Greetings Forum Denizens,
Like many others, I have come to Tom's Hardware to plead for help with a PC problem that's far beyond my own abilities. For two months I have worked at this PC build, which would be my first gaming machine since high school, and only now am I ready to admit that I can't fix it on my own. Not easily do I admit this, for I am a graduate of an electrical and computer engineering program at a good university. I won't bore you with tales of my past hardware exploits, I just want you to know that whoever solves this problem earns enough Tech-XP to gain two levels and gets to loot a high-level nerd corpse.
~~The Problem~~
The system has, on several occasions, been stable enough to install an OS (WinXP SP2 and Ubuntu 7.10) and get several hours of WoW or Oblivion in. After running for a few hours, I would power down the machine. On the next morning, the machine sucks and dies. The machine might suck and die on several boot attempts and then run flawlessly for as many hours as I care to leave it on, but over a few sessions the odds of "suck and die" seem to go up a lot, and it always ends in BIOS Corruption.
"Suck and die" is a somewhat general term that refers to
(1) no POST at all, possibly with no Video signal
(2) POST, but lock up before loading OS, possibly as I'm trying to configure the BIOS
(3) freeze while loading OS, possibly with WinXP Stop Error (usually IRQ related, sometimes pointing to a .dll) or a Linux kernel panic notice
(4) OS loads and I log in, but freeze or crash before all services and drivers are loaded
I've tried to boot this thing hundreds of time (by all the captains of the Enterprise, I wish I had kept a log of all the boot attempts) and the freeze really does happen at all four of those points.
Clearing CMOS will sometimes (but not always!) get me a successful boot. Flashing the BIOS has resulted in *one of the next four* boot attempts being successful on the two occasions that I flashed the BIOS.
~~The System~~
--Base--
Intel Q6600 with stock cooler & Arctic Silver (after the price drop, of course)
2x Corsair XMS2 1GB DIMMs (both recently passed two full memtests from the Ubuntu CD)
EVGA 8800GTS, 640MB, factory overclock
Antec P180 chassis
Gigabyte P35-DS4 Rev2, later Asus P5K Deluxe
Antec NeoPower650, later OCZ Gamestream 700 (yeah, I guess these are oversized for non-SLI)
--Peripheral--
2x Samsung 500GB SATA drives
Floppy Drive, Lite-On combo optical drive, USB Keys & Mouse
--BIOS--
Both boards had many attempts with the original BIOS and the most recent BIOS from the company website.
I didn't tinker much with BIOS settings, but I have tried setting Asus' AI-overclockign to 'standard' instead of 'auto' and enabling or disabling USB support.
~~The Trials~~
So, what have I been doing these last two months, none of which did even the slightest good? Glad you asked...
Actually, I'll skip most of it. Let me just say that I've tried very minimal configurations with both of those PSUs and both of the Motherboards and seen literally the same symptoms (the ones described above) in each case. Of course I'm posting on the Motherboards forum because this always turns into BIOS corruption, which is clearly happening on the motherboard. Having experienced the same pattern of boot failures with two different boards I'm starting to think that BIOS corruption is being caused by something off the main board.
~~Bench Test~~
When the heroes of Greece needed to get to the bottom of things, they carried gifts to the oracle at Delphi. When PC builders need answers, we do a bench test. In my case I took the Asus P5K out of the chassis and set it on a box with both DIMMs,the vid card, and the CPU with stock cooler still on the board. No keyboard, mouse or SATA device was attached. The chassis front panel connector was removed. I used a multimeter probe to bridge the Power and Reset pins for my testing. Before bench testing the PC was in a very bad state, not even showing the Asus logo on several boot attempts, and disconnecting power, which supposedly clears all CPU parameters, wasn't helping. CMOS was cleared by removing the battery and using the clear CMOS jumper as described in the manual prior to bench testing.
First result was the "Insert bootable media in appropriate drive" message. Encouraged, I attached the USB keys and SATA CD drive and tried to boot from the Ubuntu live CD. I deleted the 'quiet' and 'splash' parameters so that I could watch it spew out a stack trace when it sucked and died trying to configure Ubuntu on my hardware. Error messages were IRQ-related. After that I couldn't get it to POST over five attempts, so I cleared CMOS and removed the CD drive.
Out of the following 17 attempts to boot the board in this configuration only 7 resulted in the desirable "Insert bootable media and press enter" state. Here is a detailed log:
[Edit]No USB devices were attached at this time[/Edit]
(1) (pass) Insert bootable media and press enter... (reset)
(2) (pass) Insert bootable media and press enter... (reset)
(3) (pass) Insert bootable media and press enter... (cycle power)
(4) (pass) Insert bootable media and press enter... (cycle power)
(5) (fail) Freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" (reset)
(5.2) no video signal (reset)
(5.3) no POST, flashing cursor (reset with jittery fingers)
(5.4) (pass) Insert bootable media and press enter... (reset)
(6) (pass) Insert bootable media and press enter... (disconnect power 10sec)
(7) (fail) no video signal (reset)
(7.2) Freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" (reset)
(7.3) Freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" (reset)
(7.4) no video signal (reset)
(7.5) (pass) Insert bootable media and press enter... (reset)
(8) Freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" (cycle power)
(8.2) Freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" (cycle power)
(8.3) Freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" (disconnect power)
At this point I gave up and put Freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" into Google. Not finding any useful suggestions, I decided to post here...
Note that I had *never* seen it freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" before the bench test, so fixing that problem may or may not fix the PC.
