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shambler
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I have 2 PC's. a 2700+ about 2and a half years old, and a P3 800 Slot 1 comp. About 5and a half years old. I love that old comp. we've been together a long time.
current spec is:
P3, 800 mgz
640 ram
Fx5200
40 gig and 80 gig drives
400watt P.Supply
the other day while starting a big level of UT it locked up. then I restarted it. then it locked up again, and I restarted it again. I sometimes play ut2004 on it, so old UT gives it no probs normally.
This time when it started it siad: 'NTLDR is missing' press Control ald+delete to restart. did this and it started and ran for about a minute, then crashed and restarted. its been doing this ever since yesterday. Bios seems exactly the same as it was before, but tonight I got long beeps from it instead of booting up. manual says this is DRRAM not installed. next time it gave me 1 long beep and 3 short. manual says graphics card not installed.
Last thing: if I unplag and leave for 10 minutes it will boot up normally, but crash after a couple of minutes. Until now, this has been the most relieable comp I have ever known. great for Gen and UT etc.
what can it be?
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Phoenix
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This sounds like a motherboard going out. 1 long beep, 3 short beeps was a symptom of my old Trinity AT100 board when it was dying on me. I know the video card was good because it's in Idlebot right now and running fine. Not detecting RAM and OS boot failures also are giveaway symptoms, along with the "runs ok when cold but not hot" or vice-versa. Mine was the opposite, ran ok when hot but not cold. I'd say you have a faulty circuit that's causing the northbridge to go flaky when the system starts to warm up. Northbridge controls communications between the video, memory, cache, and CPU, and pipes traffic to the southbridge, which is responsible for PCI, I/O, and other peripheral operations. A broken microtrace inside an IC will cause the temperature-dependent behavior. When it's been off the system is cool, so the components contract and the break makes contact. Once the components warm up, the microtrace separates and poof, system fails.
The only other thing that will cause this behavior will be bad voltages from the PSU or an overheat. Seems a bit too consistent for flaky voltage though, and overheat can be checked by opening the case and checking the fans. I'd suspect motherboard for certain, but check your fans to be on the safe side.
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  I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
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shambler
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Thanks Pho. When I look inside the case, I see the processor fan has stopped working! new last year too... I'll put the old one back on and then have another go. Since I posted, I have been trying to ghost an image back to the comp, and it crashed out half way though again. I'll let you know how it goes.  Update: I've opened the case and the heatsink is very hot. allowed to cool, and I've put in the old fan I took out in Jan 05, working, but had been in for 5 years! fans running and all seems well. trying a ghost image at moment. second update: crashed again, ntldr is missing dropped voltage down to 1.65 from 1.7, replaced termal paste. been running now for 15 minutes so far. WTF is NTLDR? seems to be a windows file! |
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« Last Edit: 2006-03-21, 23:30 by shambler »
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Makou
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I actually guessed this one right. http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/n/ntldr.htmShort for NT loader, NTLDR is a program loaded from the hard drive boot sector that displays the Microsoft Windows NT startup menu and helps Microsoft Windows NT load. None of the problems listed there seem to match yours, however. |
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« Last Edit: 2006-03-21, 23:58 by Makou »
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If you see a "Rona Altana" out there on the internet somewhere, that's probably me
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shambler
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I agree. I found that page, but it did not make any sence for what I had wring.
However, I've just watched the second half of the wild bunch on dvd, and the comp ran without crashing, or anything. maybe it's sorted out. I'll retest tomorrow night.
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Phoenix
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No CPU fan = overheat = potential system damage. Be aware that I've had systems overheat that while the CPU was good, the motherboard was not. I lost an old 486 motherboard from an overheat when the CPU fan cable somehow worked loose. As to why I needed a fan on a 486, it was actually a DX2-66 and it was not a very cool environment (I like heat, remember?). It died when I was playing Final Doom. A Baron of Hell threw a fireball at me and damned my system. Tough game when it frags your hardware!
You might want to keep a close eye on that mainboard and the CPU as well. Thermal damage, like static discharge, isn't always a pass/fail situation. If the system keeps being unstable you'll need to replace either the CPU or system board. If you run ok for a week you might have dodged the bullet, er fireball in this case. 
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I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
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shambler
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Thats what I thought - it seems to be ok so far, and i've put on norton 2005 premium, and UT and its not crashed yet, but there are squares around the decals like the blood patches in UT, which is a video driver thing i'm sure. the comp seems stable as a whole, so i'll just wait and see.
wait--- no its not. it's done it again, when I set it to restart.
