Oddest Thing
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:40 am
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.
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.