My BX2 is not stable...I have tried everything

[22hertz]

I have had this board for about 9 months. I was too busy to build it for the first month, and was in the middle of moving and getting setup for about three months, so have had a total of 5 months to screw with it off and on.

From day one it has crashed everytime I use it. Sometimes it will run for hours, sometimes it crashes within minutes of booting. It just reboots itself.

Is there a known issue, or fix for this? I tried searching and didn't find any stability problems like this.

I have tried everything I can think of to try.
Temps are good, using Seasonic 600W PS, tried plugging it into different outlets-at different houses, tried three different HDD seperately, tried reapplying thermal paste (arctic silver 5) to CPU and Northbridge, reset Bios (removed battery 1 hr), tried updating Bios several times, run Fans max setting with side of case off, bought new Ram (Kingston value)....
I am lost

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

[22hertz]

I guess I should also say I started out with windows 2000pro, reinstalled it three times, then tried Xp, and installed it three times. I have also had Suze on there and the PC will crash with all of them.

[IRQ Conflict]

Specs?

Mine will reboot infrequently. But I think it's the ATI cards not obeying driver commands thats to blame for my problem.

[DMB2000uk]

Well if it is doing it on three different OS's there is definitely a hardware problem somewhere.

The problem is, if it is actually the motherboard, you have to eliminate everything else as being the problem first.

A compilation of utilities to help you diagnose problems is the ultimate boot cd.

You can check for processor stability, hard drive stability, memory stability and maybe one or two other things that I haven't found on there yet. So burn that to a CD and boot off it and run the diagnostics. You should leave memtest86+ running overnight to confirm errors, though if your system is as unstable as you say it is, any errors would show up within a couple of hours (if not instantaneously). When running the cpu prime burn in thing, the screen will go off after a while, hit any key to bring it back on when you are checking how it is doing. The harddrive tests are manufacturer specific, but will tell you if there are any bad sectors or read or write errors (and try and fix them if possible).

Lastly, to ensure that your power supply is working ok, you can grab a multimeter, and measure off the voltages from teh different rails, there is always the remote possibility that the PSU has lower voltages than it should and the lack of power is causing it to error. Though this is rather unlikely.

That should give you the ability to rule out anything as being the problem.

Lastly, your PC is probably BSODing before restarting, so to disable automatic restart after BSOD:

If you haven't changed any of the system failure settings, you should be able to see the error by looking in the Event Log. But a better long-term solution is to turn off the automatic reboot so you can actually see the error when it happens—chances are it will tell you enough about itself to let you troubleshoot further. To change the recovery settings to disable automatic rebooting:

1.Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.

2.Click the Advanced tab.

3.Under Startup and Recovery, click Settings to open the Startup and Recovery dialog box.

4.Clear the Automatically restart check box, and click OK the necessary number of times.

5.Restart your computer for the settings to take effect.

Then make a note of the error codes, and messages, and see if they correlate to any specific component.

Dan

[Pruritus]

If you are into heavey gaming or graphics intensive programs, that MB will insta reboot with that small of a PS.
I wish I could find the article again but I remember it because we sold several of those where I worked and we have a lot of gamers for customers.
The larger PS was a fix that worked.
Hope this helps.

[ibleet]

The larger PS was a fix that worked.
Hope this helps.

As Dan said, it is highly unlikely that the Seasonic PSU is not sufficient, given the fact that it is not defective of course.

[DMB2000uk]

As Dan said, it is highly unlikely that the Seasonic PSU is not sufficient, given the fact that it is not defective of course.

Without full specs, i wouldn't quite rule it out yet, 22hertz could have a million things on their 12v rail that might be killing it, like CC lights, water pumps, quad SLI, physics cards
But yeah, in an average gaming rig (probably discounting sli), then it more than likely is an ok wattage for the rig.

Dan

[Kliggie]

We had the Bx2 for about 6 months (Aug 07-Sept 07)e6700,kingston 667 5,5,5,15)(xp pro)even though we got it working it was real flakey in alot of ways but nothing we could pin down.So we scrapped it and bought the DG33TL and its running perfect.

[22hertz]

I downloaded the UBCD and ran tests.

