Puzzling Problems -- Pulling Hair

[The Mighty Favog]

So many things are going wrong, I'm not sure where's the best place to
start asking for help. Bear with me:

This past summer I built a new system:

Motherboard: ASUS P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache
LGA 775
Memory: Crucial 2GB kit (1GBx2), Ballistix 240-pin DIMM, DDR2
PC2-8500
Video Card: SAPPHIRE 100210L Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB 128-bit GDDR4 PCI
Express x16
Power Supply: PC Power and Cooling ULTRA-QUIET PSU: SILENCER(R) 610
EPS12V
Video capture: ATI VisionTek TV Wonder PCI Express (added within the
past month)
Storage: Four 500 gigabyte hard drives -- three Western Digital and
one Maxtor.

I'm running a triple-boot configuration with these OSs in separate
partitions on a single 500 gigabyte drive:

C: WinXP
D: Vista
E: WinXP testbed (a small partition where I try out things before
installing them on C

Until recently everything's been working just great. Then two or
three weeks ago I began to get an error message at WinXP shutdown.
Something like "The instruction at 0x66903f88 the memory could not be
written at 0x66903f88" along with a critical stop sound. Didn't
happen all the time at shutdown, but pretty often. Then a few days
ago I was online and I heard a "click" and the system rebooted. Right
out of nowhere. Then, when XP loaded again, I saw this error:
"Catalyst control center monitoring program has encountered a problem
and needs to close." When I closed that window, I saw this message:
"Catalyst control center host application has encountered a problem
and needs to close."

Weird. So I decided to try Vista, which I seldom do anymore since
first playing with it, because XP is just easier to use and more of my
software works with it. But when Vista loaded, my beautiful Dreamscene
desktop waterfall appeared for a second and then the desktop went to
black. And then I got an error message saying Windows Explorer had
stopped working. Then another message saying Windows Explorer was
restarting. Then another message saying it had stopped working. And
on and on. I also got a message saying I had no ATI drivers. I also
found the Aero scheme wasn't available to load.

Weird. But I had a backup of the Vista partition, so I started Ghost
from the WinXP testbed partition and tried to put a known working
version of the Vista partition in place. Ghost failed. Now this was
getting really strange. I'd done this before several times with no
problems. So what was going on?

I noticed that the Vista partition had lost its D: drive designation.
So I used the drive manager to give the partition its D: back and I
reformatted it. Then I tried loading the Ghost backup of the Vista
partition and it worked. But when I ran Vista, it would load but all
the previous problems reappeared.

So I disconnected all four of my hard drives, took a perfectly good
previously used 120 gigabyte IDE hard drive out of a drawer, and
hooked it up. I partitioned it into two equal-size partitions and
loaded Windows XP onto the first. It loaded OK -- there was one
problem when it said it couldn't find a file on the WinXP disk, but
then it seemed to find it after a few tries and went on. I fully
updated WinXP online -- SP2 and everything. But it won't load
Internet Explorer 7 no matter what I try. Seems to load fine, but
then XP announces it failed to load.

Then I installed Vista on the second partition. Big failure. It
seems to have loaded properly, but when it tries to start all I ever
see are the little horizontally moving green blocks. When they close
and Vista says it's about to run for the first time, I hear a click
and the system reboots. I am offered the opportunity to start it in
safe mode, but even then, just when the Vista wallpaper is supposed to
load, the system reboots.

I've loaded the newest version of ATI's Catalyst Control Center into
the new WinXP installation. When I started WinXP to type this
message, I got the old "Catalyst control center monitoring program has
encountered a problem and needs to close" and "Catalyst control center
host application has encountered a problem and needs to close"
messages. And this, mind you, is on a FRESH installation of WinXP on
a different physical hard drive.

I've removed the TV Wonder from the system. I've removed all four 500
gigabyte hard drives from the system. And still it's flaky.

So ... I'm guessing I have a hardware problem. The power supply?
Memory? Or, what I think is the likely culprit, the Radeon video card
itself?

Ideas, anyone? I hate to go over to Best Buy to get a new video card,
but I may just give it a shot. BTW, the first time I tried to type
this message, the computer rebooted and I lost what I'd typed. Very
annoying. Help, please.