SO:
use the K7S5A board that BAT didn't want, and his 2000+ CPU must check if it's ok. (try that first, due to my having some 133 memory)
OR I have a A7N8X-X board, but no processor.(long story) socket A, which I'll use with BATs old processor. (and buy memory) or buy a socket A processor somewhere.
later: Rigged up BATs old 2000+ rig, but didn't even get the bios to run. fans turning, tried 2 graphics cards, but to signal to the monitor at all. not even a twitch to the floppy drive. looks like I'll have to get a new board and prossesor, as the A7N8X-X does not support separon without a bios upgrade, which I find scary. so it goes
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« Last Edit: 2006-03-23, 22:26 by shambler »
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shambler
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THis has gone from bad to worse.
The old board didn't even beep, or even turn the green light on on the monitor. Changed the vid card with 2 others, just the same.
Got up saturday and took out the a7nbx-x board that i had never used (long story) and put that in a case and rigged it up but guess what? no life except the green light on the motherboard and the cpu fan working. it didn't even turn on the monitor, or give me a beep, with or without a prossesor on it.
I am at a loss what to do........
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« Last Edit: 2006-03-25, 15:43 by shambler »
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Lopson
Elite
Posts: 1133
Still Going In Circles
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So it must be something else causing this conflict. Have you tried to change the power supply? Is it clean inside the box? Are there no burnt cables? Try to take out the sound card, network card, blablabla, and test it.
So many things to do.
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shambler
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Well, I've used 2 different cases with different powersupplies.
I've rigged it with CD and HD and floppy, and no go.
I've rigged it with none of the above, and no go.
This is 2 motherboards, 2 powersupplies, 3 graphics cards, the only thing I've only one of is processors, which could be dodgy, as BAT over heated it, but I though I should get some responce from the board, having tried it with the cpu both in and out.
There will be some stupid thing I'm not doing, but I don't know what it is. Even assuming that BATs old PC was trashed, the new board should give some sighn its alive!
heres what i've done:
i've screwed in the board
i've attatched the power cable from the power supply to the board
i've attatched the processor to the board
i've attatched the heatsink and fan to the cpu
i've plugged the fan cable into the motherboard.
I've put the memory stick into the slot furthest from the CPU.
i've attatched the floppy and cable to the Mboard
I've attatched the powersupply cable to the floppy
same with the harddrive
same with the CDwriter
I've put the powerswitch cable from the case on the pins on the motherboard.
I've put in the graphics card and power lead to it (in the case of the voodoo5000)(tried 3 cards, - voodoo 3000, fx5200 and voodoo5000.
Then I booted it up.
the CPU fan turns, and an LED on the motherboard lights up. and the CD writer LED lights up, but nothing comes on the monitor, the LED just stays orange, standby mode.
this has got me beat. I took off the cd writer, harddrive and floppy, but no change.
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shambler
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Sorted!
I took it to my school and my good mates the I.T Techs (I fixed a guitar for them once, and got them both hooked on UT) tried another CPU, and no joy, so they put in a new stick on memory, and viola! it worked, so I've got it home and am installing things as I speak. It's rinning at 1.32 ghz at the moment, but I'll get it up to full speed later. I just wanted it to run, let alone 'optimal or agressive settings.
BTW the original memory had a serous scratch on one side of it, that I hadn't noticed. BAT and his screwdriver, removing the harddrives and DVD RW drives, I've no doubt. Clumsey bugger. all i've got to do is get him off final fantacy 11. so he can get his life back.
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Phoenix
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Ooooh, be glad he didn't punch a hole in the system board being clumsy with that thing! Glad you found the problem! 
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I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
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shambler
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I've read this artical, and am gob-smacked. (the one about pc case heat) http://www.custompc.co.uk/It has made me re-think what my next case will be: front fan, side fan, rear fan, lots of HD bays, good power supply. |
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Phoenix
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A lot of people concentrate on the CPU's heatsink and fan and neglect cooling the other components. I favor hotter conditions, and my system sits in a cramped space, which means I have to work with more hostile conditions toward the computer than humans who favor (or can stand for long periods of time) environments cooler than 70F (21.1C). I can offer some additional cooling tips you might find useful.