Here is what I have in the rig:
600W Seasonic PS
EVGA 7600GT
e6600 CPU
Samsung DVD burner (SATA)
Chaintech sound card
Two Seagate 320Gb HDD (SATA)
Two 1Gb Kingston Value RAM modules DDR2 800

Nothing overclocked

I dont game, but I have Halo on the PC to test for stability (in conjunction with tests-real world testing) The game seems to make no difference. In other words the PC will re boot just as quick using or not using the game. Most of the time Im just playing music on Winamp when it just reboots...very non intensive stuff

HDD tested Good (no errors)
RAM tested 48 Hr Good (no errors)
CPU tested (burn in and stress tested) 6 Hr Good (no errors)

Didnt test PSU with DMM but voltages reported by BIOS indicate good

Temps appear to be very good, but I removed and re applied arctic silver 5 to HSF and north bridge heatsink anyway

Everything appears to be OK

Do you really think a good 600W PSU is inadequate?

Re-installed Xp - still unstable.

Where should I go from here?

[Kliggie]

Have you monitored heat on the motherboard controllers.When we ran the 7950gtx in it, it would come up with battery errors.When we put a different video card in, it didn't come up with that error any more so we assumed the 7950 was getting to hot.

[22hertz]

Yes. Temps seems to be OK. I thought about that too, and unless its reporting false values the temps are actually very good.
Also i run the PC with the side of the case off, and I run the fans at max all the time.

[Kliggie]

Have you checked your virtual memory.Are you letting windows handle it.

[22hertz]

I put my paging file on a separate hard drive, and on its own partition on that drive.
Im not that familiar with specifics with a PC, so im not sure if thats what you asked.

However I just checked, and the setting was on (computer managed) (or something like that) in the 'change settings' area...accepted and just restarted.

[DMB2000uk]

Have you checked your virtual memory.Are you letting windows handle it.

Again, with the problem occurring across multiple OS's its definitely hardware and not software.

For your rig, 600w is more than enough power so that isn't the problem, and you've been able to eliminate pretty much everything else, the one thing i don't know if you have tested is the graphics card, is there another one that you can swap it out for?

Try running the system without the soundcard for a while and see if it still BSOD's, also did you manage to change the BSOD setting to not automatically restart so you can now make a note of the error code and its reason (second paragraph is the reason, and the line that might read like "IRQ_not_less_or_equal_to", then the error codes are the ones after the "***STOP" bit).

Dan

[Kliggie]

We used to have problems like that with bad sound card drivers years ago .

[22hertz]

I bought the soundcard a while after the build, and the PC was not stable before, so I assume the soundcard is not at fault.

I did change the BSOD setting and got:
BAD_POOL_CALLER
*** STOP: 0X000000C2 (0X00000007, 0X00000CD4, 0X00000000, 0X895D3FDO)

I have no other video card to try. Is there any way to test the video cards role in this instablility without another to swap with? I will download the latest drivers from nVidia to see if that makes any difference.

[22hertz]

So, is my MB bad, is it software/driver related.
Please Help. Should I RMA my MB?

I hate to send it back if thats not the cause.

[DMB2000uk]

Sorry, I looked into the bad pool caller and must have forgotten to post back.

Basically the bad pool caller errors are typically caused by bad drivers. Which makes me wonder if it is a program and not the board, but the fact that it is flaky on multiple OS's leads me back to suspect that it is in fact the board.

Each time you did a new OS install it was a reformat and install right?

Are all of the BSOD's "bad pool caller" errors or do you get different ones?

QQ, are you using the Marvel Raid controller SATA ports on your board? And have you always had the SATA DVD drive? And lastly which port is the SATA DVD drive plugged into? (the mail intel SATA's or the Marvel SATA).

If possible, disable the marvel sata controller in the BIOS, and see if that makes a difference.

Dan

[22hertz]

Sorry, couldnt get free time to post in a while.

Yes, every BSOD is the bad pool caller.
I have had the SATA DVD drive since the first day. I tried leaving it unplugged...no difference.

Using the black SATA ports, I think those are the Intel ports. No blue ones are used.
Marvel has been diasbled the whole time .
OS HDD on SATA black port 0
data HDD on SATA black port 1
DVD on SATA black port 2

Winamp has been acting real flakey on my PC. Im not sure if that has anything to do with this problem, but thought id throw that out there.

By the way, thinking back, I have this crashing problem everytime I use my PC (W/Windows), but when I had Linux (only for 3 days) I had one crash, but it may have been from a 2 or 3 second voltage drop in my apartment (lights dimmed and electronic devices audibly changed). I cant believe I forgot about that.

When I put another OS on I wipe the drive using Seagate software, then load from scratch.

If this is a driver conflict is there anyway to isolate which one would be the problem?

[Sparky]

If it's a driver conflict it should run fine in safe mode. I would boot in to safe mode just to see if it ran. Reboot and then disable suspect drivers and enable them one at a time and see if you can pin point the problem.