Strange Problems...

A

Afro000Dude

Geek Trainee
I've been getting some weird errors with my computer. I'm thinking it may be my crappy ECS motherboard, but I may be wrong. Specs:

ECS P4VXASD2 motherboard
P4 1.6A
PNY GF4 TI4400
Audigy Gamer
8G and 30G maxtor HDD's
Antec 300W PSU
cd-rom and cd-rw
PNY pc2100 memory

And my strange problems:

1. When I press the power button, the hard drive light comes on, but not the power light. It will not boot when this happens. It won't even POST. I have to keep turning it on and off until the power light comes on, and then it will boot fine and into windows. I've unplugged and replugged all the connectors from the case to the board and even got new buttons for the power and reset. I also tried just shorting the two pins for the power using a paper clip. Nothing helps.

2. When it does boot, it has random crashes. It will lock in IE, usually after I click a link. It sometimes crashes just having Winamp open listening to music.

3. It BSOD's or freezes or resets when I try to play a video file, whether in windows media player or divx or in just a webpage. It works when it is in 800x600 and 256 colors, but only in a tiny window. Going full screen causes it to reset. After it resets, it goes back to the original problem of not POSTing, or it freezes on windows startup with the little blue bar scrolling across the bottom.

4. It fails every memory benchmark or utility regarding memory. It just freezes or resets, which is very frustrating.

5. I cannot run any games. They either freeze or reset the computer.


I have totally disassembled this computer and cleaned every piece for dust or debris. This motherboard has slots for both DDR and SDRAM. When I put in SDRAM, it seems to run fine, except that I still have the boot up problems. Everything was running fine and all these problems started happening at the same time. I really do not know what brought this on, but I hope I can find some help here.
 
With a problem that covers so many areas I could only assume the motherboard. How long did this system work correctly?
 
I got the motherboard and processor in may and the video card and sound card over the summer. i got the memory in sep. or oct. and it has been fine until recently.
 
Hmm, well it wasn't DOA then. I'm not sure about how good ECS is, but I suppose if they are really bad then the MB could be going bad already. Possibly flashing of the BIOS is necessary? Do you know if there's a new version out? Or the CPU could be having major overheating problems, and that could be why sometimes it boots up and sometimes it doesn't, and why it fails everytime it trys to do something relatively intensive, like a full screen video or game. Do you have the heatsink and fan properly installed? Do you have a heatsink that's suitable for your processor? Try getting an app or just checking the BIOS that shows your MB and CPU temperature. Or maybe the HDD's going. How new is the HDD?
 
I was thinking about flashing the bios previously when it was running fine so that I could overclock the cpu, but was afraid of killing the whole thing by doing it wrong. Now it seems that I have nothing to lose. I don't think it is overheating because every time I check the bios, which is nearly every time it restarts, it says it is around 85 or 90. This is with the stock HSF. However when I first got the motherboard and cpu, I did install the heatsink incorrectly and it was overheating. The symptoms were different then, though. It would come on and make it to windows and freeze, then reset and freeze continuously on bootup. Could damage from back then possibly be showing up just now? It ran for months just fine, but would it just start showing damage now?

There is another weird thing I forgot to mention. The bios seems to randomly reset itself. Sometimes it is just the date, and sometimes it's like I hit the clear cmos jumper.

I think the hard drives are ok. The 8G is about 2 years old and the 30G is about a year and a half. I reformatted them both in july and reinstalled windows. I tried reinstalling windows after these problems started, but it bsod's on during the installation when I run it through windows. Haven't tried doing it through dos. Tried to do a virus scan, but norton locked up the system again. Seems like I'm screwed no matter what I do.
 
Yeah, you could try flashing the BIOS if you can keep it on that long, but given your symptons I doubt it'll help. For something this severe I could only guess the mainboard is shot. How long did you let it have the heatsink problem before? If it was more than once or twice then maybe doing that over and over and that excessive heat severely shortened its life right off the bat. You could try putting your CPU, HDDs, CD-ROM, video card, etc. in with another mainboard and see if it all works, but I doubt you have a friend that's willing to let you do that with their MB.
 
I had never really figured that it could be the cpu, but what you are saying makes sense. I figured that if it came on at all, the cpu was ok. It took me about two weeks to figure out that the heatsink was on wrong. I was frustrated and took the whole thing apart and saw that the "retention mechanism" connecting to the motherboard was not attached at one corner. Problem solved, I thought. But now I think all my friends are either too broke or too non-geek to have a mb that I could experiment on. And with my luck, as soon as I go to flash the bios, it'll freeze again and I'll be left with a useless hunk of purple silicon. Maybe I can sell it to some poor fool on ebay...
 
If possible, try swapping out some parts, and maybe even try a bigger power supply. My 1.6A setup needed a 350W Antec PSU to power up. If you're not getting enough power, that could be a real issue. Also, PNY memory is crap. Good luck getting it to work right any anything but the slowest memory timings (highest numbers). If you're running both DDR and SDR sticks, that might be part of the problem as well.
Good luck.
I'd blame ECS right off the bat, as they're not that great when it comes to compatibility, but try the stuff I mentioned and see if it gets you anywhere. Start with the cheapest stuff to replace and go from there.
 
For a while, I was using the 250W PSU that I was using with my PIII 550. But I was also using the onboard audio, an old Voodoo3, and sdram. I moved to a 300W after about a month. I am going to buy an Antec 380 or 430W, and probably toss this one with the motherboard. How important is that 4 pin aux power connector for the P4? This motherboard doesn't have one. Is there anyway to test the power suppy? It does the same thing when I have just one hard drive and the 20 pin connected. Shouldn't that reduce the load? I'm not running both DDR and SDR, only the 256 of DDR. It's been running at CL 2, which is the only memory timing option that I have. CL 2.5 doesn't help the problems. What is the SPD option? Would it help if I enabled it?

Do I have any bidders for a "slightly used" Pentium 4 motherboard with support for "cutting edge processor power" and "blistering fast" DDR266 memory options? It comes with a "powerful" 300W Antec power supply to power "all your computing needs!"
 
I was just looking through my bios and I saw something. The Vcore was at 1.488. Isn't the default voltage supposed to be 1.5? If it is low at idle, couldn't it drop more under load? Would this be enough to destabilize the system? Got a new Antec 430W PSU coming and I hope it helps some.
 
I never thought I could crash DOS until I tried to reinstall windows. I can't even get it into the setup. I'll do it on a different machine, but jeez!! It's bad news when you crash windows setup. I HATE ECS!!!
 
Does seem a bit low, although I've yet to use any motherboard that reports the exact voltage the CPU needs. If it has an adjustable Vcore, try upping it a notch and see if it fixes anything. That stock P4 cooler works very well, so you shouldn't worry too much.
 
Originally posted by Afro000Dude
I HATE ECS!!!
Click to expand...

I got no problems with my MB from ECS :cool:
I can even overclock my fsb to 150 with my Kingston sdram

I would say buy some new ram as u say it runs "fine" with sdram ;)
 
I noticed you have PNY memory. That brand has always given me trouble, especially if you try to use anything but the slowest memory timings on your board. Buy something quality, like Samsung or Crucial.

I know I mentioned it already, but PNY RAM is utter and total crap.
 
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