I'll lose an A64 if you don't help

C

Carnival Forces

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Feb 9, 2003
Messages
4,297
so i've been having random restarts, crashes, lockups, etc. with my A64 system.

it's not the RAM, Video Card, CPU, HDD, or (i don't think) PSU

yeah, i think it's the motherboard.

i won't be getting a new motherboard for a couple of weeks, but i will be switching to Linux, however, i need a cd-burner-capable computer (that's stable) to burn a *nix OS for me.

i have this pII 450MHz crapper that got a Philips CD-Drive, but as per this thread, which has only gotten 9 views and is the reason i'm cross-linking it, i can't get it to work.

if anyone has any suggestions about how i can get my A64 system stable, or, how i can get that Philips piece-of-shit to work, it's much appreciated.

thanks!
 
I'm having the same sort of issues with my DFI nforce3. I need to figure out why it is unstable. I've been down a 3400+ for a few days. Good luck.
 
Hito Bahadur said:
I'm having the same sort of issues with my DFI nforce3. I need to figure out why it is unstable. I've been down a 3400+ for a few days. Good luck.
Click to expand...
i tried a different vid card (PCI that i knew was stable)--no fix
tried a different HDD that's stable ( a non-sata one )--no fix
tried different RAM (that passed memtest)--no fix
CPU passed prime95 (back when i had some semblence of "stability")--no fix

so it's either the PSU or the motherboard. i think it's the motherboard. Chaintech piece of shit.

btw, specs:
Chaintech ZNF3-150
A64 3200+ (at stock 2.0GHz)
1x512MB Corsair PC-something-or-the-other RAM
Radeon 9800PRO
Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus9 200GB SATA HDD
Antec 430(?)W PSU
 
Oldbenwa said:
I could download, burn, and mail the CDs to you if you'd like.

Oldbenwa
Click to expand...
aww, thanks so much! i'd much rather fix this problem though--i'll need to sooner or later, and i wouldn't want to inconvenience you so...maybe if i can't fix it anyother way..

thanks so much, Oldbenwa!
 
When you contact Philips please have available:
- The exact model number
- Your date of purchasing
- The serial number of your product


Speak with a Philips representative:
1-888-541-5837


As for the 64, keep switching parts out till you find the offender..
 
yeah, i'll call Philips tomorrow (i can't today, i'm at my parents' office =\)

as per above, i did switch out parts...and i can't get a new mobo yet (money is an elusive prey), so i was wondering if anyone had any other ideas about what i could do...?

maybe a suggestion for the mobo i should get? (i am NOT getting another Chaintech one)
 
I would yank all the parts out and put em together without the case, using only the motherboard,cpu w/hsf, memory, videocard, harddrive and psu. If you have a differant psu I would try it just in case. If you get stability at this point, I would check the case and make sure its not grounding to the motherboard somehow. I did have a case that the screw from one of the cdrom drives had backed out and fell behind the motherboard. not enough to fry it just to make it randomly shut down. found the screw when i took it apart to test everything.

T-3
 
i'm almost 100% sure there are no screwy screws.

and it's not that it randomly shutsdown, the errors are much more interesting--sometimes it'll just freeze.

sometimes it'll restart and get stuck at the screen where it shows my BIOS loading

sometimes it'll restart and get stuck at the screen where it shows my "SCSI RAID" (sata) drivers loading (this screen comes right after the BIOS screen)

sometimes it'll get a part of the way through the BIOS screen, literally letters will be cut off, like i'll get half a "Z" in teh "Chaintech-ZNF3-150"

sometimes it'll just inform me it's going into "Power Save" mode and i'll be unable to wake it up, ever again (this is when the shit really hits the fan--i generally have to turn off the computer and wait a few hours and then try to turn on my computer again and pray it works)

sometimes it'll restart and go into "Power Save" mode

but, BUT, i NEVER get a BSOD....
 