 

[Bob M]

So many things are going wrong, I'm not sure where's the best place to
start asking for help. Bear with me:

This past summer I built a new system:

Motherboard: ASUS P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache
LGA 775
Memory: Crucial 2GB kit (1GBx2), Ballistix 240-pin DIMM, DDR2
PC2-8500
Video Card: SAPPHIRE 100210L Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB 128-bit GDDR4 PCI
Express x16
Power Supply: PC Power and Cooling ULTRA-QUIET PSU: SILENCER(R) 610
EPS12V
Video capture: ATI VisionTek TV Wonder PCI Express (added within the
past month)
Storage: Four 500 gigabyte hard drives -- three Western Digital and
one Maxtor.

I'm running a triple-boot configuration with these OSs in separate
partitions on a single 500 gigabyte drive:

C: WinXP
D: Vista
E: WinXP testbed (a small partition where I try out things before
installing them on C

Until recently everything's been working just great. Then two or
three weeks ago I began to get an error message at WinXP shutdown.
Something like "The instruction at 0x66903f88 the memory could not be
written at 0x66903f88" along with a critical stop sound. Didn't
happen all the time at shutdown, but pretty often. Then a few days
ago I was online and I heard a "click" and the system rebooted. Right
out of nowhere. Then, when XP loaded again, I saw this error:
"Catalyst control center monitoring program has encountered a problem
and needs to close." When I closed that window, I saw this message:
"Catalyst control center host application has encountered a problem
and needs to close."

Weird. So I decided to try Vista, which I seldom do anymore since
first playing with it, because XP is just easier to use and more of my
software works with it. But when Vista loaded, my beautiful Dreamscene
desktop waterfall appeared for a second and then the desktop went to
black. And then I got an error message saying Windows Explorer had
stopped working. Then another message saying Windows Explorer was
restarting. Then another message saying it had stopped working. And
on and on. I also got a message saying I had no ATI drivers. I also
found the Aero scheme wasn't available to load.

Weird. But I had a backup of the Vista partition, so I started Ghost
from the WinXP testbed partition and tried to put a known working
version of the Vista partition in place. Ghost failed. Now this was
getting really strange. I'd done this before several times with no
problems. So what was going on?

I noticed that the Vista partition had lost its D: drive designation.
So I used the drive manager to give the partition its D: back and I
reformatted it. Then I tried loading the Ghost backup of the Vista
partition and it worked. But when I ran Vista, it would load but all
the previous problems reappeared.

So I disconnected all four of my hard drives, took a perfectly good
previously used 120 gigabyte IDE hard drive out of a drawer, and
hooked it up. I partitioned it into two equal-size partitions and
loaded Windows XP onto the first. It loaded OK -- there was one
problem when it said it couldn't find a file on the WinXP disk, but
then it seemed to find it after a few tries and went on. I fully
updated WinXP online -- SP2 and everything. But it won't load
Internet Explorer 7 no matter what I try. Seems to load fine, but
then XP announces it failed to load.

Then I installed Vista on the second partition. Big failure. It
seems to have loaded properly, but when it tries to start all I ever
see are the little horizontally moving green blocks. When they close
and Vista says it's about to run for the first time, I hear a click
and the system reboots. I am offered the opportunity to start it in
safe mode, but even then, just when the Vista wallpaper is supposed to
load, the system reboots.

I've loaded the newest version of ATI's Catalyst Control Center into
the new WinXP installation. When I started WinXP to type this
message, I got the old "Catalyst control center monitoring program has
encountered a problem and needs to close" and "Catalyst control center
host application has encountered a problem and needs to close"
messages. And this, mind you, is on a FRESH installation of WinXP on
a different physical hard drive.

I've removed the TV Wonder from the system. I've removed all four 500
gigabyte hard drives from the system. And still it's flaky.

So ... I'm guessing I have a hardware problem. The power supply?
Memory? Or, what I think is the likely culprit, the Radeon video card
itself?

Ideas, anyone? I hate to go over to Best Buy to get a new video card,
but I may just give it a shot. BTW, the first time I tried to type
this message, the computer rebooted and I lost what I'd typed. Very
annoying. Help, please.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog
If you want to send a private email, pls use (e-mail address removed)

Download Memtest 86 and test the memory. I've read reviews on
Newegg.com and several other places about Crucial Ballistixs failing
quite often. If the memory passes the tests then my bet is on the power
supply.

