Is my roommates mobo failing?

My roommate has the following setup:

Asus p5e mobo
e6600 c2d
4gb ocz pi ddr2 800 memory (was 2 gb corsair value)
geforce 7350 gpu
noname case/psu
3 hdds, all sata, 4 including the new one
memorex dvd +/i r, pata
XP pro OS

For the past week he's been having random application errors - games just will randomly crash. Typically it was a memory error that would come up. At this time he had 2 gb of corsair value select ddr2 memory. He decided since memory was cheap that he would go ahead and get 4gb, thinking that memory was the issue. In addition, as he wanted to do a clean install of an OS, he bought the 640gb caviar black hd.

The memory and hdd came in, so he disconnected all his HD's, put just the new one in, and swapped out the memory. He boots up and attempts to install Vista Ultimate. It gets part of the way through, then comes up with an error saying that vista couldn't be installed because it couldn't find a .win file. He reboots and tries again; this time it doesn't even get that far complaining that it couldn't find a hdd to install it on (checking the bios showed the drive). Tries again, and gets past the hdd part and it begins installing, but fails again. He swapped out the pata cable to the dvd drive, and attempts again, and it gets most of the way through the install then blue screens, complaining about memory management.

At this point he swaps back in his prior sata hdd with his XP install and boots up. Applications still have random failures, and even watching a video in media player classic caused issues. In addition, the computer also started randomly restarting itself. We're at a loss for what it could be, except for thinking that the motherboard could be causing issues. This computer had been running fine for over a year. Anyone have any ideas?

Try prime95 and memtest?

could very well be his ps is failing sinces you say its a no name brand
Rich

inspect the dimm slot area carefully for swollen/fat capacitors, if there is any its RMA time.
Also check your temps and make sure the NB is not running too hot, set everything to stock and test ram with HCI Memtest, then a nice prime run or 10 loops of IBT and see if it passes. 4GB's of ram will tax the NB harder than 2GBs and will require a drop or 2 more vNB, also you'll get better stability with tref ( row refresh cycle time) set to 55

Thanks for the replies. He was running memtest, but the computer rebooted itself after a few minutes. Checked for any swollen/fat capacitors, but as far as I can tell none appear bad (I have another mobo that has swollen ones so I know what you mean).

What tool should I use to monitor NB temp? Should there be something in the bios? He's not overclocking the computer at all but I will have him reset defaults in the bios anyway to be sure.

Zimpo said:

Thanks for the replies. He was running memtest, but the computer rebooted itself after a few minutes. Checked for any swollen/fat capacitors, but as far as I can tell none appear bad (I have another mobo that has swollen ones so I know what you mean).

What tool should I use to monitor NB temp? Should there be something in the bios? He's not overclocking the computer at all but I will have him reset defaults in the bios anyway to be sure.

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I agree that the random resets make me lean toward PSU issues. When you say random reset, you mean it's like someone pushed the reset button right? Not a BSoD followed by a real quick reset?

Try and find out what the wattage is on the PSU. Running 4 HDD's could be a bit more than some no name PSU could handle.

Use a power supply checker if you happen to have one around. If not, maybe hit up your local computer geeks and see if anyone has one. Or if you have a multimeter, check the voltages make sure they're all ok.

chech your 12volt rails and 5 volt rails unload
Rich

ShaggyTDawg, yeah, it's like someone reached down and just popped the reset button. I would assume then that if the power supply is flaky, it could be causing the other issues due to not enough power getting through the mobo?

w2richwood, how should I go about checking the rails? I may have access to a voltmeter if I can use that?

good idea a power supply can take your board with it and or other stuff
Rich

Zimpo said:

ShaggyTDawg, yeah, it's like someone reached down and just popped the reset button. I would assume then that if the power supply is flaky, it could be causing the other issues due to not enough power getting through the mobo?

w2richwood, how should I go about checking the rails? I may have access to a voltmeter if I can use that?

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Look up the pin diagrams for the various connectors coming out of the PSU... take the volt meter and touch the black probe to a ground pin and the red probe to whichever pin provides the voltage.

If you touch it to a +5V pin and your meter reads something like -5V, then you've just got your two probes backwards.

You can probably also look up what the acceptable ranges are for the various rails, b/c your +5V rail won't provide exactly +5v, probably something like +4.93V or something... same goes for most of the rails.

Also look up the trick for powering up your PSU while the main 20/24 pin connector isn't hooked up to the mobo. It should be something like put a bobby pin or paper clip to short a green and a black wire.

Ok, a bit of an update, and unfortunately no success.

He went to microcenter and bought a Corsair HX 620 psu to replace his noname unit. We put that in, and replaced the case fans as well with new ones. Hooked up the brand new hdd (the wd caviar black 640gb) and the dvd rom. Started the install of Vista, and about 20 minutes into it got a blue sreen with a page fault. Reboot, and even though the bios detects the dvd drive, it doesn't give the option to boot from it, it just goes straight to saying the ntldr wasn't found. He discoed the hd completely and left just the dvd rom installed, and it just says disk boot failure.

We've ensured several times over that the boot order is indeed cdrom first, then hard drives. At this point he connected his old main drive back in and booted to xp. When it loads up, it freezes...at first he can use the keyboard, but not the mouse but then after about a minute it just freezes completely.

I put an XP disk in, and it detected that, so my roommate is currently trying to install XP on the new drive instead of vista. The vista disk is a burn, but I used it to install on another machine already. I popped it back into my computer and it seems to be reading it fine.

So, my thoughts are maybe the disk has gone bad between the time I used it to install vista and now, maybe his dvd drive is going bad, but neither of those would explain the other issues he's having (like his current xp os not loading, unless it got corrupted from the previous issues) - or that his MB is dying. Any ideas?

i would try it with i stick of cheap ram

Zimpo said:

Ok, a bit of an update, and unfortunately no success.

He went to microcenter and bought a Corsair HX 620 psu to replace his noname unit. We put that in, and replaced the case fans as well with new ones. Hooked up the brand new hdd (the wd caviar black 640gb) and the dvd rom. Started the install of Vista, and about 20 minutes into it got a blue sreen with a page fault. Reboot, and even though the bios detects the dvd drive, it doesn't give the option to boot from it, it just goes straight to saying the ntldr wasn't found. He discoed the hd completely and left just the dvd rom installed, and it just says disk boot failure.

We've ensured several times over that the boot order is indeed cdrom first, then hard drives. At this point he connected his old main drive back in and booted to xp. When it loads up, it freezes...at first he can use the keyboard, but not the mouse but then after about a minute it just freezes completely.

I put an XP disk in, and it detected that, so my roommate is currently trying to install XP on the new drive instead of vista. The vista disk is a burn, but I used it to install on another machine already. I popped it back into my computer and it seems to be reading it fine.

So, my thoughts are maybe the disk has gone bad between the time I used it to install vista and now, maybe his dvd drive is going bad, but neither of those would explain the other issues he's having (like his current xp os not loading, unless it got corrupted from the previous issues) - or that his MB is dying. Any ideas?

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Ohh... I just had a duh moment... If this is a burned copy of vista, it may not have the patch that allows it to use (or install w/) 4GB of memory. Take out one of the sticks of RAM, do the install. If that works, install all patches and SP1. Then power down and throw in the other stick of RAM and you should be set.

I'm guessing that's what w2richwood is getting at.

Thanks guys. Turns out one of the new memory modules was bad; he put his corsair memory back in and everything went smoothly for the install. This vista had sp1, I was able to install it on a machine with 4 gb in it, so that wasn't it. He's RMA'ing the memory back to newegg to get a replacement.

np glad we could help
Rich