I've been having intermitent read/write errors on my rig for the past month. I've RMA'd the motherboard, bought a new boot drive, replaced the IDE cables, and replaced the PCI IDE card. The errors have been occurring on all three of my drives, even the new one. This problem has caused me to re-load Windows XP more times than I can count and run disk check constantly. At this point, about the only thing left that I haven't replaced is the CPU. Yesterday, the BIOS informed me on start up that the CPU had been replaced, which was news to me because I hadn't touched it. Now I'm thinking that my stability problems might be caused by a bad CPU.
HISTORY:
I bought this CPU brand new in January, and by March I had it overclocked and very stable (tested using 3DMark) at 247 MHz FSB. I was always carefully monitoring the CPU temps, and they were never above 50°C, and it idled at 37°C, so I thought it was doing pretty well with my aftermarket cooler. When the trouble started last month, the first thing I did was reset the FSB to the stock 200 MHz. Is it possible that there was permanent damage to the CPU that will allow the system to boot on some configurations but not others?
PROBLEM:
Until two days ago, I thought the problem was with one of my Maxtor 250GB SATA drives. I removed that drive and the system seemed fine. Then it started giving my "Hard Disk Read Error" after the BIOS had successfully completed the post. The motherboard is Intel 925XE chipset and only has one IDE connector, so the boot drive is connected via a IDE PCI card. When I disconnect the optical drives from the Mobo, and replace them with the boot drive, the system fully boots into Windows. If I connect the optical drives to the PCI card, which is a SIIG ATAPI compatible card, after the BIOS post, I get "SYSTEM DISK ERROR". Basically, the system won't boot if anything is connected to that card. I tried a different card, a different cable, and I tried the other PCI slot, same results.
Is it time to give up and just buy a new CPU$$?
Abit AA8XE motherboard
530J 3.0GHz Pentium 4
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7
SIIG IDE PCI card
ATI X700 Pro 256MB PCIE
Maxtor Diamondmax 200 GB ATA 133 (Master)
Hitachi 250 GB SATA
Western Digital 60 GB ATA 100 (Slave)
Media Stor 52x CD-RW (Master)
MicroAdvantage 16x DVD-RW (Slave)
Antec Neopower 480
Raidmax 668W
HISTORY:
I bought this CPU brand new in January, and by March I had it overclocked and very stable (tested using 3DMark) at 247 MHz FSB. I was always carefully monitoring the CPU temps, and they were never above 50°C, and it idled at 37°C, so I thought it was doing pretty well with my aftermarket cooler. When the trouble started last month, the first thing I did was reset the FSB to the stock 200 MHz. Is it possible that there was permanent damage to the CPU that will allow the system to boot on some configurations but not others?
PROBLEM:
Until two days ago, I thought the problem was with one of my Maxtor 250GB SATA drives. I removed that drive and the system seemed fine. Then it started giving my "Hard Disk Read Error" after the BIOS had successfully completed the post. The motherboard is Intel 925XE chipset and only has one IDE connector, so the boot drive is connected via a IDE PCI card. When I disconnect the optical drives from the Mobo, and replace them with the boot drive, the system fully boots into Windows. If I connect the optical drives to the PCI card, which is a SIIG ATAPI compatible card, after the BIOS post, I get "SYSTEM DISK ERROR". Basically, the system won't boot if anything is connected to that card. I tried a different card, a different cable, and I tried the other PCI slot, same results.
Is it time to give up and just buy a new CPU$$?
Abit AA8XE motherboard
530J 3.0GHz Pentium 4
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7
SIIG IDE PCI card
ATI X700 Pro 256MB PCIE
Maxtor Diamondmax 200 GB ATA 133 (Master)
Hitachi 250 GB SATA
Western Digital 60 GB ATA 100 (Slave)
Media Stor 52x CD-RW (Master)
MicroAdvantage 16x DVD-RW (Slave)
Antec Neopower 480
Raidmax 668W