Bob

 

[The Mighty Favog]

Download Memtest 86 and test the memory. I've read reviews on
Newegg.com and several other places about Crucial Ballistixs failing
quite often. If the memory passes the tests then my bet is on the power
supply.

I'm not at all familiar with Memtest 86. But I downloaded it and
created a boot floppy and while I really don't know how to interpret
the results, they certainly don't look promising to me. I removed one
of the 1-gig sticks and put the other in the first memory slot.
Here's what I saw:


Bits in error: Total 15 Min 0 Max 14 Av 8 7
Max contiguous errors: 2

Test Errors
0 56
1 24
2 40
3 56
4 72
5 88
6 104
7 120
8 136
9 152
10 168

In addition, to the immediate left of the 6 for Test 6 was this
number: 84208028
And further to the left of the 9 for test 9 was this number 538982199


Saw something similar when I put the other stick in the first memory
slot.

Does this mean anything to anybody? Could a bad power supply cause
memory errors to show up, or is the problem that the memory sticks are
going bad, or do the results of the test show bad memory as I suspect?

Help. Please. Sorry to be so ignorant on the memory thing, but this
is something I've never experienced before. The last time my computer
went flaky it was on another mbo completely and the problem was the
power supply. PC Power and Cooling replaced it as it was under
warranty and after that my problems went away.

 

[The Mighty Favog]

Download Memtest 86 and test the memory. I've read reviews on
Newegg.com and several other places about Crucial Ballistixs failing
quite often. If the memory passes the tests then my bet is on the power
supply.

Bob, I never did figure out how to interpret the results of Memtest
86. But I did find something called DocMemory PC Memory Diagnostic
Software that seemed to be more user friendly, for me, anyway. I
removed one stick of memory and ran Docmemory and after about 35
minutes of passing every test four times, I shut down and tried the
other stick. This time I thought DocMemory was going to blow up, as
it found more than 10,000 errors in the first 10 seconds. Switched
the sticks again, and all tests passed. Switched again, and 10,000
errors in 10 seconds. I think I may have found the problem Many
thanks for your very insightful help. I'd have invested in a video
card if you hadn't intervened.

 

[Bill Anderson]

On Dec 8, 1:05 pm, Bob M <[email protected]> wrote:

Bob, I never did figure out how to interpret the results of Memtest
86. But I did find something called DocMemory PC Memory Diagnostic
Software that seemed to be more user friendly, for me, anyway. I
removed one stick of memory and ran Docmemory and after about 35
minutes of passing every test four times, I shut down and tried the
other stick. This time I thought DocMemory was going to blow up, as
it found more than 10,000 errors in the first 10 seconds. Switched
the sticks again, and all tests passed. Switched again, and 10,000
errors in 10 seconds. I think I may have found the problem Many
thanks for your very insightful help. I'd have invested in a video
card if you hadn't intervened.

Update: With just the one good memory stick installed, I have
everything working just as it's supposed to again. I've
Ghost-reinstalled a good Vista partition. In fact, I'm typing this from
Vista now. You people who can diagnose a problem like mine from nothing
more than my summary really amaze me. Many thanks and three cheers for
Usenet!

 

[Ed Medlin]

Update: With just the one good memory stick installed, I have everything

working just as it's supposed to again. I've Ghost-reinstalled a good
Vista partition. In fact, I'm typing this from Vista now. You people who
can diagnose a problem like mine from nothing more than my summary really
amaze me. Many thanks and three cheers for Usenet!

Did the "click" you heard just before your problems go away when you changed
the HDD? That still concerns me because it sounds like power to a HDD is
being cut off or the HDD itself may have a problem. The memory issue would
not cause that. Oh well, if it is ok now just RMA that memory and go with
it........Glad you got it going.


Ed

 

[Bob M]

Update: With just the one good memory stick installed, I have
everything working just as it's supposed to again. I've
Ghost-reinstalled a good Vista partition. In fact, I'm typing this from
Vista now. You people who can diagnose a problem like mine from nothing
more than my summary really amaze me. Many thanks and three cheers for
Usenet!

I'm really glad you found out what the problem is. Sorry I didn't
respond sooner but I only check this newsgroup once a day. Good luck.

Bob