GA-890GPA-UD3H instability problems

[Kitts]

Main disk is a brand new replacement Seagate only about 4  or so months old, the  other is virtually the same age Hitachi I bought to use while the Seagate was being replaced.
I ran Seatools test on both, obviously it can test the Seagate in more depth, but both fine, no bad sectors.

[Dark Mantis]

OK so it seems that the drives are healthy. I would next recommend going back to basics. Remove your motherboard and build it up outside of the case with just one strip of RAM, graphics card, processor and heatsink and the psu(obviously attach the monitor. Try booting you should get as far as detecting the HDD. If it does that with no problem turn off and install tha C drive and reboot. If successfull do any tests you want and turn off. Leave as long as normal and then try starting up again.

[Kitts]

I'm not comfortable doing that. It has been disconnected and remade in the case, though.

The components were new mid May from New Egg, so if faulty I can still recoup my losses, though from the manufacturers. I will try one stick of ram then the other, but after that I am going to put it in to Fry's for fixing as my knowledge has run out. Unless someone comes up with something else I can try without disconnecting everything again.

[venganza]

Kitts, you build this in March, and no where in this thread do you say you have tried to reinstall the OS since then.

Rather than pissing trying to investigate a bunch of unknown factors, reinstall the OS clean, at least then you remove most SW culprits.

Anything else you are like a dog chasing it's tail, since if the obvious solutions have not worked, the law of diminishing returns means you are going to waste far more time than a simple reinstall

[absic]

Hi,

Checking through the issues that you are having and as you have had this problem since day one I would suggest taking a BIG step back and looking at what is actually occurring with your system.

You have built a new PC but from the outset you have had problems with it crashing and failing to boot properly.
You have changed your GPU and feel that you have tested all of the individual components and are reasonably happy that they are OK.
You have now updated your BIOS and the problems are still there.

When I am faced with similar problems I tend to re-examine the steps that I have taken and double check everything. I notice from your specs that you are using a 550Watt PSU and this is the first thing I would be looking at now. These new motherboards, AMD CPU's and Nvidia GPU's are power hungry and I would be looking to a more powerful PSU than the one you currently have. It might say in the Specs that it can power everything but experience has shown me that this is not always the case. And, I don't wish to be funny but, a quick search on the net shows me that your PSU can be purchased for under £35 (50 US Dollars) and these lower value models, whilst adequate for most general purpose low end use are not really up to the task that you require. (I have learnt this from my own mistakes)

If possible swap out or replace the PSU with something that has a bit more power, at least 650 watts as I think that will solve most, if not all of your problems.

ATB

[Dark Mantis]

Venganza and absic115 are giving you good advice. If you don't want to do as I suggested and start from scratch I would go with what they are telling you. It is no good asking for help and then ignoring the advice you are given.

[Kitts]

OK,the tale from the start. My bad, I didn't think to mention all of this.
I built it and reinstalled the OS clean, then did a virus check because of the cascading crashing programs, and found a virus that AVG had not caught, plus several dormant ones in files I had downloaded and not opened. So I ran Avast! through all of both drives three times, and DrWeb through it all three times, and not just through the 2 hard drives, but my back up external  hard drive and my USB sticks. Then I reinstalled the OS again. (DrWeb destroys viruses but is not an AV program)

I must have reinstalled  Win XP Pro about 5 times in all, including reformatting ALL of both hard drives each once, and the C partition at least 4 times. I then moved to Win 7 Pro in the hope it was the OS being a bit old for the new DDR3 stuff that was the problem. /shrug.. you never know, and I wanted to migrate anyway. I got a Student copy of Win 7 through the college I am at.

Since then I have done a clean reinstall of the Win 7 OS at least 3 times. So it has been thoroughly reinstalled fresh several times and the error has shown up as the same, though the messages in Event Manager and on a BSOD have been varied. And I haven't had messages that point to anything specific - they are pretty general like Explorer has fallen over, or it couldn't find something..

Somewhere in all that I found out about the problems with the way the HIS and other brands of the Radeon video card I had starting up slowly in 2D mode was causing crashes, so I returned it and changed it for an Nvidia video card, the 250 GT. That got rid of a lot of problems.

I have run it with Opera instead of Firefox as it was suggested that the browser might be the problem. It was the same with Opera.
I have run it with minimum programs on, no change. I have not tweaked it as I usually do, except to make the Services match those on Black Viper's site. Again no difference. It starts up and crashes instantly I try to open my browser or start up the not-starting Windows Defender. So it isn't incompatible programs.

I did have something new this morning, though, after an evening watching a couple of movies and TV shows ... When I started up it went straight into the Recovery program and I chose to let it Roll Back to last good option, which failed. So I put in the Win 7 CD and told it to boot from the CD with the intention of reinstalling fresh by reformatting the C partition, but it loaded Win 7 normally for some reason.. I have no idea why, but I got no Install screen, so I have left it to see how it behaves. It has been as stable as I could want, even playing Mass Effect 1 this evening.

It is possible that all the crashing this time around has damaged the OS yet again, and it now needs yet another fresh install. I have to admit I decided that since I was closing down almost instantly after the first boot up, and not starting any programs until after the 2nd cold boot up, that maybe it wasn't getting damaged. But after it starting normally, I can restart it as often as I want,  or even close it down for 2 hours and it starts normally with no problems at all. It only shows the problems if I leave it off for 6-8 hours.

Dark Mantis, there is a big difference between being not comfortable doing a procedure, and ignoring advice. I know my limitations and I would prefer to put it into a shop for repair rather than risk damaging the components myself. At this point IF they are faulty, I can recoup the money or get a replacement. If I damage them by taking it apart and reassembling them, and there is always that risk when you remove components, then I am out a whole PC. I should add I am unemployed and a student retraining at college right now as my UK teaching qualifications are useless here in the USA. So money is scarce.

