Oddest Thing

[normalicy]

OK, I haven't posted about this since I've never had trouble... troubleshooting. So, about 2 months ago, my computer started acting up. About every 4-12 hours, it would plain blue screen.

It looked like a dying drive from the error codes. I told my wife that this was the chance I needed to upgrade to Vista anyhow. So, I do some basic troubleshooting. Swapped out drives & still had issues. What was really odd was that the "dead drive" now works perfectly in another machine when I tried to recover lost data.

OK, maybe it's the ram. I ran memtest & sure enough, after about 1 hour or so, it starts throwing errors. OK, I'll throw in another set (I've got like 4 sets due to the recent sales). But no matter which set or what voltage, they all throw errors within an hour.

OK, maybe something is overheating, I reapply the thermal compound on the heatsink & give everything a good blow down. No help there.

OK, maybe it's the power supply acting funny. I try swapping out 4 different power supplies, still getting errors. Then while I'm doing tests, I happen to be around when it starts throwing errors. I hear a odd hissing sound. Kinda sounds like it's coming from around the processor or mother board.

OK, well I had been thinking of upgrading my mother board, so I order up a new one. Guess what, same thing starts to happen. At this point I'm going about nuts. I also tried swapping the video card & disconnecting everything but the CD rom & a PCI video card to run memtest. Still getting problems. OK, it's never happened to me, but maybe it's the CPU. So in goes a new processor. Same problems!!!

For the heck of it, I run all of the old stuff on my desktop. Works for 2 days straight. What the heck. I can only figure that its the case at this point which is really wierd. Sure enough, I put it all back into the case (making sure nothing is grounding out or pinched) & more errors.

Then it dawns on me, I have UV Cold Cathode lights in my case & I never unplugged them since they really aren't connected to the motherboard & shouldn't affect anything. Sure enough, I disconnected them & bam, no errors at all & I can overclock the heck out of the system. At this point, I don't know if it is the inverter or the lights themselves yet (checked the wiring & see no evidence of grounding). Heck, I don't even care. At least it works. That was the oddest problem I've ever had with hardware in all my time working on computers.

[FlyingPenguin]

Cold cathodes = high voltage power supply. The hissing noise could could easily have been the sound of high voltage leaking to ground (it does sound like hissing when it's doing it slowly over an air gap).

I've never liked cold cathodes in a PC just for this reason. They are a huge RFI (Radio Frequency Noise) source. The case shields the delicate electronics from most RFI, but the cold cathode power supply is right there in the case.

[normalicy]

Yeah, needless to say, I'm sticking with LED fans & lights from now on.