Random Freezing Problem...

[andrewy3k]

Im confused what do you mean? That when I installed my cpu cooler I somehow damaged my board?

[pam123]

Originally Posted by andrewy3k Im confused what do you mean? That when I installed my cpu cooler I somehow damaged my board?

"since I installed my thermaltkae silent tower I ripped of the black heatsink bracket to install it.. "

If you physically removed part of the motherboard then yes, you could have.

What usually happens is that you put small cracks in the board's circuitry ( if you do more damage it's obvious since the computer won't boot ) that will respond to changing temperatures as the board heats.
When asked about "doing surgery" on motherboards I usually say that it's okay if you can afford to buy replacements if it doesn't work the first time or two.
I don't know that that's your problem but when I saw your cooling set up I wondered.
What happened with the changes in smartgart and vpu ?

[andrewy3k]

Well I guess I chose a bad word when I said "Ripped" I am 99% sure that I didnt damage the board because i was careful.. what I did to easily remove it was squeezed the white clips that hold the bracket on the mobo with scissors..and I know I did not bend the board or anything like that.. maybe its just because its ASRock and they are not a well known company..

As for VPU and fastwrite and setting to 4x .. I did all that.. I need to play some games and test it out.. although shouldnt I set the AGP setting in my bios to 4x aswell?? Right now I think i set the aperature size to 256.. the defualt was set on 128 and I set the agp speed to 8x and defualt was 4x.. should I set all those bios settings back to defualt??


thanks

[pam123]

Asrock has a pcChips handicap. I think they're pretty good boards but there's lots of room for doubt given the (justifiable) reputation pcChips has.
I think your right about the defaults in bios, 256mb for aperture is a mistake by the way do a search of the forum for why, and don't forget to turn off fastwrites, it notorious for causing problems.

[andrewy3k]

Well right away after doing those changes I noticed that for some reason in win-xp the fade effect on the start menu and other menus took like 1-2 seconds to come up.. the fade effect was kinda laggy.. so I just disabled those effects in windows but when I did go to the start menu or right when I right click and open a menu I can hear one of my fans speed up or somthing.. It could quite possibly be my CPU fan im not too sure.. why is it doing this all of a sudden? Just curious.. I could care less about the fade effects..

Now for the ultimate test though.. see how stable the system is running doom 3 for more then 30 mins..

What I am also gunna do is run doom 3 and bring up Everest while the game is open to see how high my CPU temp is.. I will post that screenshot here afterwards..

thanks

[pam123]

I asked this before : Can you keep track of your cpu temps as the processor is pushed harder?

[andrewy3k]

Originally Posted by pam123 I asked this before : Can you keep track of your cpu temps as the processor is pushed harder?

No I cant.. for some reason.. when using Everest MBM 5, SpeedFan or any other temp monitor the sensors are always incorrect.. like for one second my Mobo temp will be 12 C and then 125 C.. all these monitors do it with the cpu temp as well as the mobo temp.. but the HD temps seem to always be accurate .. I dont understand why at all either.. so there isnt a way for me to accuratly keep track of my CPU temps at this point in time.. although when Everest was showing reasonable temps .. the idle was around 32C and then while doom 3 playing it went to about 35C MAX, so basically no matter if accurate or not one thing I do know is that it jumps about 3 degrees.. which is pretty good .. but like I said its not an 100% accurate temp even in that case..

***

Anyways I just finished playing Doom 3 for little over an hour and a half and no freezing took place.. hopefully I found a cure to my problem but like always as I have seen in the past "Dont wanna speak too soon"

I will keep you guys posted if any freezing occurs..

thanks

[pam123]

Originally Posted by andrewy3k No I cant.. for some reason.. when using Everest MBM 5, SpeedFan or any other temp monitor the sensors are always incorrect.. like for one second my Mobo temp will be 12 C and then 125 C.. all these monitors do it with the cpu temp as well as the mobo temp.. but the HD temps seem to always be accurate .. I dont understand why at all either.. so there isnt a way for me to accuratly keep track of my CPU temps at this point in time.. although when Everest was showing reasonable temps .. the idle was around 32C and then while doom 3 playing it went to about 35C MAX, so basically no matter if accurate or not one thing I do know is that it jumps about 3 degrees.. which is pretty good .. but like I said its not an 100% accurate temp even in that case.. *** Anyways I just finished playing Doom 3 for little over an hour and a half and no freezing took place.. hopefully I found a cure to my problem but like always as I have seen in the past "Dont wanna speak too soon" I will keep you guys posted if any freezing occurs.. thanks

Like the man said "D***".
Post back with performance at the defaults.

[andrewy3k]

Indeed I spoke too soon once again.. Was installing Diablo 2 and system froze.. required hard boot..

..excuse me while I go kill myself... lol

This must be like the ultimate tech problem.. wow

[andrewy3k]

Somthing just struck me.. everytime I have something im my cd rom drive my comp will freeze.. could this be a possiblity??

[JPMiller]

In the finicky realm of computer circuitry, ANYTHING, is possible...
Swap the cable first.. then the drive.... if its still doing it... you might try re-installing the IDE and or chipset drivers...

[pam123]

You played Doom 3 but locked on Diablo 2 ?
Find a forum for the game and check for updates and patches.
What other games do/don't run now ?

[andrewy3k]

nonono it froze during insatllation..I have a hunch that my cd rom ddrive could b causing the problem/...

[Cricket]

A faulty optical drive can cause the problems you're seeing. Swap in another optical and if the problems go away, you've found the cause.

Cricket

[pam123]

What Cricket said.

