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Problems with newly built Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3
I recently built a new machine with a Gigabyte GA-M770-DS3 board. It
is running XP and was stable for a week or so but now has major problems and I am not sure where else to look for the problem. I need to make sure that I find it soon before the Newegg return policy runs out. Any suggestions would be appreciated. The hardware is listed below. I put the machine together with no problems and XP installed easily. Once the drivers, etc. were installed from the Gigabyte CD, I then connected to windowsupdate to get all the latest patches. The computer is running pretty basic stuff: Win XP Pro SP2, Office 2003, etc. However, based on the latest behavior I's say I can definitely rule out a software problem. I first noticed the problem a few days ago. I was in the middle of watching a video that I had downloaded from the pay service at Amazon.com. About 20 minutes into the video I got a BSOD. Unfortunately, the blue screen only stayed for a second or two and then the machine immediately started rebooting. A little later the same thing happened. After the next reboot it was stable for a few hours. I went to bed and when I got up in the morning it had tried to reboot again but it said that it couldn't boot because one of th esystem files was missing or corrupt. At this point I assumed that I had gotten a bad hard drive. I shut the machine off in order to wait until I had more time to deal with it on the weekend. When I powered it up on the weekend it booted just fine. Since I had already downloaded the Western Digital drive tester I decided to run a full test. I watched it for about 1/2 hour and it ran fine. I left for a few minutes and when I came back the machine had tried to reboot again. However, this time the BIOS screen was all messed up. The first several lines (video card, BIOS version, etc.) were normal but then there were some "garbage " characters and a couple of lines of inverse video and then more garbage. I shut the machine down for a few hours and when I powered it back up it booted fine again. Normally I would immediately suspect a heat problem with this kind of behavior. I downloaded the Gigabyte EasyTune Pro in order to monitor temps and fan speeds. And BTW, I don't do any overclocking. The fans were normal and the CPU temp never got above 110F. Normally it stayed around 105F. I opened up the box and reseated the memory and all the connectors but the problem is still the same. The last time it rebooted, I didn't get the garbage characters but it hung just before the device detection. Here's the config: - Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 motherboard - XFX GeForce 8600GT 256MB PCI X16 video card - Antec Earthwatts EA500 power supply - AMD Opteron 1218 Santa Ana 2.6GHz dual core processor - 2 x 1GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC2 8500 memory - 3 Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - 1 Seagate 500MB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner - SABRENT CRW-UINB 52-in-1 USB 2.0 Internal Card Reader I am not running RAID. The BIOS settings are mostly default other than enabling USB keyboard support. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks. |
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Problems with newly built Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3
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Problems with newly built Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3
On Mar 18, 5:33*pm, Andy wrote:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:23:24 -0700 (PDT), wrote: I recently built a new machine with a Gigabyte GA-M770-DS3 board. It is running XP and was stable for a week or so but now has major problems and I am not sure where else to look for the problem. I need to make sure that I find it soon before the Newegg return policy runs out. Any suggestions would be appreciated. The hardware is listed below. I put the machine together with no problems and XP installed easily. Once the drivers, etc. were installed from the Gigabyte CD, I then connected to windowsupdate to get all the latest patches. The computer is running pretty basic stuff: Win XP Pro SP2, Office 2003, etc. However, based on the latest behavior I's say I can definitely rule out a software problem. I first noticed the problem a few days ago. I was in the middle of watching a video that I had downloaded from the pay service at Amazon.com. About 20 minutes into the video I got a BSOD. Unfortunately, the blue screen only stayed for a second or two and then the machine immediately started rebooting. A little later the same thing happened. After the next reboot it was stable for a few hours. I went to bed and when I got up in the morning it had tried to reboot again but it said that it couldn't boot because one of th esystem files was missing or corrupt. Set Windows startup and recovery to not automatically reboot after a crash. At this point I assumed that I had gotten a bad hard drive. I shut the machine off in order to wait until I had more time to deal with it on the weekend. When I powered it up on the weekend it booted just fine. Since I had already downloaded the Western Digital drive tester I decided to run a full test. I watched it for about 1/2 hour and it ran fine. I left for a few minutes and when I came back the machine had tried to reboot again. However, this time the BIOS screen was all messed up. The first several lines (video card, BIOS version, etc.) were normal but then there were some "garbage " characters and a couple of lines of inverse video and then more garbage. I shut the machine down for a few hours and when I powered it back up it booted fine again. Normally I would immediately suspect a heat problem with this kind of behavior. I downloaded the Gigabyte EasyTune Pro in order to monitor temps and fan speeds. And BTW, I don't do any overclocking. The fans were normal and the CPU temp never got above 110F. Normally it stayed around 105F. I opened up the box and reseated the memory and all the connectors but the problem is still the same. The last time it rebooted, I didn't get the garbage characters but it hung just before the device detection. Here's the config: - Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 motherboard - XFX GeForce 8600GT 256MB PCI X16 video card - Antec Earthwatts EA500 power supply - AMD Opteron 1218 Santa Ana 2.6GHz dual core processor - 2 x 1GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC2 8500 memory - 3 Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - 1 Seagate 500MB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner - SABRENT CRW-UINB 52-in-1 USB 2.0 Internal Card Reader I am not running RAID. The BIOS settings are mostly default other than enabling USB keyboard support. