ASUS P4T-E and heavy disk use

[angrybrit]

Hi all,
I have an ASUS P4T-E and it's getting flaky. Some weeks the system runs fine. Other weeks, it will reboot or freeze by itself frequently. I have not run a full Diskeeper on my HDs for a while. If I do, it's a garanted reboot. It will never get through. Last month, for 2 straight days, I had to press the RESET button for the IDE devices to be properly detected. Each time it took like 5 tries just to get them to identify them on the boot up sequence. There was one day, the computer didn't wanna boot up period. Almost each day I have to press RESET at least once just to get the IDE devices to be properly detected. :x

At first, I thought it was the HDs that were giving the computer some trouble. Both Maxtors were swapped and work fine. I removed 2 DIMMs and let the system work on 256 Megs. Did the reverse for the 2 other DIMMs. I bought a new ANTEC power supply (350 watts) to replace the older Antec power supply (250 watts). Removed all unnecessarty peripherals. Problem still there. I am hopeless. About a week ago, I was reading some forum and people kept talking about how good the quality of the capacitors were on some XYZ mobo.

I opened my PC and took out the mobo. The capacitors seem fine. Some are a little tilted. But there doesn't look like there are some leaking or a puffy top. Is there anything I am overlooking?

I don't wanna replace my mobo and have to buy new memory. :|


Here are my system specs:
P4 1.7GHz (Willamette)
512 RDRAM (non-ECC, 4 DIMMs x128 Megs)
ASUS P4T-E mobo with latest BIOS 1.007
MSI GeForce 5200 with 128 Megs RAM.

[Topcat]

Welcome to the boards...

What you're describing is a tell-tale sign of bad capacitors. Asus used quite a few brands of caps, some known to fail. Look at your actual caps and post the brands. This info will help in diagnosing. I understand you not wanting to replace the board/RAM, for what you probably paid for the RDRAM.

Capacitors don't always leak and bulge when they go bad.

[angrybrit]

Here's the list of capacitors:
Taicon
green - 1500
black/blue - 3300
black/blue - 1500
black/blue - 100
black/gold - 1500

Sanyo
green - 1000
purple - 510

I am having difficulties getting pics of the mobo up.

I tried to switch the RIMMs again and see if some are bad but it does the same problem when running Sandra (instant reboot).

EDIT:
1st
2nd
3rd

[RJARRRPCGP]

Run Memtest86, because you possibly have a RAM problem and the capacitors possibly aren't faulty.

http://memtest86.com

BTW, were there any errors in the event log about a crash, a stop error?

[angrybrit]

Run Memtest86, because you possibly have a RAM problem and the capacitors possibly aren't faulty.

http://memtest86.com

BTW, were there any errors in the event log about a crash, a stop error?

It was my first stop (Memtest86).


A month ago, I got a bad transfer (corrupt data) from 1 HD to another HD.

I also have a known offender, TEAPO caps on my board. But they're small and not very numerous. Could this be the culprit?

[kc8adu]

try a cable from a known working box.
the 80 wire ide cables are fragile and i see plenty that have been damaged.

[angrybrit]

try a cable from a known working box.
the 80 wire ide cables are fragile and i see plenty that have been damaged.

Already changed them from normal IDE cable to rounded IDE cable. And the system is unstable on both cables.

[RJARRRPCGP]

When the PC reboots on you, after reloading Windows, do you get any entries in the event log that at least looks similar to:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x00000050 (0xf0006a70, 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000).

[angrybrit]

When the PC reboots on you, after reloading Windows, do you get any entries in the event log that at least looks similar to:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x00000050 (0xf0006a70, 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000).

I get a window that says that Windows encountered a serious error. :|

[RJARRRPCGP]

That means you got a BSOD, a stop error. To make Windows XP display a BSOD, do the following:

Go to Control Panel>Performance and Maintenance>System>Advanced>Startup and Recovery, click Settings, then uncheck "Automatically restart".

Then, you probably will see a BSOD, next time Windows XP crashes instead of a spontaneous reboot.

[angrybrit]

Thank you for the BSOD tip.

There was a problem with the IdeChnDr.sys file which comes from Intel's IAA drivers. Did a quick google and the first suggestion was check the HDs for bad clusters.

We'll the culprit was bad clusters. -_- :oops:

I ran the Maxtor utility, on both HDs, and it fixed all those bad clusters.

And then I tried to run a Defrag and it went all the way to the end!!! :P

Then I also did a full av scan and it went well too. No more reboots.

And I discovered another thing: the PC components are overheating inside my PC case from lack of airflow. Since I opened my case, no more missing ATAPI/IDE drives on bootup.

ScreenShot 1
ScreenShot 2
ScreenShot 3

EDIT: Under heavy disk usage last night, there was some beeping from the PC. The mouse was locked and PC was locked up. I waited aboot a min and the PC became responsivea again. Anything I should be worried aboot?