[andrewy3k]

I tried 3 times to install the diablo 2.. one time with on of my drives and 2 times with my other drive.. it seems to happen with both cd drives.. I would have to replace them both?? I dont even think I can get a hold of some drives unless I buy them

So yea basically it has to be something like that.. maybe why my windows media player froze that time was becaus I had a cd in the drive...I know one thing about one of my drives.. if I have a cd in there while playing certain games the system with lagg for no apparent reason..

My graphics in game problems seem to be fixed though.. played doom 3 all last night that I am happy about..

[Cricket]

I would replace the IDE cable before I replaced the drives.

Cricket

[andrewy3k]

omg but these are brand new ide cables.. look at the pics on page 2 in one of my posts to see how new they are.. they barley have dust on them.. lmao

and doom3 froze after about 7 hours of total play time since the last freeze.. well if I can get 7 hours of time before it freezes I wont mind.. much:S

edit: Keep it clean.

-----------------moderator----------------------

[andrewy3k]

So basically all I can do for the installation freezing up is get new cd drives? how come this dosent happen wtith any other cd installation?

And my last hypothesis of the games freezing because there were cd's in the drives was incorrect as doom 3 froze again but this time after 3 hours of play..

Is there anything else to do? or am I basically screwed?

I really wish I had not build my system and just bought one from somewhere because the time I spent trying to fix all these problems is unbeliveable and its driving me insane...

[pam123]

Going by the pics you're using round cables.
Since you probably got one old fashioned ribbon cable with your motherboard try using that for your optical drives.
It's probably best to have the drives jumpered master/slave instead of cable select for this.

[andrewy3k]

okay ill try it out..

thanks

[andrewy3k]

Well after taking apart my system to get my 2 drives out of my case I ponderd what the problem could be... before that though I reconfigered all my 12v hook ups so that all of my power supply's hook ups were evenly distributed..

then I inspected my 2 drives which I took out and my round ide cables.. the cables seemed to be perfect as I suspected since they are very new.. then I moved on to the drives.. the first on I looked at was fine.. all the pins were perfect and not bent or messed up in any way...so moved on to looking at other drive and what do you know.. one of the pins was NOT bent BUT had been pushed in probably from forcing the IDE cable in the wrong way and it must have been recently .. so basically I figured that was the casue .. so took that out and im using the good drive now.. but what still is unbelivable is if one of the pins wasnt making connection on the IDE cable then why would my system boot shouldnt it bring up an error and how come the drive could still read the cd's??? can someone explaine that to me? this had to have happened recently because I installed programs/games via this drive like 2 weeks ago..

anyways long story short.. the "faulty" drive removed seemed to fix this problem and I was able to install diablo 2 perfectly but like always "dont wanna speak too soon" lol

Attached is a pic of the back of the faulty cd rom drive which is now going in the trash.. the picture is really blurry so I labeled the pin that was pushed in and the spot I call "Missing Pin" which is the one spot on cd rom drives that dont have a pin..

I will post if any problems arise.. thanks guys...

[pam123]

If all continues you should be able to return to your over clocking without lock ups (I'm the eternal optimist).
That was a nice job of investigating you did.

[andrewy3k]

omg.. I was again this time installing the expansion for the game and froze... then I booted up again tried again and it worked.. *** is this ??? its like its so random if it freezes and dosent freeze.. damn I hate this .. anymore ideas??

should I just replace both drives with new ones??

Im running outta options.. to the power of 100.. lol

[pam123]

Lets bring this up to date : the only time your computer freezes now is when you're installing something ?

[andrewy3k]

Okay..

#1. Doom 3 froze after about 7 hours of playing and I think it may be the same reason as when installing diablo 2 it froze.. doom 3 has not froze since that which is good..

#2. Diablo 2 froze while i was trying to install randomly on 5/6 occasions trying.. the 1/6 time that it worked was when I took out the drive that was defected.. but then again it froze when I tried to install the expansion.. I have not tried to install any other game yet but I will today and post what happens if anything..

*** So basically freezing only happens FROM CURRENT KNOWLEGE, after long hours playing a game or installing diablo 2.. ***

makes me still think if it could still be a PSU related problem sicne after I pulled out one of the drives it happens less..

[pam123]

Okay.
We've got 3 possibilities (in case no one clued you in most pc diagnostics are done by elimination ).
From your reports heat is not the problem.
It's still continuing after you switched out cables and checked the drive jumpering.
So we're down to the optical drives,the motherboard connector and, maybe, the psu.
You have to admit it's an improvement over a rig that just froze "whenever".
Zap IDE 2 in Device Manager and make XP re-recognize it ( I know you formatted but humor me ). What happens ?
Is DMA still enabled ?
What happens with freezing then ?

[andrewy3k]

removed secondary IDE channel and win xp succesfully detcted it afterward and DMA is set to "if avaliable"

also I left my computer on for about 10 hours because I went out the whole day I just got back and it was frozen

lets move on to another possibility..

[pam123]

Okay.
This is the one CD-ROM at a time test.
Remember to remove the optical drive you disconnect in Device Manager and then test them one at a time, jumpered to master, to find out which one is faulty.
If they both fail then it's likely the IDE2 connector on the motherboard that's at fault .

[jduffy]

Originally Posted by pam123 You've answered my question about those pics. I know that it can be done and that it has worked but given the way printed circuit boards are made you may have done more damage then you intended.

I not a computer expert, but I know a bit about electronics and circuit boards. If you "ripped" something off the bard, you may have cracked one of the minor circuit board traces (those little copper lines on the board). It could be connecting and then not connecting. Heat and cooling can cause it to expand and contract.

My quess is the motherboard is damaged and you are going to have to replace it.