Have you considered resetting the bios? Maybe flashing it to a different version?

 
p[H]ant0m said:
Have you considered resetting the bios? Maybe flashing it to a different version?

Click to expand...
i've reset the CMOS (pulling the little red jumper)

and i'm fairly certain i've flashed the BIOS...i guess i should check Chaintech's web page to see if i can find a newer version...it (IIRC) was hard to navigate, also hard to find tech support in english. bah, i can't speak chinese yet, so it's kinda difficult.
 
Carnival Forces said:
money is an elusive prey
Click to expand...
QFT ;)

I'd suggest yanking it from its case, just to make sure that it's not a grounding issue. If you have a piece of wood to put it on, that'd be better than cardboard - I think cardboard can conduct just enough to screw things up under some circumstances. Then run it stripped down and see what happens. Also, check the temps on the northbridge etc to see if they're heating up.
edit: old badges!
 
Carnival Forces,

Here is the link to the BIOS. Hope it helps.

Also on another point, while it sucks that you have a dud board. I heard in the past the nforce 150 had major problems. I have used my chaintech VNF3-250 since October folding pretty much full time and o/ced without a problem just for the occasional whistling it used to have, ironically fixed by maxing CPU usage to 100% i.e F@H.

G/L on your mobo. :)
 
magnusvir said:
Carnival Forces,

Here is the link to the BIOS. Hope it helps.

Also on another point, while it sucks that you have a dud board. I heard in the past the nforce 150 had major problems. I have used my chaintech VNF3-250 since October folding pretty much full time and o/ced without a problem just for the occasional whistling it used to have, ironically fixed by maxing CPU usage to 100% i.e F@H.

G/L on your mobo. :)
Click to expand...


heh, fate's one cruel bitch.
 
Check the voltage in the bios. I had a simliar problem with my GF's computer, which I built as a birthday present(knowing it would be running FAH 24/7). All kinds of random problems, same as you are having. I was looking in the bios and noticed the 3.3v line was reading 2.7 or something... I thought the PSU was dying, but remembered that I switched out the 92mm tornado for a quieter fan (she loved the computer, but asked why it was so damn loud!), and wondered if I pulled something out when I was replacing the fan, since I had all the cables tied up real tight. Sure enough, the ATX connector was a little loose, and once I fixed it, the 3.3v was fine, and the computer was back to normal. When I replaced the fan, I had to return the computer to stock settings, it wouldn't overclock at all, and it had me thinking that temperature was the problem since I went from a Vantec Tornado :D to a Stealth :( ... But know here 3400+ is back to 2.6, and everything is fine... So I wouldn't rule out a PSU problem.

 
Carnival Forces said:
btw, specs:
Chaintech ZNF3-150
A64 3200+ (at stock 2.0GHz)
1x512MB Corsair PC-something-or-the-other RAM
Radeon 9800PRO
Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus9 200GB SATA HDD
Antec 430(?)W PSU
Click to expand...

I had some real freakish issues with a Maxtor SATA drive. I ran MaxBlast to test it and it said the drive was bad. That was on a DiamondMax 10 but I would give it a try.
It can be downloaded as an ISO image and burned as a bootable disc.
link
Good luck and I hope you fix it!

 
These things are worse than passive-aggressive girlfriends, I tellya...

The little beast A64 I have here called "Lil' Blue" was a torment to get stable. BSODs like every other day, random reboots, and the most maddening of all? After all the BIOS updates, the guessing of which drivers to load on a SIS chipset with IGP, three reloads of the OS?

Having the irritating little shit perfectly stable burning through 600-point Gromacs, then crashing every time it tried to upload the results. Tinkers, 356-point Gromacs, no problem. The El Grande 600? Bomb run, right into the swamp of reboots. :mad:

Drivers. Look seriously at the driver revisions for EVERYTHING.