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks. I would start by measuring the power supply voltages to make sure they're within specs. Next I would run memtest86+ to check system memory. After that, I may try a different graphics card.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Thanks for the suggestions. I'll run the memtest program tonight and also change the reboot option. What do you recommend for measuring the power supply? I did download Easy Tune in order to check the temp, fans and voltages. The voltages seemed OK. Should I use a voltmeter? |
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Problems with newly built Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3
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Problems with newly built Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3
On Mar 19, 5:24*am, Invalid wrote:
In message , writes Here's the config: - Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 motherboard - XFX GeForce 8600GT 256MB PCI X16 video card - Antec Earthwatts EA500 power supply - AMD Opteron 1218 Santa Ana 2.6GHz dual core processor - 2 x 1GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC2 8500 memory - 3 Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - 1 Seagate 500MB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner - SABRENT CRW-UINB 52-in-1 USB 2.0 Internal Card Reader I am not running RAID. The BIOS settings are mostly default other than enabling USB keyboard support. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks. I would start by measuring the power supply voltages to make sure they're within specs. Next I would run memtest86+ to check system memory. After that, I may try a different graphics card.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Thanks for the suggestions. I'll run the memtest program tonight and also change the reboot option. What do you recommend for measuring the power supply? I did download Easy Tune in order to check the temp, fans and voltages. The voltages seemed OK. Should I use a voltmeter? I would go along with Andy and suspect a marginal PSU. Have you got the OS set up to stop the hard drives when they are idle for long periods? The crashes seem to happen when the system is unattended, or you were watching a movie (no KB or Mouse activity). It may be that the PSU is fine when cold and can cope with the start up load of the disks; hot it can cope with the steady state load. However if a drive spins down once things are hot, the re-start load may be enough to tip the voltages over the edge. If the OS spins down the disks when idle, it may decide after a period of time to spin them up (to do something for its own internal reasons). Under those circumstances the system may simply crash when apparently sitting idle. In fact its more likely to crash when apparently idle than under load. * You will probably never see that without some form or recording voltmeter, however one check you might do is to temporarily disconnect one (or two) of the hard drives (power and SATA) or the optical. If the machine is then stable, its probably the PSU that is marginal. Regards -- Peter R Cook- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - I powered up the machine last night. According to the Easy Tune software, all the voltages, temps and fan speeds were good. I do not have the machine set up for any kind of power saving scheme like powering down the hard drives, etc. I even have hibernation disabled. The first time I ran the memtest86 program, it ran for around 1/2 hour without a problem so I then decided to boot it up and try some other stuff. It ran fine for several hours doing videos, web browsing, etc.. I then shut it down and ran memtest again. After a short time (I don't know exactly how long), the test halted. I took a picture of the screen: http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/n...0/IMG_1212.jpg This is very frustrating. I don't know whether or not to keep troubleshooting or just RMA the power supply, motherboard, video card and memory and start over. |
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Problems with newly built Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3
On Mar 19, 4:55*pm, Invalid wrote:
In message , writes On Mar 19, 5:24*am, Invalid wrote: In message , writes Here's the config: -GigabyteGA-MA770-DS3motherboard - XFX GeForce 8600GT 256MB PCI X16 video card - Antec Earthwatts EA500 power supply - AMD Opteron 1218 Santa Ana 2.6GHz dual core processor - 2 x 1GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC2 8500 memory - 3 Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - 1 Seagate 500MB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner - SABRENT CRW-UINB 52-in-1 USB 2.0 Internal Card Reader I am not running RAID. The BIOS settings are mostly default other than enabling USB keyboard support. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks. I would start by measuring the power supply voltages to make sure they're within specs. Next I would run memtest86+ to check system memory. After that, I may try a different graphics card.