I already had to shell out an extra $200 on a new chip as my son's friend, who was supposed to be only taking my last PC innards out of my case and putting them in the new case I bought my son for his 25th birthday, started making up my new rig before I could stop him, and mashed my chip the wrong way into the motherboard. And I do mean mashed. I couldn't even say anything as we were working on another table next to my son who was table top gaming with other friends of his at the time..

absic115, I had wondered about the PSU size myself, but the PSU is powerful enough because when I changed the video card, I got it from Fry's Electronics and asked to speak to a rep who was a PC builder. I then went over my components with him to check my PSU was adequate and he assured me it was more than powerful enough to deal with that motherboard and video card. The only other things I have plugged into the mobo are my Audigy 2 sound card and the memory. All parts apart from the Nvidia video card came from NewEgg not Fry's, so he had no reason to say the PSU was well up to the job if it wasn't because he could have tried to sell me a new PSU at that time. Not just that, but before I bought the components I checked with the friend who usually built my PCs till I moved South. He said I was well within the specs with that one, and even suggested getting the 3 x 12v rail model.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371016 It is about $70 worth of PSU, actually. And here in South California, with our high cost of living, and me being unemployed, that is quite a lot for me.

Personally I am thinking it is a faulty motherboard now, or perhaps the fact it is G-Skill memory and that board has a dislike of G-Skill. Anyway, since my money is tight, trying to replace either the PSU or the memory on spec is not sensible when I don't know if either is at fault. It makes more sense to put it into a shop where they can test everything.

I do thank you all very much for your time, and for your suggestions, and I have tried what you suggested, apart from rebuilding it outside the case. I will try yet another reinstall of the OS tomorrow, on a reformatted C drive yet again, just to be sure it is clean. If I still have problems, I give up and will let the pros with test equipment handle it.

Again, thank you for your help, it has been very much appreciated.

[absic]

Hi,

there is a big difference between being not comfortable doing a procedure, and ignoring advice. I know my limitations and I would prefer to put it into a shop for repair rather than risk damaging the components myself. At this point IF they are faulty, I can recoup the money or get a replacement. If I damage them by taking it apart and reassembling them, and there is always that risk when you remove components, then I am out a whole PC

You are quite right and it is easy for some of us to forget this. 

I'm sorry that your problem has not been resolved and, from reading through your latest post, I think you are doing the right thing by having someone with the correct equipment, test out your PC components, if another install doesn't cure the problem. There is only so much you can do and sometimes it is best to admit defeat.

I hope that you find a solution quickly and it would be great if you could let us know how you get on.

ATB

[Dark Mantis]

Dark Mantis, there is a big difference between being not comfortable doing a procedure, and ignoring advice.

I meant no offence by my remark only that you seemed to be ignoring our advice and to make headway certain situations need to be cleared up. If you had let us know the full facts it would have helped earlier. Anyway my gut feeling says that it has something to do with the virus problem you had initially. I know you have done multiple scans etc but sometimes these little suckers can hang on. Wish you luck in sorting it out and please post your final solution.

[Kitts]

No problem, guys. I made assumptions too, that you would assume I had enough knowledge and nous to have done the reformat and reinstall thing at least once. 

Lingering virus. Yes, it could look like there was one lingering with the cascading errors, but I have anti-virus scanned everything to death, and run that DrWeb program through all my data, on the PC or off it, so many times it isn't funny, and it always comes back as "No viruses found." So I have to assume that it is correct, especially as the 2 PC drives have both been totally reformatted and repartitioned once each, and the main drive C partition deleted, and reformatted as I said about 5 plus times.
If you can suggest anything in virus removal I may have forgotten, please feel free. Won't use Norton though, it ate an OS of mine a few years back, and I hate that program! I now use Avast! Free as it seems to catch stuff AVG missed, which is how the virus got through  in the first place.

Yups, I will come back and let you all know. Perhaps my experiences may shed light on other folk's problems after all. 

[Dark Mantis]

Yes, I totally agree with you on Norton! What you said about the drives is true but I just have a niggling feeling about a virus it doesn't really make sense I know but after all these years I have a sort of instinct sometimes. Anyway good luck and look forward to hearing the outcome.

[Ecelestin]

Disable C1E in bios, solved all my BSOD issues. Try it and see if it works for you aswell.

I have tried with all the different versions of the bios released for this board. The only thing that ever solved my BSOD issues, was to disable C1E in the bios.

I really don't know why this is, but that is the only solution I came up with that actually works. Used the Computer for weeks now, with no BSOD, as soon as I enable or put C1E to auto in the bios, I get BSOD, I don't over clock, so there should be no reason for me to disable it, but I don't know. Bad bios code.. Is my guess..

[Dark Mantis]

Hi
Are you using the latest BIOS release? C1E is just an energy saving setting.

[Ecelestin]

Hi
Are you using the latest BIOS release? C1E is just an energy saving setting.

As I said, I have tried every bios release for this board, no matter what I get BSOD with C1E enabled. Sometimes directly, sometimes after awhile in Windows. When I disable C1E in bios, I have no issues at all, had it disabled for weeks, tried the latest beta  bios release yesterday, after ignoring it for awhile, as it worked fine with C1E disabled. Flashed to the latest beta bios, enabled C1E, things seemed to work fine, played a few games, surfed watched a few movies, and then boom after like a day, BSOD. And then it continued until I disabled C1E.

Yes I know its just a Energy saving setting, but still, my computer becomes very very unstable with it on, with it off, there is no issues at all.

I use the Phenom II X4 995BE (C3) So yes it should support C1E, which Everest also confirmed it does.

[venganza]

Save yourself the grief, back up user created data, and clean-install Windows (ie custom install and format the drive etc)