Surprise : PC's playing up ;) (again...)

[Evildead666]

Well then.
YES, this is the highly overclocked PC, but I just don't understand all of the problems...

It worked fine last night, doing everything i could throw at it. OCCT for 30mins, sweet.
no probs whatsoever.

Today, a sound problem has resurfaced. The audio 'locks' for less than a second, sometimes more, repeating the last sound produced, in the millisecond range.
'Br.r.r.r.r.r.r.r.r.r.r.r.r.' is what it sounds like.
The mouse locks when the sound is locked, it looks like the whole PC is locking up for really short periods of time.
When this starts, i know i only have a few seconds before the whole PC locks up.
Then its locked, and it will stay that way until i hard reset.

I have tried with no audio cards installed at all, same problem.
Tried lowering the memory frequency, and voltage : even worse. barely reaches windows.
The memory timings are already very relaxed.

When I last went into the BIOS, i deactivated the XD bit, and the CPU microcode update, and now it seems to be more stable, with audio card installed an all...

When i tried to load in Safe mode, it stopped on MUP.sys (or .exe)...seems quite a common stop point, but not for the same reasons...

Anyway, if anyone has had the sound lock problem before, with Audigy 2ZS or Realtak HD audio, and knows where its from...? Help me please

If anyone who clocks knows where this may come from, I would appreciate it.
I have a tendency to over-over volt things....

[Fat Tone]

I'd say get your foot off the FSB pedal first.

[rylan]

Yeah whats the pci bus running at? Sound cards have not been too tolerant of a high pci clock.

[Evildead666]

Phew. Just spent a little while getting back into Windows...

I have a little feeling it may have been Rivatuner 2.06

The PC locked up in safe mode when I tried to reset some things, and now I have uninstalled it, i am in Windows with no probs.
Couldn't even boot into windows with stock voltages and speeds just now...

Safe mode, uninstalled RT, and now gonna see if I can get back up again.

@FT - Its not the FSB, last night I benched no probs at 4920MHz.
I haven't found anywhere in the Bios to lower the multiplier...? so I'm stuck at 17x.
It also happened at much lower clocks...just so intermittent, that I couldn't pin it on anything. For days, it works fine, just fine. Then, like this morning, boot, lock, repeat, and a few hours of swearing...

@Rylan - PCI is locked to 33.33MHz, audio is onboard, or PCI Audigy, but it locks up without either installed as well...The problem was easily noted by the sound since I have virgin Radio on virtually all the time...

When I posted the thread here, the PC locked up, wasn't sure it made it

I haven't reinstalled windows since march, and don't really want to yet....
Seems stable now, much more stable...gonna have another hack at RT, but the non-beta one...seeing as i'm back to 3.4GHz for the mo...

Will keep updated if it was RTuner 2.06 or not...

[Evildead666]

Not Rivatuner...

writing this from my Epia spare PC that i use for when the main PC is AWOL.
As soon as i finished the above post, i went to rivatuner website, and it locked, after about 4-5 hiccups, tell tale signs of impending doom. at stock everything.

Letting it cool off, and then gonna try to run the XP SP2 from the install CD, and if that won't work, then reinstall windows....

btw, the Boot disk is on a Adaptec PCI SATA controller. Not sure if it could cause probs, but as I said before, the PCI bus should have been locked, and the Smart status is OK...

Starting to hope its more of a software problem than a hardware problem.
(seemed to also get worse when uTorrent was on...)

ttyl, SP2 here i come...

[Evildead666]

i seem to be getting a blue screen with a stop error.
I have only now been able to read it.
STOP 0x0000007F (0x0000000X...)

Microsoft says its a Divide by Zero error, either RAM or a software error.
Doing a memtest now, and it seems fine, with the RAM running by default at DDR666 on a 800fsb.
Hope i can get into safe mode long enough later on....

[Technoid]

I'm with Fat Tone, The absolute first when trubbleshooting overclocked PC's is to turn down to standard clock!!

[MultimediaMan]

Check this out...

Found something you might want to look at...

http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=729

This one really helped me out...just their methodology is enough to fix nearly ANY boot problem.

The meat of the meal is here: http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/t1047532372

[Evildead666]

I'm with Fat Tone, The absolute first when trubbleshooting overclocked PC's is to turn down to standard clock!!

It's at standard clock and voltages already. Thats the problem.

Memory has completed over an hour and nearly two complete loops of memtest.

Just trying to get into safe mode...

[Evildead666]

Having the boot drive on a PCI adapter, and not having a Floppy drive is the biggest arse of all...

Gonna have to reinstall XP temporarily on the 4 disk RAID drive, then empty the drive of all the data, (about 6 files i actually want), then break the raid, have one boot disk off the intel internal SATA controller, and a three disk stripe.

[Evildead666]

Multimediaman, I had a good look at that site, mcpmag, and it helped a bit...except some of the suggestions are non existant on this mobo.

I have no ESCD reset at all in the BIOS. I thought all mobos had them, but hey...
I have changed some of the mobo values, as I was trying to stabilise it...probably did more harm than help.
I reset the BIOS to defaults, and reconfigured to boot from the PCI drive and still no go.
Boll*x.

Well, I suppose installing to a 4 disk RAID stripe shouldn't take too long at least

edit : I don't suppose there are hidden settings on the P5WD2 ?
on my gigabyte NF2 mobo, I had to do ctrl+F1 to get to the hidden overclocking options...

[rylan]

Inspect the motherboard for blown/swollen capacitors? I've seen lose mounting screws cause a board to become unstable also due to poor ground connection.
Another easy thing is to try swapping power supplies.

[Evildead666]

Yup. just shone a torch in there and all the caps look good.

Switched off the PSU for a while, and on restarting, I can get into safe mode.
I'm just saving all the data i want off the RAID now, so I can break it and reinstall Windows.

Trying to find my SP2 cd also, gonna give that a go as a final thrust to the throat...

[Nowhere]

What I'd do in such situation - start with bare minimum (no sound, preferably some old PCI GFX card, one IDE HDD, etc.), see how it works and add one thing at a time...

[The PIT]

And if that doesn't work clean install of OS without any drivers.

After that sledge hammer.