845WN Probs - need help with em...

I just had a look at the "Intel Boards" section - not likely I'll get a response there so will post here instead.

Problem is we have these P4's at work which are real buggy h'ware wise. The only thing I can think of that is causing these probs(varying h'ware failures over a batch of a dozen pcs) is the chipset or mobo. They are all Intel boards on the 845WN chipset. A can't find any other info on them besides the fact that they can't overclock (duh).

Is this chipset known for being useless? Can any mobo guru help a poor tech out?

What sort of problems are you haveing? I have installed and maintained many of the 845WNL and 845WN's. I haven't had any problem out of them, except that they are kinda picky about memory. When I use one of those boards, I put the 64bit high density in them. It seems to work great.

Describe your problems, and I might be able to help you.

OK (thanks for the replay btw). We have had out of 11 PCs (identical setups) - two graphics card failures (dying slow deaths), a dud memory stick(not so unusual), three or four network card failures and a couple of dvd drive deaths. Also some strange hardware glitches with some machines and W2K, "csc window notification error" when attempting to logout or shutdown (it has something to do with novell i'm pretty sure). All in the three/four months. None of the other batches of machines have had anywhere near that failure rate. The only other thing I can think of is bad power supplies or dirty power. But we havn't had one failure in a PSU. (I just thought that I should check their voltages for fluctuations, if that turns out to be the prob thanks for getting me thinkin)

Any more input would be greatly appreiciated.

Thanks guys/girls.

OK, from what I can tell, and this is a longshot, is it sounds like static may be part of your problem. Since they are dying slow deaths, that would be my first guess. The power supply is an option, but I would say static.

It may not be, so lets look at other options.

I just had to pull some ram out of one of the boards that I have installed, because it blue screened a lot. Ran memtest on it, and it was fine, but I think it got shocked, as the other ram ran fine.

One of my friends had one of these boards just up and die on him recently. It just up and died. Wouldn't turn on. I have heard that a few times about these boards.

Maybe the power is dirty, and you may need to try a ups on a couple at a time to see how it works. That would be a good troubleshooting option.

If you keep having problems with them, I would suggest getting a different board. I am starting to hear bad things about the boards just dying, and more problems like yours. I will definitely use a different board for the PC133 people I build for.

Try the ups, try reseating the cards (I have put a card in thinking it was ok, but I have noticed you have to push kinda hard to get the cards in the pci slots on that board), try different power supply's, and get rid of some of the static around them, and make sure and wear an anti-static wrist band when replacing parts. That is the #1 killer of computer hardware. It could kill it instantly, or it could take months.
It takes less charge than what you feel after walking across the carpet and get a very very light shock when you touch a doorknob to kill a chip. Remember that, and live by it.

Those are just some suggestions. I will look up some more info about the board though.

Thanks for the great info - yeah I had exactly the same problem with a couple of sticks of ram a while back.

I checked the power today and the 12V rail is out by about a volt ~11V. That could be some reason (although not enough rather than too much?). I also got in contact with the distributer of these machines and they seemed very eager to replace the PSU's(under warranty), maybe they know something that I don't.

I will check about for static, the thing is we have about 60 other PC's running on the same lines, same surfaces, same rooms and no problems with them.

Well, hopefully I can sort all this out and score a couple of points with the boss

Thanks again, I'm glad there are other people out there with good knowledge.

Actually, that is the funny thing about static. It could happen to one machine, and not to another. But since it is just on these boards, that probably isn't the problem with the board. But the components, that is a different story. When they were being put together, they could have gotten shocked.

Sounds good you are getting new power supplies. If that doesn't work, make them replace the mobo's.