Lil' Blue is a strange dog, based on an Asus K8S-MX. I tried updating everything from the Asus website, assuming they had the tested and approved mix that would stabilize the machine. Nahh. BIOS, video, audio, nothing got it quite right. What turned this turd into a 14-day uptime diamond was replacing the Asus NIC driver with the latest generic from SiS.

Drivers.

Good Luck.
 
The other thing I found that would make or break the deal was N-Force drivers.
I ended up useing the drvers that came with the mobo, as they seemed to work out hte best!
I fought with that A-64 for quite a while before it would settle down and work properly.

 
Mayhem33 said:
I had some real freakish issues with a Maxtor SATA drive. I ran MaxBlast to test it and it said the drive was bad. That was on a DiamondMax 10 but I would give it a try.
It can be downloaded as an ISO image and burned as a bootable disc.
link
Good luck and I hope you fix it!

Click to expand...

Off topic I know, but those Diamond Max 10's are comming back to the store I work at in large quantities. Plus our shop machine has gone through 3 Diamond Max 10 300GB drives in just over a month.

Absolute junk.
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
Off topic I know, but those Diamond Max 10's are comming back to the store I work at in large quantities. Plus our shop machine has gone through 3 Diamond Max 10 300GB drives in just over a month.

Absolute junk.
Click to expand...

Great, I built that rig for someone in another state! :eek:
The Diamond Max 9 was/ is a good sata drive? Whats the difference between the two?

 
seems like maxtor and wd are going to 1 year warranties on their drives - even maxtor's top of the line 16mb cache drive. people want cheap drives and i guess manufacturers are building them cheaper and lowering the warranties correspondingly. i'm a seagate guy because of their 5 year warranty. just had an almost new 250 gig drive fail (can happen to any manufacturer). called seagate up and asked for a 300 gig one as a replacement because i wanted to complete an array with 300 gig drives and they upgraded me no charge. that's what i consider customer service
 
dualblade said:
seems like maxtor and wd are going to 1 year warranties on their drives - even maxtor's top of the line 16mb cache drive. people want cheap drives and i guess manufacturers are building them cheaper and lowering the warranties correspondingly. i'm a seagate guy because of their 5 year warranty. just had an almost new 250 gig drive fail (can happen to any manufacturer). called seagate up and asked for a 300 gig one as a replacement because i wanted to complete an array with 300 gig drives and they upgraded me no charge. that's what i consider customer service
Click to expand...

I have had good luck with the old IDE format, drives seem to be pretty solid.
I wonder if the trouble with the SATA drives is just because the standard is still realatively new?
Then again I havent bought any new IDE drives in quite a while.

 
afaik, maxtor drives carry a 1,3,or 5 year warrenty

retail, off the BB selves drive - 1year
OEM, DM10 drive - 3 years
OEM, Maxline3 drive - 5 years
 
Check your other thread
smile.gif
 
qb4ever said:
Check your other thread
smile.gif
Click to expand...
thanks

just in case you didn't know (i haven't read the hell thread yet) there are two diff. systems--the old pII w/ the Philips CDRW and my A64 with the Chaintech...


to the guys: i'll try the rest of your suggestions in the afternoon b/c i'm at the office right now (i have a doctor's appointment.. :()
 
Mayhem33 said:
Any luck, CF? :)

Click to expand...
i'm thinking i'll try formatting and installing XP w/ SP2 because my PATA install got seriously FUBARD.

it can't connect to the internet, it's just screwed.

 
Carnival Forces said:
i'm thinking i'll try formatting and installing XP w/ SP2 because my PATA install got seriously FUBARD.

it can't connect to the internet, it's just screwed.

Click to expand...


Bummer....but its better than win98 :D
Good luck!

 
KodiakStar said:
So how are you posting?
Click to expand...
i have an XP install on my SATA drive also. See, first i thought it was the HDD, so i got a PATA one and put XP on it (so i had , at that time, as i do now, two XP installs - one on my SATA one on my PATA).

now the PATA one is fucked.

 
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