Running out of ideas...

[BBigJ]

I'm running out of things to troubleshoot, and I'm hoping that some of you can toss me some new ideas. Here's the story,

The system in question (Orion) is listed in my sig. My primary HD (a 60g IBM) died about a month ago. I replaced it with a 250g SATA Seagate, (the OS, drivers, and most of the software is identical to the previous installation). Once I loaded all my programs onto the new drive, everything ran fine for about 4 days before I started getting multiple BSOD's. The surest way to crash the system is to start iTunes or WMP, although, frequently it crashes during boot. I have disabled everything in startup using MSCONFIG, and have uninstalled the virus scanner with no change in the behavior. The problem persists if I replace the sound card (either with an identical card or with the onboard sound) or the video card. The machine passes Memtest, P95 Torture Test, and Disk fitness test (both remaining HD's). I tried to move the primary HD over to my wife's machine (almost identical hardware, see sig), and it crashed on the first bootup, but after that it did fine (even with iTunes or WMP).

I have borrowed a small HD (6g), and I plan to install win2k on it and try to reproduce the problem (I would use XP, but M$'s product activation makes this a pain.) Actually, I've already tried this approach, but the multiple OS's did not get along and I never got around to any troubleshooting. This time I'll unplug the other HD's first. After that, I'm totally out of ideas. Any suggestions?

 

[orion25]

My only suggestion would be to do a totally clean install with the full (not quick) format during the XP install procedure. Have you tried to run checkdisk or any of the HDD checking software that came with the new 250?

Or, return the drive for another one.

Above all, make sure you have a good back up of all your important data! Trust me I know from experience!

 

[Murdochs_mad]

Try removing the RAM, and putting in some stuff you know is good (poss from your wifes machine) and see how it goes, I had a stick of RAM go bad, dunno how, and the PC still passed Memtest and Prime tests, which I couldn't understand. But when I removed the stick in question the PC went back to normal.

 

[orion25]

Or, strip the computer down to the bare essentials, Mobo, CPU, HSF, one stick of RAM, one HDD, and video card. See if you have problems then. If not then add other parts one at a time until the problems start.

 

[BBigJ]

Try removing the RAM, and putting in some stuff you know is good (poss from your wifes machine) and see how it goes, I had stick of RAM go bad, dunno how, and the PC still passed Memtest and Prime tests, which I couldn't understand. But when I removed the stick in question the PC went back to normal.

This is too easy not to try. My wife has identical RAM. I thought that p95 and memtest exonerated the ram, but from you experience I guess that isn't true.

Thanks for all the suggestions, keep 'em coming. juhtg

 

[BBigJ]

Ok, I think I've got it now. The machine runs fine if I unhook the 120g ATA drive before I boot it seems to run fine. This is why the primary HD ran fine on my wife's machine, and also why the separate win2k installation worked fine. I can't for the life of me imagine why a non-boot HD would cause this many problems. Although, when I was installing XP on this machine for some reason the installer insisted on putting system files on that drive. I didn't get a proper install until I unplugged the data drive until after the install finished.

Thanks for all the suggestions, keep 'em coming. juhtg

Looks like my son got to the keyboard right before I hit send. LOL.

 

[SeasonalEclipse]

Hm.. id check to see if it is the hard drive, or the PSU.. or perhaps something to do with the jumpers even. Iv had issues with jumpers and installing windows.. (My board only using cable select sometimes makes things difficult.)

 

[BBigJ]

Nevermind, system just crashed again. But I did just set a new uptime record.

 

[SeasonalEclipse]

Sounds like the PSU to me.. Try a different one from another system?

 

[BBigJ]

I'm back to thinking it is the soundcard (which was my first guess back when I first noticed that iTunes and WMP killed the system). After the last round of crashes, windows recognized it as new hardware but would not install drivers. When I dl'ed the creative drivers, they told me I didn't have a SB installed. I swapped it out for an identical card and it is running fine again. I don't understand why it didn't behave like this the last time I tried swapping soundcards, but maybe there is some sort of feedback with the secondary HD. Anyhow, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[BBigJ]

Alright, since I'm sure everyone is dying to know how this turned out, here is the answer. My computer runs fine only if I remove BOTH the ATA hard drive and the sound card. The sound card is no problem because I can just use the onboard sound (arguably as good or better than my 5-year-old soundblaster anyhow), and since the hard drive passed the DFT presumably I just need to reformat. Since I can't boot with the HD hooked up, I'll borrow a USB HD reader to get my data off.

Now that this is resolved it is easy to see why it was such a pain to troubleshoot. Any scientist knows that you need to change the variables one at a time until you find the problem. But the space to explore becomes MUCH bigger when there are two problems at the same time.