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Thanks for the suggestions. I'll run the memtest program tonight and also change the reboot option. What do you recommend for measuring the power supply? I did download Easy Tune in order to check the temp, fans and voltages. The voltages seemed OK. Should I use a voltmeter? I would go along with Andy and suspect a marginal PSU. Have you got the OS set up to stop the hard drives when they are idle for long periods? The crashes seem to happen when the system is unattended, or you were watching a movie (no KB or Mouse activity). It may be that the PSU is fine when cold and can cope with the start up load of the disks; hot it can cope with the steady state load. However if a drive spins down once things are hot, the re-start load may be enough to tip the voltages over the edge. If the OS spins down the disks when idle, it may decide after a period of time to spin them up (to do something for its own internal reasons). Under those circumstances the system may simply crash when apparently sitting idle. In fact its more likely to crash when apparently idle than under load. * You will probably never see that without some form or recording voltmeter, however one check you might do is to temporarily disconnect one (or two) of the hard drives (power and SATA) or the optical. If the machine is then stable, its probably the PSU that is marginal. Regards -- Peter R Cook- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - I powered up the machine last night. According to the Easy Tune software, all the voltages, temps and fan speeds were good. I do not have the machine set up for any kind of power saving scheme like powering down the hard drives, etc. I even have hibernation disabled. The first time I ran the memtest86 program, it ran for around 1/2 hour without aproblemso I then decided to boot it up and try some other stuff. It ran fine for several hours doing videos, web browsing, etc.. I then shut it down and ran memtest again. After a short time (I don't know exactly how long), the test halted. I took a picture of the screen: http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/n...0/IMG_1212.jpg This is very frustrating. I don't know whether or not to keep troubleshooting or just RMA the power supply,motherboard, video card and memory and start over. As I suggested, try your tests with one or more hard drives disconnected. If it is a marginal PSU, then it may work on the limit, and fail when something (anything) drives up the load slightly, or the mains power drops slightly, or even a decent noise spike. If it works with one or two disks *disconnected, RMA the PSU - it does have enough power available *on ALL the lines doesn't it? Don't forget to add in the case fans when computing the 12v load. Regards -- Peter R Cook- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Problem solved! It was the memory apparently. I had gotten an RMA for all the major parts-- video card, motherboard, memory and power supply but I decided to try one more thing before I went to all that trouble. I stopped at a local store and picked up some memory (Corsair this time, not Crucial) and installed it. Memtest86 ran fine so I then booted it. Later I did some stress testing with Fresh Devices benchmark programs and then I used Nero to convert an hour long avi file to DVD. Everything went fine. Just an FYI-- I had earlier tried adjusting the memory voltage as some had suggested. The BIOS did not allow it to go as high as 2.2v as was suggested. The max it would allow was +3.75 volts. At first, I tried just one extra volt to see if that would make a difference. The board would not post with the extra volt but luckily it detected it and had an option to restore to last know good without having to reset the entire BIOS. I've also been monitoring the pwoer supply with te Easytune utility. All the voltages still look fine. As for temps, the highest the processor has gotten was 113 and that was during the video rendering. Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions. I appreciate the help. |
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Problems with newly built Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3
On Mar 20, 1:26*pm, "RobV" wrote:
wrote: [snip] Problemsolved! It was the memory apparently. I had gotten an RMA for all the major parts-- video card,motherboard, memory and power supply but I decided to try one more thing before I went to all that trouble. I stopped at a local store and picked up some memory (Corsair this time, not Crucial) and installed it. Memtest86 ran fine so I then booted it. Later I did some stress testing with Fresh Devices benchmark programs and then I used Nero to convert an hour long avi file to DVD. Everything went fine. Just an FYI-- I had earlier tried adjusting the memory voltage as some had suggested. The BIOS did not allow it to go as high as 2.2v as was suggested. The max it would allow was +3.75 volts. At first, I tried just one extra volt to see if that would make a difference. The board would not post with the extra volt but luckily it detected it and had an option to restore to last know good without having to reset the entire BIOS. This makes no sense. *"The BIOS did not allow the voltage to go to 2.2V...The max allowed was +3.75V." *First, 3.75V is 2.2V, so I don't understand theproblem. Second, you purchased the wrong memory for yourmotherboard. *The Crucial memory specs state it requires 2.2V to operate correctly, yet you installed it into a MB that can't supply that voltage. Replacing the memory with another type that requires a lower voltage is, in your case, the only way to fix theproblem(other than getting a MB that can provide spec'ed voltage). In any event, it's running stable, which is all that is really important. *However, when building a system, be sure to check that all components are compatible with all others. I've also been monitoring the pwoer supply with te Easytune utility. All the voltages still look fine. As for temps, the highest the processor has gotten was 113 and that was during the video rendering. Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions. I appreciate the help.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Oops...sorry...I just can't type today. It was a long night with server failures here. I meant +.375 volts was the max. And the memory used to be listed as compatible with that motherboard. According to what I read in another forum, it was just taken off the list. Since I don't overclock I didn't look at any of the specific details; I just figured I'd get name brand 1066 DDR2 memory since that's what the motherboard specifications showed. |
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