Teaser

[johns]

A really hard troubleshoot:

PC crashed, and it had 52 gigs of project data on it.
Symptom was system would not boot into Windows,
but it POSTED normally. Chkdsk gave bad files.
Also, the heat alarm was going off with CPU at 62 C.
I figured bad hard drive, so I got a new one, and I
also got a new mobo exactly the same GA-K8NS.
The BIOS was newer .. F12 up to F18.
Moved cpu ( AMD athlon 64 3000+ ) and ram to
new mobo, and also installed new hard drive ( SATA
160 gig Maxtor ). Ready for an easy install to XP.
Install sort of works. It read the floppy with SATA
driver OK, and installed OS. On first reboot, again,
PC will not boot into Windows. Black screen.
I think, OK .. bad Video card too. I replace the
video card, and the system boots into Windows,
but on first reboot, again black screen. OK, I replace
the psupply. No change. OK, I replace the ram.
Same deal. OK, I replace the cpu with identical
cpu. Again same. POSTS fine. Will not load
Windows. CPU temp is 43 C. Looks like some
kind of heat problem, but what? I let the PC cool
off for an hour, and reload WinXP. After about
10 minutes, system gets flakey and reads from
the DVDRW get flakey. Crashes, and again will
POST fine. Will not load WinXP. All of the parts
I replaced, I tested in a working PC, and all of
them worked ... cpu, ram, video card, dvdrw,
floppy, and psupply ... all worked. In the broke
PC, no matter what I try, after a few minutes,
the reads seem flakey, and then PC will not boot
into WinXP. Sound familiar ? Oh, and I have
RAID disabled, and BIOS settings are identical
to working system. Also, the drivers on the floppy
were the same. I ran "MENU" from the driver CD
and created the floppy ( hit F6 ) to load. And, for
those of you who know the K8NS, I tried both
single and double sided ddr400 ram.

johns

 

[johns]

Also, reason I'm posting this teaser, is
the fix is maddening, and most of you
are going to see something like this if
you continue building systems. It is
working fine now.

johns

 

[Mr. Brian Allen]

I had a problem like this once, and it ended up being a bad processor, but
you already tried that fix.

 

[johns]

You might not have had a bad cpu. This made my cpu look bad,
like it had a heat problem. I pulled it and re-gooped it, and then
I went and got one from a working system, and for a few minutes
I thought I had fixed it. Nope.

johns

 

[johns]

OK. No bites

The fix: I replaced the old Maxtor SATA 150 with a new Maxtor
SATA 300 which I jumpered back to 150. Doing that limits the
data rate, but does not quarantee access window syncing of
the data bus .... and THAT is temperature sensitive. After a
day of pulling my hair out, I decided to see if I could find a
new Maxtor SATA 150 so I had an exact duplicate for
replacement. XP install jumped on it like an old friend, and
all is well. Moral of story: if you like really flakey builds,
do a partial upgrade across about 3 years of development.
Also, the way I got on to this was I had a spare IDE drive
which I put in the system, and it installed without a hitch
.... proving that I did not have a heat problem. The K8NS
is highly IDE compatible. It is also well known for not
liking 2 sided ddr400 ram, but it will work most of the time.

johns

 

[`AMD tower]

I can't quite make out what you mean.

Are you saying you originally had a 150 that was bad,
and replaced it with a 300 jumped to 150
and that was bad as well, but a new 150 worked?

Mike

 

[johns]

The 300 was not bad. It worked fine in a newer mobo.
It gave me a fit in the K8NS mobo which has been on
the market for about 3 years now. I tried jumpering it
to 150, but that did not help at all ... flakey reads
corrupting the install, that got worse with time. I went
through all kinds of mull-heading ... bad new 300 ..
bad new K8NS ... bad SATA controller, and that one
had me try the IDE drive, which worked perfectly.
Then I put the bad 150 back in, and it tried to work,
and the install got past the hang point with it, but
it would not format because of bad spots on the
disk ( which I saw with chkdsk ). So then I took
the new 300 back to where I bought it, and asked
them to swap me for a 150 that they thought was
in good condition. They had a new 150 on the shelf,
and I took that back, and the install ran perfectly
with no further problems. Machine has been up for
3 days now, and no problems at all. If anything, it
runs great. I've seen hints of this same problem
with Dell Dimension 9100s which have the 150s
in them. If you lose the drive, Dell will send you
a 300 to replace it .... and it will give problems
with DOS level formatting ... taking a very very
long time. However, it will quick format, using the
install cd, so that is a workaround. The SATA 300s
are not fully backward compatible to mobos designed
for the SATA 150s ... esp the K8NS.

johns

 

[`AMD tower]

Thanks for the clearification!