Like many others, I have come to Tom's Hardware to plead for help with a PC problem that's far beyond my own abilities. For two months I have worked at this PC build, which would be my first gaming machine since high school, and only now am I ready to admit that I can't fix it on my own. Not easily do I admit this, for I am a graduate of an electrical and computer engineering program at a good university. I won't bore you with tales of my past hardware exploits, I just want you to know that whoever solves this problem earns enough Tech-XP to gain two levels and gets to loot a high-level nerd corpse.
~~The Problem~~
The system has, on several occasions, been stable enough to install an OS (WinXP SP2 and Ubuntu 7.10) and get several hours of WoW or Oblivion in. After running for a few hours, I would power down the machine. On the next morning, the machine sucks and dies. The machine might suck and die on several boot attempts and then run flawlessly for as many hours as I care to leave it on, but over a few sessions the odds of "suck and die" seem to go up a lot, and it always ends in BIOS Corruption.
"Suck and die" is a somewhat general term that refers to
(1) no POST at all, possibly with no Video signal
(2) POST, but lock up before loading OS, possibly as I'm trying to configure the BIOS
(3) freeze while loading OS, possibly with WinXP Stop Error (usually IRQ related, sometimes pointing to a .dll) or a Linux kernel panic notice
(4) OS loads and I log in, but freeze or crash before all services and drivers are loaded
I've tried to boot this thing hundreds of time (by all the captains of the Enterprise, I wish I had kept a log of all the boot attempts) and the freeze really does happen at all four of those points.
Clearing CMOS will sometimes (but not always!) get me a successful boot. Flashing the BIOS has resulted in *one of the next four* boot attempts being successful on the two occasions that I flashed the BIOS.
~~The System~~
--Base--
Intel Q6600 with stock cooler & Arctic Silver (after the price drop, of course)
2x Corsair XMS2 1GB DIMMs (both recently passed two full memtests from the Ubuntu CD)
EVGA 8800GTS, 640MB, factory overclock
Antec P180 chassis
Gigabyte P35-DS4 Rev2, later Asus P5K Deluxe
Antec NeoPower650, later OCZ Gamestream 700 (yeah, I guess these are oversized for non-SLI)
--Peripheral--
2x Samsung 500GB SATA drives
Floppy Drive, Lite-On combo optical drive, USB Keys & Mouse
--BIOS--
Both boards had many attempts with the original BIOS and the most recent BIOS from the company website.
I didn't tinker much with BIOS settings, but I have tried setting Asus' AI-overclockign to 'standard' instead of 'auto' and enabling or disabling USB support.
~~The Trials~~
So, what have I been doing these last two months, none of which did even the slightest good? Glad you asked...
Actually, I'll skip most of it. Let me just say that I've tried very minimal configurations with both of those PSUs and both of the Motherboards and seen literally the same symptoms (the ones described above) in each case. Of course I'm posting on the Motherboards forum because this always turns into BIOS corruption, which is clearly happening on the motherboard. Having experienced the same pattern of boot failures with two different boards I'm starting to think that BIOS corruption is being caused by something off the main board.
~~Bench Test~~
When the heroes of Greece needed to get to the bottom of things, they carried gifts to the oracle at Delphi. When PC builders need answers, we do a bench test. In my case I took the Asus P5K out of the chassis and set it on a box with both DIMMs,the vid card, and the CPU with stock cooler still on the board. No keyboard, mouse or SATA device was attached. The chassis front panel connector was removed. I used a multimeter probe to bridge the Power and Reset pins for my testing. Before bench testing the PC was in a very bad state, not even showing the Asus logo on several boot attempts, and disconnecting power, which supposedly clears all CPU parameters, wasn't helping. CMOS was cleared by removing the battery and using the clear CMOS jumper as described in the manual prior to bench testing.
First result was the "Insert bootable media in appropriate drive" message. Encouraged, I attached the USB keys and SATA CD drive and tried to boot from the Ubuntu live CD. I deleted the 'quiet' and 'splash' parameters so that I could watch it spew out a stack trace when it sucked and died trying to configure Ubuntu on my hardware. Error messages were IRQ-related. After that I couldn't get it to POST over five attempts, so I cleared CMOS and removed the CD drive.
Out of the following 17 attempts to boot the board in this configuration only 7 resulted in the desirable "Insert bootable media and press enter" state. Here is a detailed log:
[Edit]No USB devices were attached at this time[/Edit]
(1) (pass) Insert bootable media and press enter... (reset)
(2) (pass) Insert bootable media and press enter... (reset)
(3) (pass) Insert bootable media and press enter... (cycle power)
(4) (pass) Insert bootable media and press enter... (cycle power)
(5) (fail) Freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" (reset)
(5.2) no video signal (reset)
(5.3) no POST, flashing cursor (reset with jittery fingers)
(5.4) (pass) Insert bootable media and press enter... (reset)
(6) (pass) Insert bootable media and press enter... (disconnect power 10sec)
(7) (fail) no video signal (reset)
(7.2) Freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" (reset)
(7.3) Freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" (reset)
(7.4) no video signal (reset)
(7.5) (pass) Insert bootable media and press enter... (reset)
(8) Freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" (cycle power)
(8.2) Freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" (cycle power)
(8.3) Freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" (disconnect power)
At this point I gave up and put Freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" into Google. Not finding any useful suggestions, I decided to post here...
Note that I had *never* seen it freeze on "Initializing USB controllers" before the bench test, so fixing that problem may or may not fix the PC.