ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe system freezing

[Nocturnal]

The system in my signature is giving me issues, again. I thought I had it
all taken cared of but now it seems it is becoming more apparent. Basically
the system will hard lock up and I'll have to hit the reset button or power
the system down by holding the on/off button in order for it to restart/turn
off.

I would think if it was my processor that it would shut down and not just
hard lock. I can still see everything on my screen and everything is frozen
as I can see Zone Alarms icon in my system tray and it is not moving. I
cannot ctrl-alt-del either.

Now, I'm beginning to wonder if it is my power supply. I do have quite a lot
of things in this system and I'm sure my PSU is more than adaquete enough to
handle all the items however it is the Antec TrueControl PSU which means I
have the ability to lower and change the voltage. I have not changed it
stock from the factory and within BIOS it does read that the 3.3, 5.0 and
12.0 voltages are kind of lower than the normal average.

Any ideas?

PS, nothing in Event Viewer, no errors or anything.

-------------------------
A8N-SLI Deluxe
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester
eVGA 6800GT
1x74GB WD Raptor HDD
1x300GB Maxtor Maxline 10 HDD
Plextor 716SA
Crucial Ballistix 1GB PC3200
Antec P160 case (1x120mm Sunon intake fan, 1x120mm Antec Exhaust fan)
Antec TruePower 550W PSU

 

[pete]

On the motherboard cd, there is a monitoring program, that displays all of
the voltages and temperatures, have you given this a go?
I will see what my readings are tomorrow and post the results back.

 

[Leif Nordmand Andersen]

Hi Nocturnal,

I would think if it was my processor that it would shut down and not just
hard lock. I can still see everything on my screen and everything is frozen
as I can see Zone Alarms icon in my system tray and it is not moving. I
cannot ctrl-alt-del either.

1x300GB Maxtor Maxline 10 HDD

I've had similar problems with a system om mine ... it's taken a long
time to figure out.

I definately could be the power supply .... I've been down that road.

However in my case it was the Maxtor which was the problem. I've had
two different maxtors in my system, one was IDE and the other was
SATA.

I could give you a long story ... but several different SATA disks, in
fact ALL the Maxtor SATA disks I've triede (about 5 different), gave
the exact same problem, which you describe.

I have now removed all the Maxtor SATA drives from my system (my
system is actually on the IDE Maxtor drive!!), I've replaced the
Maxtor SATA drives with 7 250 GB Seagate drives and recently another
1 250 GB Samsung drive.

And since my system has run for up to two weeks with no freezes.

So if you have a chance ... either replace the Maxtor drive it it's a
SATA drive og try to run without it.

Regards Leif.

 

[Nocturnal]

Thanks. I do have a regular Raptor Western Digital. I disconnected the
Maxtor drive this morning in attempts to see if that would resolve the
problem. I hope it does.

 

[milleron]

Thanks. I do have a regular Raptor Western Digital. I disconnected the
Maxtor drive this morning in attempts to see if that would resolve the
problem. I hope it does.

The Maxtor is a very good bet, but if that doesn't fix the problem, be
aware that Plextor SATA optical drives have caused huge headaches on
this board, too.
BOTH the Maxtor and the Plextor may work after firmware upgrades. I'm
not sure if Plextor has released one yet. The last I heard they were
still involved in a finger-pointing battle with nVidia, but some
people have had great results with flashing their Maxtor hard drives.
Do some browsing on both the Plextor and Maxtor Web sites to see if
your firmware is the latest (the 716SA is currently at version 1.08).


Ron

 

[Nocturnal]

Well, I removed the Maxtor drive and it froze up again last night. I'm
beginning to think that it may be a heat related issue. I do have the NB47J
passive northbridge cooler mounted on my mobo. The only other thing I can
think of is possibly my video card overheating. I'm trying to narrow things
down. Thanks for the advice and keep the advice coming.

 

[milleron]

Well, I removed the Maxtor drive and it froze up again last night. I'm
beginning to think that it may be a heat related issue. I do have the NB47J
passive northbridge cooler mounted on my mobo. The only other thing I can
think of is possibly my video card overheating. I'm trying to narrow things
down. Thanks for the advice and keep the advice coming.

Have you tried disconnecting the Plextor drive yet?

Ron

 

[Leif Nordmand Andersen]

Hi Nocturnal

Well, I removed the Maxtor drive and it froze up again last night. I'm
beginning to think that it may be a heat related issue. I do have the NB47J
passive northbridge cooler mounted on my mobo. The only other thing I can
think of is possibly my video card overheating.

Sorry about that :-(

I have the same passive Northbride cooler ... It reports 43 degree,
during the hot summer it's been 48. But had no freezes.

For your information

Regards Leif.

 

[Len Mattix]

Have the same board and CPU but fortunately not the same problem. I have
more drives 2x IDE, 1x SATA and 2x optical and a bit less power 480 Watts.
You have a bit more video power draw as I just have an MSI 6600GT on my
system.

As mentioned by other posters there has been problems with the Plex SATA
drive but also there has been problems reported with the Crucial Ballistix
RAM. Have you by any chance checked Event Viewer to see if XP has any idea
as to what is causing it problems? Sometimes there is actually worthwhile
information there.

Good Luck,
Len

 

[Nocturnal]

The weird thing is, yes, I do check Event Viewer and there is nothing there
which leads me to believe it is some type of hardware issue. I do have a
TrueControl power supply unit made by Antec. Up until yesterday I didn't
have the control panel hooked up which in the manual meant that my PSU was
running at 95% if its rated power. This could be the cause of all of my
problems.

I'm going to go to Sears later today and purchase a digital multi meter to
rule out my power supply.

Other than that, my Plextor seems to be ok. Yesterday while I was out I ran
Prime95 with the priority set at 10 which brought my system to its knees.
Upon coming back my unit was still functioning. I left it on over night
just idle and I came back to a functioning machine again. I am hoping that
it was just a power issue. Thanks for the replies.