First off is the case of course. More space = better. Front to back space = godlike. Not only do you get more airflow, but you also don't have to worry about large DVD and CD-ROM drives touching or hanging over the motherboard. Larger case width will buy you more air space, larger fan mounts, and the ability to use the largest heatsinks on your CPU. Side intakes are really, really good. My old Noblesse case (idlebot's case now) had no side intake, so I modded the side pannel and installed a grille on it. That was not easy since it was heavy steel, but it did drop my temperatures. My current case has fewer exhaust fan spots, but it does have a side intake built in. The downside to my setup is I have only a 3" clearence on the left of my case, which adds another challenge to cooling. Some of the newer cases have a mesh front instead of a solid front pannel. I'm of mixed thought on that. It can allow more airflow in for certain, but it also allows dust, dropped small objects, etc, to potentially infiltrate the case. An errant staple or clipped wire fragment can be disaster for electronics, so that's something to consider. I imagine broken metal guitar strings might be bad too. There are a lot of good cases designed primarily with cooling in mind though, so it's not like the days when all computers were cream-colored monolithic clones.
Something can do if your side intake space is restricted (like my situation) is to get a bay cooler. Even if your side intake isn't in close quarters, they're still useful for increasing airflow. I have a nifty device that fits in a 5.25" drive bay that has 3 fans on it and a removeable, cleanable mesh filter that snaps into the front. This allows more air into the case. It looks something like this but it's black and has 20mm thick fans instead of 10mm fans, so it's a bit more powerful, though very quiet. I don't bother with actual hard drive coolers that use the fancy heatsinks because I use the 3.5" mounts toward the bottom of the case. I do have two high speed Sunun 80mm fans that sit directly in front of the hard drives. They can each push 50CFM (cubic feet per minunte) at full speed. I stagger my drives, so I have a drive, and empty slot, and a drive above that. This gives excellent airflow above, below, and between the hard drives. These front fans don't do so much to bring air into the case as they serve to keep the hard drives from overheating. If you can help it, always leave airflow space around the hard drives.
You can also add a slot blower like this one. Ironically, AOC's slot blower is really the best one on the market despite their case review there. I've been using the same one for over 6 years and it's still going strong. They're not all that noisy (unless you sit with your head near the back of the case) and are very good for getting hot air spaces out of the space beneath your PCI cards, which is harder to exhaust since there typically aren't any fan attachments in that area. I like putting them under video cards, you just have to watch that you have enough intake space for it and also that it doesn't fight your video card's fan if it has one. It's perfect if your video card has no fan on it. Don't bother with some of the other brands that only push 21CFM. Space between PCI cards is tight and you need to push the air to draw hot air out from between them. Just be aware that this will use up a PCI slot. If your video card has a good fan on it, you might just throw it in the bottom slot or near by so it acts to pull fresh air from the front and side intakes down toward that area.
Another thing I highly recommend is the use of round hard drive and floppy cables. They cost a bit more, but they're so much better for airflow. Not so important if you're using a SATA hard drive since SATA cables are so thin, but the old ribbon cables are the #1 culprit for blocking air circulation. Another thing I do to keep cable clutter out of the way is that I utiluze the wasted space on the right side of the case. The hard drive bays leave about an inch between the side pannel and the hard drive mounts, so after I attach the drives I route all my power cables back there and tie them using zip ties. This way any unused cables are not in the main airspace, and the only parts of the cables I use that are exposed are the parts that actually connect to the drives. I have extra long power cables (another reason I like Enermax power supplies) so it's fairly easy to do this. If you take the time to hide your cables it also makes it easier to mess with your drives, RAM, etc, should you need to since you don't have power cable clutter in the way. It also makes a windowed case look Damn Nice™.
I also use a speed control for my fans. Vantec makes a nice one, looks like this. There are plenty of different kinds on the market. I use mine to tune the performance of my fans to provide the best cooling with the least noise. I have a philosophy of buying beefier fans and then tuning their speed down. It not only lets me balance the fans' thermal performance, but also I can control the pitch of the fan motors so the case doesn't sound dissonant (remember that I have very sensitive hearing). You can always slow a powerful fan down, you can't ever speed up a less powerful fan. The downside to a speed control is you lose a drive slot. My case has 4 5.25" drive bays, so I have a CD-Rom, a DVD-writer, an intake, and a speed control using up all four.
