted, and a week later it's fine:
http://mappage.net/images/badpic.jpg
http://mappage.net/images/goodpic.jpg
I had an AMD 64 3000+, and this happened. I heard it happened to old AMD chips, so thinking it may be the chip, I upgraded to a 64 X2 4200+ a couple months ago, and I still have the problem randomly, about 1 in every 50 or so pictures viewed on the web, or even as thumbnails on my hard drive. It's so weird. Those screenshots are from last February BTW, so again I've had this problem for a while now.
2. Failures. I don't know how to word it other than that. Stuff just fails. I tried downloading Matrix Online trial from fileplanet about 10 times (a huge download mind you), and every time I went to install, I had a 'catastrophic failure' at the same point. I download on my laptop, it works fine. I download on my old rig with an Asus A7N8X Deluxe in it, and it works fine. Well, it's happening again. I tried to download the new Vanguard Beta, and it kept failing the download every few minutes. It took days to download 20 gigs, because I had to reset it every few megs. I'd choose view details, which is essentially a log, and it kept saying whatever file killed the download, that "the uncompressed file size does not match the server file size", in other words, what I was extracted didn't match. So I'd download it a few times, and I would get random file sizes. It wasn't even consistently wrong, except for that it kept being wrong on certain files.
Well, I got invited to another Beta, the Battlfield 2142 one, this week, and SSDD. I download the 1.2gig file, go to install it, and it fails at the exact same spot every time. So I can't install that either.
3. BSOD. I get BSOD's for random reasons. I can't think of any off the top of my head at the moment, but 9 times out of 10 when I start windows back up, it says 'failure caused by a device driver'. Well which one dammit? A couple BSOD's I recognized as being IP related, and it turns out that when I turned on my A7N8X system, and it started sending DHCP requests, it would literally crash my machine!!! How's that for fricken odd? I work in an IT shop in the networks section, and everyone at work agreed that it shouldn't be possible. Well it is. I turned off DHCP on both machines, and walla, I've not gotten those BSOD's in quite a while. But I still get random device error BSODS. Some of them are STOP 0x00000001 errors, some are (I'm guessing now) IRQ Less than or not equal to blah blah blah.
I've got my A+, Net+, most of the requirements for CCNA, I'm a tech, and I've been working in a computer networks shop for a government agency for 4 years now, and I have no idea what the freaken deal is with this machine.
Could it be the power supply? Sure... Doubtful to produce errors so consitent when they randomly occur (how's that for an oxymoron!). BTW, I'm using a 600W EPower PSU from Microcenter.
Could it be memory? Well, I'm not overclocking, so the voltages and timings are at their default. I've also changed memory, as my wife has some Kingston crap that went bad in her rig, so I bought some Corsair Twin-x for myself, and slapped the Patriot ram in hers. My symptoms were there before the swap and are still there now.
Noise from fans & extra crap? I doubt it, for the same reasons as the PSU.
An actual device? I don't have much plugged in. USB Keyboard, mouse, KVM switch, 17-1 memory card reader, and a set of headphones. All of those things came after the problems started except the KVM, but the KVM uses PS2 ports, so I don't see how it could cause the problems either.
Soundcard? Audio is on board, no seperate soundcard.
Drives? 1 IDE DVD burner, 1 floppy drive, 1 SATA drive on the Silicon Image drivers, 2 raid-0 drives on the NVRaid drivers. Could the SATA or Raid drivers be causing it? Possibly. Tho how the heck do I proove it? The single Sata is the C:\, and if something was wrong with that drive or the drivers, I suppose that could explain corruption, such as in temporary internet files, or page file extractions... But would it crash installs at the same point every time?
Chipset? I don't know how to troubleshoot the north or south bridges. Can you?
That's it, thats everything in the rig. A co-worker suggests a reformat, but I don't know if that'll solve it. I have not reformatted since building the computer last october, but I don't know that I need to either.
I also believe I've gotten most if not all of the current drivers off of Asus's site. Everything should be up to date, including the A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo bios running on v1016 chipset drivers.
Any help or insight which can be offered would be most greatly appreciated.
v/r
Bacinator
AMD X2 4200+
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
600W EPower PSU
Albatron 7800 GTX
2GB Corsair Twin-x DDR 400
2 250gb SATA II Raid 0
1 250gb SATA I
1 DVD-RW Burner