Instabilities and a power-on problem

davd_bob · Post by **davd_bob** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 12:17 pm

What do the system temps do at 66 and 100FSB?
Seemed to be working ok except for the temps. Both CPUs were ok but the system was up to 10 or more hotter then the CPUs. Changed some of the caps made by Jackson and fixed that problem.

hugoc · Post by **hugoc** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 12:57 pm

Hi all,

First off, looks like I've been a victim of electromigration of some kind. My BP6 with dual 366s@550 has been stable for 5 years, but now it keeps crashing all the time. I've tested the memory, changed the graphics card and sound card, reinstalled countless times but the only thing that seems to have made a difference so far is setting the clock back to 366. It's a shame. Any comments?

Secondly, two times out of three I turn on the computer the fans will start up, drives will spin, but there'll be no POST beep or VGA output. I've tried three different VGA cards, 2 AGP and 1 PCI type. When the computer does start, it's just fine. Any thoughts on what might be doing this?

There's no bulged or leaking caps anywhere on the board. It looks as good as the day I bought it. The voltages seem to be stable and not too far off where they should be (at the moment, 3.34v, 4.89v and 12.4v).

Hugo

InactiveX · Post by **InactiveX** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 2:01 pm

Have you tried replacing the PSU? Maybe it's on its way out.

cavity · Post by **cavity** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 11:01 am

I've got the same power on problem, sometimes it just doesnt post and i have to hit the power button again. everything spins up but the bios just doesnt start. Its not a huge deal, but it can be a pita some times.

edit: just remembered it wanted to do this way more at 66mhz than it does at 93

davd_bob · Post by **davd_bob** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 6:54 pm

cavity wrote:I've got the same power on problem, sometimes it just doesnt post and i have to hit the power button again. everything spins up but the bios just doesnt start. Its not a huge deal, but it can be a pita some times.

edit: just remembered it wanted to do this way more at 66mhz than it does at 93

Something in one of the slots maybe.
At 66 the PCI/ISA divider is 1/2 with slots run at 33Mhz.
At 93 the divider is 1/3 with the slots at 31Mhz.

hugoc · Post by **hugoc** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 8:59 pm

Well, I have an update. Today the computer locked up three times on me at 366, so it isn't that. Back to 550 we go. However, each time it locked up it was playing music. I got a buzzing noise from the speakers and then a KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED ntoskrnl STOP error. I'll try searching the MS knowledge base for that in the morning, but AFAIK that's a driver problem.

This has happened before. I've tried a Soundblaster 16 PCI and a cheap CMI8738 soundcard and neither was any more stable than the other. I'm thinking it might be buggy playback software, I was using Foobar2000 but now I'll try Winamp 5, although I'm running Win2k (problems also happened in WinXP), so a buggy application shouldn't be able to bring the whole system down with a STOP error. Maybe it's the drivers. How to tell? I'm running the latest ones.

About the power-on problem, I don't know what causes it. What have other people tried? The PSU is a four-year-old cheap "300W" unit (made by Deer), so I'm willing to accept that it might be at fault, but I don't want to lay out $60-75 Cdn for a decent major-brand PSU if it's not going to actually fix the problem, nor do I want to throw good money after bad and spend $30 on another el-cheapo PSU. What else might it be? The only things doing any work in the startup would be the PSU, the mobo, the RAM and the graphics card. The RAM has been tested a dozen times, the graphics card has been changed for two others (none of them cheap brands - a Creative and two Matroxes), so where does that leave me?

davd_bob · Post by **davd_bob** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 10:04 pm

hugo,
That was important info in your update.
2nd...check around with friends or IT people where you work or best of all...IT people that are friends. Someone probably has a PSU they'ed give you if you bought em a Big Mac when they were hungry and busy at the same time.

1st...Apps with audio sometimes have to deal with hardware not releasing control until the sound is completed. I think its a "Hogging the Bus" or Controling an IRQ issue. Try Quicktime or Media Player before Win-Amp and see if those tried and true(well at least tried) apps can do any better.
good luck

purrkur · Post by **purrkur** » Tue Dec 07, 2004 1:59 am

Check if any of your cards are sharing IRQ's.

Don't belive the manufacturer if they say that their card can share. I have seen on more than one occasion where a card can bring the system down when sharing IRQ's even when the manufacturer says it should be possible. The manufacturer can't possibly make such a claim since they can't test every single card under every single operating system. All they can say is that their card complies with some specification that says IRQ sharing should be possible. I have on many occasions fixed misterious problems in computers by solving IRQ sharing.

hugoc · Post by **hugoc** » Tue Dec 07, 2004 8:24 am

OK, the MS knowledge base didn't turn up anything productive. It seems that one needs to know what the problematic software or hardware might be before checking the knowledge base, but that's precisely what I don't know.