When choosing your fans, be they slot blowers, 80-120mm case fans, or CPU fan - whatever - you have 3 things that are of primary concern. First is CFM, or cubic feet per minute. The higher the CFM, the more air it moves. Higher is not necessarily always better. You have to balance your intake with your exit. You can have two 50CFM exhaust fans, but only 20CFM intake fans. That doesn't do too much good, as your fans will fight and the exhaust fans will tend to try to pull air into the case through any crack and cranny, which means dust will follow. Better to have slightly more powerful intake fans which will pressurize the case a bit and help keep the dust down since the air will only enter where YOU want it to. You do want a high enough CFM to actually move the air though, and the more cramped your quarters, the more CFM you need overall. Just be aware that it comes with a cost. High flow fans are ALWAYS going to generate more noise at full speed.
The second consideration is that noise I mentioned, measured in dba. The higher the dba, the louder the fan. 30 dba is decent, 57 dba is going to be quite loud. What it does not tell you is what kind of noise the fan makes. Some fans have a lot of motor whine, which can be a lot more annoying than the whoosh from the air. I have a 92mm Sunon on my CPU (marketted by Vantec under the name Tornado) that can push over 100CFM at full speed. It also sounds like a jet turbine at that speed. Slowed down it's not so bad, and the extra air from full speed doesn't really help cool my CPU any more. The heatsink can't pull heat off the chip any faster at that speed than at half throttle, so why waste the power and wear my fan out, and why put up with the noise?
The third consideration is RPM, which is the rotational speed of the fan. High RPM does not necessarily equate to high CFM. However, it can equate to high motor noise. High RPM is not necessarily bad though. Too low an RPM and a fan can stall if you slow it down. If you use a speed control make sure your fans don't stall at the lowest speed, and also check that if for some reason you physically stop the fan (eg, putting your finger on it) that it can restart on its own at that power setting. This is extremely important since you can't see what goes in inside the case, and dust build up changes resistance to flow over time.
Some other considerations on fans are bearing type, lights, etc. Ball bearing fans tend to last a bit longer, and get noisy when they're going to fail (the rattle/groan behavior). Sleeve bearing fans tend to be cheaper and a bit quieter, but also fail quicker. Lights are just for show, but remember that cold cathodes AREN'T COLD. Unless you're building a PC for show, stay away from cold cathodes. They generate a tremendous amount of heat. LED's generate nearly no heat and are great for lighting the inside of a case if you have a window. The one useful side to lighting the inside of your case is with a case window you can easily see if your fans are spinning or stalled.
Now regarding some things like RAM heatsinks and coolers... in practice they tend to be more gimicky and for show. RAM can take pretty high temperatures compared to some other components. Consider how hot video cards run (often in excess of 90C for the GPU) and they have RAM chips slapped all over them. Mainboards and CPU's are a lot more touchy. I can't remember ever hearing of situations where the RAM overheated and killed a PC without something else going bye-bye first. 
Typically, most people will do fine with some high quality, 30 CFM intake and exhaust fans, a good CPU heatsink and fan, good thermal paste on the CPU die (Arctic Silver 5 for the win), maybe a slot blower for good measure and getting the cable clutter out of the way. If you like cooler environments, and you have a fairly tame system, you won't need as much cooling. If you like hot conditions, or you have a lot of high performance parts, you're going to need some extra cooling.
Some people will say "why bother with all of this? Just water cool." Water cooling is a whole different beast, and something I've not ever done, and most people don't water cool for a reason - it can be expensive, and it has a much lower "spork up" tolerance. You can spend as much on air cooling, for certain, but I'm not really fond of water cooling primarily for the fact you can spring a leak or get condensation if done wrong... and the fact that you still have to air cool the water, which means some kind of heat exchanger and reservoir built into the case, or else an external tower with water lines running into the case. Neither is good for my setup since I don't have much room to work with. Done right it can and will get your PC cooler than you can do with air. It certainly does have its uses, and there are plenty of people that swear by it.
Well that's about the best I can recommend for air cooling. Hope the info is useful for you.
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I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
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shambler
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Intresting... I intend to think very carefully about a case, and fit extra fans after this. Update: I have bought a 'CoolerMaster Praetorian 731' for ?54 - 2 fans at front, 2 at back and option to get one at the side. aliminium body. http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=6112or http://www.madshrimps.be/printart.php?articID=294 for a better look. seemed the best deal at the moment. (this is for my new PC. the old one is now running fine, once I can sort out the reason the usb2 PCI card will not run as usb2. small thing really. |
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« Last Edit: 2006-03-29, 17:18 by shambler »
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