- Joined
- Oct 16, 2002
- Location
- NJ
I've had this board running without issue for a few years until the other day, Windows froze and upon reboot I haven't been able to get the system to stay running without freezing for more than 10 minutes.
My most recent setup:
Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe BIOS 5001
AMD Phenom II x4 940BE
CPU water cooling loop (EK Supreme HF)
2x 2GB Corsair XMS DDR2
2x 2GB G.Skill DDR2 (After adding this RAM I had to run in forced Unganged mode or else Windows wouldn't boot (when set to Ganged/Auto) which I thought was weird, but a friend gave it to me so I figured 4GB for free- why not!)
Asus nVidia GTX 560
1x Seagate SATA II 750GB 7200RPM
4x WD RE3 500GB SATA 7200RPM - RAID 0+1
1x Lite-on SATA DVD-RW
Antec Earthwatts 750W
At first I had a feeling that my Seagate 750GB (2 Partitions - 300GB for Windows / The rest for storage) HDD died, I noticed the PC took a long time to POST then once Windows booted it would almost instantly lock up. So I pulled the G.Skill RAM to eliminate that as a potential issue - same problem. Next I disconnected my RAID array and connected and extra WD RE3 500GB Hard drive, booted into Clonezilla off a USB drive to clone my Windows partition and boot off that drive instead of my Seagate, about %5 into the cloning process Clonezilla error-ed out stating bad sectors on the Seagate drive.
So far it was straight forward - Bad HDD - get a new one and continue with my life. So I pulled the Seagate and booted into Lubuntu Live off a USB drive to get online - after a few minutes THAT froze on me.
Weird, so now I'm thinking maybe it's RAM, I tried all different configurations, tried clearing CMOS multiple times, and no matter what I do the PC keeps freezing. (When running any live Linux Distro - or while trying to install said Linux distro from USB drive to the WD 500GB drive). So for the why not factor I tried ANOTHER drive (a WD 250GB SATA drive I had lying around) and the system STILL freezes. I did a quick Google search found some posts on forums from 2008/2010 other members mentioned bad SATA ports as well as their DVD-RW causing system hangs. So I disconnected my DVD-RW and swapped the WD 250GB to one of the other SATA ports... the PC is STILL freezing when running a Live Linux distro or while installing Linux to the drive.
TL;DR - Nothing changed - PC keeps freezing, thought it was a bad HDD, new HDD(s) still freezing, disconnected all drives except one/swapped RAM around, stillll freezing.
Anyone have any idea's what could be causing this thing to hang? I know it's running cool enough (I've been watching temps in the BIOS - no problems at all with the water loop), and it doesn't look like RAM is the issue, I just left the 2 Corsair sticks in and ram Memtest for over 2 hours wiht 3 passes and no errors or freezing. It's only when I attempted to access the SATA drives does the system freeze.
Almost seems like something on the mother board (SouthBridge maybe?) is acting up....
Thanks in adv.
My most recent setup:
Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe BIOS 5001
AMD Phenom II x4 940BE
CPU water cooling loop (EK Supreme HF)
2x 2GB Corsair XMS DDR2
2x 2GB G.Skill DDR2 (After adding this RAM I had to run in forced Unganged mode or else Windows wouldn't boot (when set to Ganged/Auto) which I thought was weird, but a friend gave it to me so I figured 4GB for free- why not!)
Asus nVidia GTX 560
1x Seagate SATA II 750GB 7200RPM
4x WD RE3 500GB SATA 7200RPM - RAID 0+1
1x Lite-on SATA DVD-RW
Antec Earthwatts 750W
At first I had a feeling that my Seagate 750GB (2 Partitions - 300GB for Windows / The rest for storage) HDD died, I noticed the PC took a long time to POST then once Windows booted it would almost instantly lock up. So I pulled the G.Skill RAM to eliminate that as a potential issue - same problem. Next I disconnected my RAID array and connected and extra WD RE3 500GB Hard drive, booted into Clonezilla off a USB drive to clone my Windows partition and boot off that drive instead of my Seagate, about %5 into the cloning process Clonezilla error-ed out stating bad sectors on the Seagate drive.
So far it was straight forward - Bad HDD - get a new one and continue with my life. So I pulled the Seagate and booted into Lubuntu Live off a USB drive to get online - after a few minutes THAT froze on me.
Weird, so now I'm thinking maybe it's RAM, I tried all different configurations, tried clearing CMOS multiple times, and no matter what I do the PC keeps freezing. (When running any live Linux Distro - or while trying to install said Linux distro from USB drive to the WD 500GB drive). So for the why not factor I tried ANOTHER drive (a WD 250GB SATA drive I had lying around) and the system STILL freezes. I did a quick Google search found some posts on forums from 2008/2010 other members mentioned bad SATA ports as well as their DVD-RW causing system hangs. So I disconnected my DVD-RW and swapped the WD 250GB to one of the other SATA ports... the PC is STILL freezing when running a Live Linux distro or while installing Linux to the drive.
TL;DR - Nothing changed - PC keeps freezing, thought it was a bad HDD, new HDD(s) still freezing, disconnected all drives except one/swapped RAM around, stillll freezing.
Anyone have any idea's what could be causing this thing to hang? I know it's running cool enough (I've been watching temps in the BIOS - no problems at all with the water loop), and it doesn't look like RAM is the issue, I just left the 2 Corsair sticks in and ram Memtest for over 2 hours wiht 3 passes and no errors or freezing. It's only when I attempted to access the SATA drives does the system freeze.
Almost seems like something on the mother board (SouthBridge maybe?) is acting up....
Thanks in adv.