Purrkur, thanks for your suggestion - as it turns out, the NIC and the sound card are both sharing IRQ 19! They are in PCI slots 5 and 4 respectively, as D-Link assured me that the NIC doesn't require DMA. I can't change the IRQ in software, so I suppose I'll have to go moving cards around. I'll give that a shot and see what happens.

I'll try and borrow a PSU off somebody, but the Second Coming might occur before I actually get one. I still haven't gotten my Serious Sam disc back after two months. It's kind of ironic that I have enough spare computer parts to build at least one computer, barring a power supply!

I would try the Quicktime/Media Player suggestion, but I need something that will play APE, MPC and OGG files.

Thanks for the help guys, I will post back after I do some card-shuffling later today.

hugoc · Post by **hugoc** » Tue Dec 07, 2004 1:24 pm

Alright, another update. I found that my soundcard, NIC, USB and one of the HPT366 controllers were all sharing IRQ 19. I disabled the HPT366 (don't use it anyway), moved the soundcard to IRQ 18, which left the NIC and USB sharing 19, which I didn't think would be a problem because I don't use USB.

Anyway, long story short, 90 minutes later the system locked up again. So I've just rearranged everything again and now every device has a unique IRQ. We'll see how that runs. I'll make sure to use all of the devices in the system to try and provoke a crash.

davd_bob · Post by **davd_bob** » Tue Dec 07, 2004 1:32 pm

I get most of my PSUs from Pentium-II units that people are throwing away. Give me your shipping address and I will check the cost to send you one. If I can find one that is. I just scavanged the fans from a few and pitched them out so hopefully I will have a spare and it will be cheap to ship UPS ground.

Billl · Post by **Billl** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 5:28 am

You might want to try stripping the system down to the bare essentials and see if it's still crashing on you. This would rule out your sound card and such. I wouldn't bet on the CPU's being bad though. I have a Celery 533 running at 824 thats been crunching SETI since 99 without hardly a burp. I think the whole electromigration thing was way over blown.

Billl

hugoc · Post by **hugoc** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 8:18 am

Another update. After I removed all IRQ conflicts yesterday, it didn't crash. I left it on overnight looping an .mp3 file and with a keepalive program to get some network activity, I came back to it this morning and it had locked up some time during the night. So it isn't that.

I'll try your suggestion, Bill, and pull the NIC and soundcard (about all I have that's nonessential) this evening and leave it running a burn-in test overnight, see what happens.

To be honest I'm beginning to suspect this is a software problem. The STOP screens and ntoskrnl errors make me think it might be a shoddy driver for something, probably the soundcard, or else just an argument between the kernel and a driver. Perhaps this is a sign that I should erase Windows and go full-time Linux.

purrkur · Post by **purrkur** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 9:29 am

hugoc wrote:Perhaps this is a sign that I should erase Windows and go full-time Linux.

Now you're talking!!!!

hugoc · Post by **hugoc** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 9:44 am

I think I can confirm that it's a driver problem. I had another STOP error, this time of IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. According to the MS knowledge base this is definitely a driver problem. It's not for certain which one it is (if it happens again I will be sure to note down the memory range and look up which device is using that range) but I'd put money on the soundcard.

Now you're talking!!!!

Well, so far I've only tinkered with Linux. I always dual-booted. But if Windows is determined not to work with my hardware my decision may be made for me. If I can find substitutes for all my apps that would be good - perhaps you can help! I think all my hardware is compatible. I had doubts about my Kodak CX6200 digital camera, but apparently it works if you use usb hotplug and gphoto2, and just shows up as a volume - so I'm told! The wife prefers Windows, but if I can get Linux to do everything she wants to do (surfing/e-mail, p2p, photo editing) she might concede.

purrkur · Post by **purrkur** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 12:34 pm

hugoc wrote:If I can find substitutes for all my apps that would be good - perhaps you can help! I think all my hardware is compatible. I had doubts about my Kodak CX6200 digital camera, but apparently it works if you use usb hotplug and gphoto2, and just shows up as a volume - so I'm told! The wife prefers Windows, but if I can get Linux to do everything she wants to do (surfing/e-mail, p2p, photo editing) she might concede.

