Frustrated! Please tell me this isn't my mobo...

[daveleau]

Hi everybody!

I have been having problems with my system recently. When the CPU was at 910 (566 Cel), it was running fine. Then i installed a Kenwood 52X cd-rom. It was dead. I left it in my system trying to get it to work thinking it was a configuration problem of some sort. I put a cd into it and heard a click. My system froze. Upon reboot i got no post. i let it sit overnight and got it to post FINALLY after several tries. It ran fine until the system did was asked to do strenuous work (ie play games, backup from hdd to another partition, load and start RC5% client on reboot). It also began to not reboot. It would cold boot which was odd since I ad been having problems with cold boots b/c of power issues which you will see when I put up my system specs.

Well, I got it running finally when I turned the CPU down to 850. Then after a couple of days it began again. I bumped it down to 700. Stable then began again. Ran at default, stable until i try to mess with drivers (installed SB Live Ware 3.0 to get my headphones jack to work on my SC)

Now the symptoms are:
---Won't post half the time
---When it does it takes forever to boot.
---Have no internet connection through the NIC (works on this system so it is not an @Home problem)
---Tried to uninstall my second NIC make sure there was no conflict between the 2 NIC cards that were sharing an IRQ, got BSOD, then frozen screen the next time I tried it

I know it is not my RAM b/c I have tried known good RAM in my system. I know it is not a power supply problem because I have tried a 300W and a 350W PS in it and still get same stuff.

i cleared the CMOS several times.
I did NOT reflash the BIOS. (should I?)
Now my system will not post (again) and when it does on occasion get to POST, it says everything is fine but Windows takes forever and it has serious lag when trying to do anything strenuous. i tried reloading my driver for my @Home NIC in my last successful boot but the system froze and msgsrv crashed, then the driver installer crashed. i tried again and got a BSOD and no post On the he subsequent reboot. Now it is sitting there looking smug and not posting again. My hdds seem to be ok.

Here are my system specs:

Cel 566 (now at default but been running 100% stable with 100% CPU util at 910 for several months)
Abit BF6 (SH BIOS)
IWill Slocket 2 (default jumper settings)
Golden Orb that keeps the CPU below 50C (~45C)
Case temp 23C
2---20GB West Dig 7200 rpm ATA66 hdds in RAID 0
Fasttrak RAID66 (successfully modified from Promise ATA66 card)
384 MB PNY (Infineon) PC100 SDRAM CL 2 8ns (3 sticks of 128)
Kenwood 52X CD-ROM (this one works, the dead one is awaiting RMA on my shelf)
HP 8250i cd-rw
Mitsumi fdd
Matrox G400 Max DH (one monitor connected) (latest supported driver)
SB Live! Value (Live ware 3.0)
Netgear 10/100 NIC
3COM 10/100 NIC
Enermax 350W PS

Please, please, please tell me it is not the mobo. I just bought a new CPU which is on the way, i just got a new PS (350W) b/c i thought that was the problem. I really don't want to have to get a new mobo as well. Coudlt he cd-rom being dead have caused this?

Here is what the cd-rom was doing:
It showed up in Post every time.
It showed up in Win98/ Win 2000 1/2 of the time
When you put a cd in, it would seek the cd-rom by giving two short bursts every second and then say the cd-rom was unreadable.

Thanks for reading this book.
And thank you for any help you could give.
Thanks
Troubled Dave

[skywalker[TSG]]

odd

try flashing bios


hmmm that click is making me worried
that it might indeed be the mobo

one question
was the HDD on the same cabel as the cd-rom ?
maybe the HDD is screwed can you try with another one perhaps ?

seems unlikely that the mobo has died
due to a cd-rom malfunction

[codybear]

ok....its not your mobo

that is what you ask for http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

other than giving you what you ask for..I dont have a clue http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[BFlurie]

Dave, if W9X, go to Device Monster, CDRom -- expand that & double-click your specific CDRom. Uncheck the little DMA box if it's there. Reboot & see if helps -- also check the box again to make sure it stayed unchecked. I don't know if that option is available in NT/2000.

P.S. Your remarkable overclocking may have taken a toll. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/frown.gif

[This message has been edited by BFlurie (edited 08-02-2000).]

[Underclocked]

Dave, which OS? Have you tried a clean install to a different hard drive(s)? You may have suffered some damage if the POS cdrom caused a power glitch. You have certainly done enough driver manipulations for that alone to be causing you some problems.
Good luck.

[daveleau]

Thanks guy (especially you codybear LOL)

The CD-ROM was on an IDE by itself. Each CD-ROM was master since the hdds were on the Fasttrak with each beng master as well.

The CD-ROM that was dead had the same problems with and without DMA enabled. Do you think the DMA which is now enabled on the good Kenwood replacement would cause this? This does occur in both Win 98 SE full and Win 2K full (no SP1).

These symptoms occur in both OSes.

possible power surge to the mobo from the cd-rom? I was manipulating the cd-rom when the click and immediate freeze occured. My RAID setup seems ok, as well as the burner and my NIC worked until tonight with the SB Live driver install. I was thinking the NIc was a side effect of the SB Live driver install.

Thanks
I will try flashing the BIOS tomorrow.

Any other ideas?

Thanks these are all good ones that I will try tomorrow.
Dave

[This message has been edited by daveleau (edited 08-02-2000).]

[daveleau]

One other thing.

When I pinged my own IP address on my NIC, I got 100% packet loss and 0% transmition. When i ran winipcfg, it locked and could not refresh the IP. Is this normal with driver failure or is my NIC dead as well? This could be indicative of a power surge if that was the case, right?

Thanks
Dave

[Beemers]

As far as your packets go you can try this.

Open a DOS Prompt window and enter the following command until you know exactly which is the largest packet size that doesn't get fragmented:
C:\> ping -f -l [packetSize] [www.localisp.com]
where [packetSize] is the size of the data packet you will send (only use values between 0 and 1500) and [www.localisp.com] is the URL of your ISP.
This is an excerpt from my Cable Tweak page on Beemer's Windows Tips. By performing this you will find out if you can find a packet size. If you can't then your suspitions could be right.
http://www.geocities.com/a3a17013/sysopt_graphics/bw.gif http://www.geocities.com/a3a17013/tippages/beemerswindowstips/cabletweak.htm

[daveleau]

NIC now works under Win 2K and Win 2K on a whole is much more stable than Win98SE but still not completely stable. It will run linger than Win98 but still crashed uncharacteristically.
Thanks
Dave