I got a camera and an MP3 player that uses the CompactFlash memory cards so I bought myself a CF reader. They are really cheap and work wonders under Linux. You just mount the CF card as a harddrive. I also checked Gphoto2 homepage and they support your camera.

Surfing: Firefox (which you should also be using even though you run Windows).
E-mail: Thunderbird, Evolution, Kmail (There are many more)
p2p: various clients around
Photo editing: Here the choice isn't as good but Gimp is a professional image editing program.

All your hardware in your sig is supported.

hugoc · Post by **hugoc** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 5:57 pm

Another update for you helpful fellows.

I have now had several crashes when the soundcard was not actually in use at all. My suspicion has now turned to the NIC, since there is always network activity (my virus scanner maintains a constant, minimal amount of traffic according to my firewall program).

I do have another NIC that I think is in good working order, so I'm going to swap them this evening, and then leave a keepalive program running overnight to test it.

BTW purrkur, is there a particular distro you recommend? As you know I like Yoper, however there hasn't been an update for four months and there's no activity on their site - I think it might have bit the big one. I'm not an experienced Linux user by any means, but I know my way around a BASH shell.

purrkur · Post by **purrkur** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:04 am

hugoc wrote:BTW purrkur, is there a particular distro you recommend? As you know I like Yoper, however there hasn't been an update for four months and there's no activity on their site - I think it might have bit the big one. I'm not an experienced Linux user by any means, but I know my way around a BASH shell.

I am always fond of the distro's that are built on Debian. I think Xandros is getting the honors for being the best and most user friendly desktop distro out there but it costs money. They have just released version 3. There is another distro that the Debian developers have been raving about (many of the Debian developers have been hired to work on it full time). It is called "Ubuntu" and it is supposedly a really good desktop distro that is free. www.ubuntu.com. I have read that it is simply fantastic, although I haven't tried it myself.

Debian will soon be coming out with a new release that will include a better installer that will detect your hardware etc. It will still be ugly (curses based) but it will do the job without being too complicated. It seems as if some people can't get past the "ugly" part of it but it doesn't bother me and I have tested it a few times and found it real easy.

hugoc · Post by **hugoc** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 1:07 pm

I installed a NIC I borrowed from my son's machine, an Accton 1207D 10/100 card. I plugged this into my BP6, installed it, started a keepalive program and Winamp to loop a few mp3 files and left it overnight. Next morning it was still working fine. I left it until the afternoon - still working fine. So I sat down to do some work on it and it crashed.

Then I rebooted it. I got some work done for 20 minutes and it crashed. Then half-an-hour later, it crashed again. So, we're no further ahead. Just now, I had a STOP error that referred to the soundcard driver - but a soundcard problem wouldn't explain all the crashes that happened while it was not in use, and you'd think that swapping the NIC for a completely different one with completely different drivers would eliminate the NIC!

I think I must conclude that WinSh*t 2000 is the problem. It can't seem to make up its mind whether or not the NIC or the soundcard is a problem, and I know the hardware is fine - it's all worked in other computers without a problem. Windows 98 also works just fine, probably because it uses a different driver model. Who would have thought that Win98 would be more stable than Win2k?

Thanks for your suggestions, Purrkur. I think I'm going to try the free version of Xandros (a few features disabled but nothing important), since I have heard reviewers say that Ubuntu is really great but smells like a first release (few bugs here and there), and Gnome as-of-yet has no decent cd-burning app and running K3B looks ugly and has to be run with sudo. If I like Xandros I'd probably fork out for the deluxe version.

You should try the live version of ubuntu. I recommed the bittorrent download - I used it to get ubuntu (I'm still interested in giving it a shot if Xandros doesn't work out) and it came in at 350-400KBps all the way!

purrkur · Post by **purrkur** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 6:27 pm

hugoc wrote:I have heard reviewers say that Ubuntu is really great but smells like a first release (few bugs here and there), and Gnome as-of-yet has no decent cd-burning app and running K3B looks ugly and has to be run with sudo. If I like Xandros I'd probably fork out for the deluxe version.

You should try the live version of ubuntu. I recommed the bittorrent download - I used it to get ubuntu (I'm still interested in giving it a shot if Xandros doesn't work out) and it came in at 350-400KBps all the way!

Hmm. Ubuntu is doing its first release that had a long beta period. You should see Ubuntu as a refined Debian product so it really isn't a "point oh" release in any such manner. I have heard of problems but they are usually specific to hardware that use drivers that is still being worked on. In other words nothing major.

Gnome uses the file manager for CD burning. I have never used it myself so I can't vouch for it but others say it is good enough for simple burning that most users do. I actually like the idea of having a file manager where I can directly burn stuff from instead of having to start a separate program to do the function.

As for K3b, it is my burning program of choice but I don't need sudo for it. It all depends on how you set it up. I set up a cd-burn group that my user is a member of. It works fine. K3b also comes with a separate setup program that will help you manage this.

hugoc · Post by **hugoc** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 9:09 pm

This is just what I read of Ubuntu. I think people agree that they did a great job, however, it will probably benefit from being out in the wider community a bit. After a few bugzilla reports it should be very nicely polished and most reviewers said they expected the next release to be truly awesome. Like you say, I think it's some odd hardware problems - I read of issues with some WiFi cards, routers and so on. The biggest turn-off for me was the CD writing. I have read that while it's easy enough to do data CDs in Gnome, there's no option for CD-DA, PhotoCD and other formats. I often burn those other formats, so it's an issue for me. My guess is that the sudo issue with K3B in Ubuntu might be due to the fact that Ubuntu has no root user and all root functions are done with sudo. OTOH, Xandros reportedly has a really great CD-burning tool. It's built into the file manager too, but can do all the fancy formats, even DVD burning.

My download of Xandros is now complete after many more crashes interrupting everything - bah. I shall install it on Monday and let you know how it goes. Thankfully, I think my wife is now sufficiently frustrated by the crashing that she won't mind either.

Thanks to everyone for all the help and suggestions. Hopefully my problems are soon to be solved.

hugoc · Post by **hugoc** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 5:43 pm

OK, another update. I downloaded Xandros and found that the free version is crippled in a number of problematic ways - the firewall is missing, maximum CD burning speed is 4x, and more. To add insult to injury, the full version that you pay $90 for does not support SMP! So out goes that.

I also tried Ubuntu to find that it also does not support SMP out of the box. Now, I suppose it could be made to work, but to be honest I think that expecting me to recompile my kernel just to get all my hardware recognised is a bit much. It also seemed quite barren of useful software, so out went that.

Then I got Mandrake 10.1, which recognised all my hardware, mounted my Windows volumes and all that, but it was sloooow. Windows XP feels snappier than this. I really can't stand sluggish OSes, and I don't know how anybody could put up with them, so out went that too.

I installed my old favourite in its latest version, Yoper 2.1.0.4. It's very snappy, the only OSes I've used on this system that seemed faster were BeOS and Win98 after a clean install with 98lite and Internet Explorer stripped out of it, but there wasn't much in it. I've now gotten the system set up as I like it, installed the software I need (Firefox, oOo, Azureus, aMule, java) and it's going pretty well. No crashes.

Dave Rave · Post by **Dave Rave** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 5:27 pm

the computer store had some old IBM 500 mhz celeron systems doing nothing, so i checked em over to be used at least as in house POS terminals.

one always had a problem, i checked ram, nic, hdd, mobo, always had some glitch after a while or while installing win2k.
i gave up on it and said it was a flaky damn system.

some time later, another tech changed the cpu and it's fine now.
go figure.... ( or think it might be the celery )

hugoc · Post by **hugoc** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 11:18 pm

OK, here is a further update.

I installed Linux a while ago. My system uptime is now 5 days, 11 hours and counting. Before that reboot I was up for over 2 days. I rebooted because I had written a script for executing a few daemons on startup and wanted to test it, not because anything obliged me to.

So I can only summarise that the problem was Windows. This is all the same hardware, voltages, everything, but Linux is rock-solid stable and Windows crashes every few hours - what would you think?

Tomorrow I am removing my last FAT32 partition and going full-time Linux. I'm very happy with my Linux experience thus far. My wife is able to use it perfectly well and I did not have to tell her how to do anything, except to point out which program burned CDs.

And one last thing:

Cavity, you mentioned that you had the same power-on problem. I have noticed that if I turn the computer off with the power switch, instead of soft power-off, it comes back on without a problem. But if I shut down in software, 2 times in 3 it won't start up again properly.

Perhaps you could test your system along these lines and see if it works this way for you?

davd_bob · Post by **davd_bob** » Tue Jan 04, 2005 12:30 am

hugoc wrote:So I can only summarise that the problem was Windows. This is all the same hardware, voltages, everything, but Linux is rock-solid stable and Windows crashes every few hours - what would you think?

After all that...
There are virus attacks that will force W2K and probably XP to reboot repeatedly.