Weird issue today

[GreenEnvy]

So my new rig has been running fine for 2 weeks:

C2 Q6600
Asus P5K-Premium
2gb crucial ballistix tracer 1066
Palit 8800gt super 512mb.

OC'd to 3.0ghz (333x9), it's been rock solid and everything is nice and cool.

Installed Vista64 last week, it's been running perfectly since. Also have XP Pro 32 on it.

Today I try to remote in from work like I do frequently, can't get in. I could get into my other PC's so I knew it was just this one. Came home and it's on, but frozen up in Vista. Screen saver is on but frozen.
I rebooted, and a second after the Vista logo appeared, bluescreen and reboot. It happened way to fast to see what the error is. Tried a few more times with the same result.
Booted into XP, it got in OK but programs were crashing like mad. Started prime95 torture test and within a second I saw it say Hardware failure(in prime95), then bluescreen and reboot.

I tried dropping everything to stock settings, still bluescreening. Took out one stick of ram, it booted OK and no errors that I noticed. Switched to the other stick of ram, also ok.
Put both back in, and it still seems OK?

Running prime95 now generates no errors, however while it is running a test, the PC is VERY slow. I know it's normally slow when running a test as it's maxing out the PC, but this is unusually slow. Also, after I stop the test and exit p95, the whole pc is still VERY slow for 30 seconds to a minute after.

Any ideas what might be going on here? Temps are all in the 30's on the CPU, ram is only slightly warm to the touch. I did have it running at 2.25V instead of stock 2.20, but put that back when I restored the normal clock settings.

[ORION]

q6600 run at 1.23v Stock, 1.35v rated max, anything over 1.5v is usually dangerous without sexy sexy cooling.
(Oh wait, you meant DDR2 voltage...)
If you need to know what a BSOD on startup says, press F5/F8 just before it starts loading and select "Disable automatic system restart on failure"
0x024 and 0x08e are usually fixed pretty easily but just google whatever code you get.
My advice: Torrent a copy of Hirens 9.3, Testing Tools -> PC Doctor 2004 -> CPU Test -> Mobo Test -> RAM Test -> HDD Test
It's usually fairly decisive.
GL M8.

EDIT: If your using SATA HDD's PC Doctor takes a while to load btw.

[iheartyou]

possible windows update conflict? if it did indeed update while you were at work... seems odd though either way.

[ORION]

possible windows update conflict? if it did indeed update while you were at work... seems odd though either way.

touché, heard word of one of those last week on IRC @ work. System Restore?

[GreenEnvy]

possible windows update conflict? if it did indeed update while you were at work... seems odd though either way.

I doubt it since WinXP was also acting weird, and it certainly didn't update since I haven't booted into it for a week.

[Sweetlou]

funny u say u comp was frozen like that. My had the same prob on friday i woke up too my radio skiping and i tryed too move my mouse too turn on my screen an it was blank i then reset and i got two BSOD. On the 3rd try too boot it work out now sum things arnt working right but i blame my windows ( XP x64 bit)

[ArchAngel2]

Do you have another set of RAM sticks to try out?

[GreenEnvy]

I could try swapping in another set of slower ram, I'll do that if it happens again. I'll try to speed the system back up tongiht and see if it craps out again or not.

[Slaughter]

That is very odd. I haven't had that issue as I'm running Vista x64 as well and my computer has been running for a few months 24/7 without issue. All updates and such, including SP1!

Perhaps a harddrive issue though?

[ArchAngel2]

That is very odd. I haven't had that issue as I'm running Vista x64 as well and my computer has been running for a few months 24/7 without issue. All updates and such, including SP1!

Perhaps a harddrive issue though?

Does Vista64 run better than Vista32? And better thanXP64 ran?

[Slaughter]

I never tried Vista32.

XP64 I found to be incredibly stable and quite fast. Hard to compare the two but there is a drop in FPS in Vista as opposed to XP64.

Vista64 runs incredibly well to be honest. I don't have any complaints. I'm running Home Premium.

[GreenEnvy]

That is very odd. I haven't had that issue as I'm running Vista x64 as well and my computer has been running for a few months 24/7 without issue. All updates and such, including SP1!

Perhaps a harddrive issue though?

Possible, both XP and Vista are on the same HDD, different partition.
**Auto-merged Double Post**

Does Vista64 run better than Vista32? And better thanXP64 ran?


I so far have found Vista64 more stable and generally quick feeling then Vista32.
I doubt I'll ever intentionally go back to 32bit now. Next time I reinstall windows on my media center, I'll be doing 64, assuming my tuners all have drivers for it.

I have almost zero experience with XP64 though.

[GreenEnvy]

Hmm, came home today to a frozen PC, hit reset button and it rebooted, but BIOS was back to factory settings (asus logo came up, and when I got into windows the mobo's wireless card wanted drivers, it was disabled in bios before).

I'll run the above mentioned test software to see whats acting up.

[ArchAngel2]

Maybe your mobo is toast.

[GreenEnvy]

could be, hope not though this is already the second one.
It was frozen again this morning. I rebooted and again got a message saying BIOS was out of whack.
I used Vista's builtin memory checker and it didn't find any issues. Could be that the mobo is toasty. I'll be running that Hirens CD tonight to see if it finds anything. If it is toast, I need to swap the mobo out before saturday!
**Auto-merged Double Post**
And so it craps out again while RDP'd into it from work.
Swapping in some other ram tonight, if still having issues, then mobo is probably bad.

[GreenEnvy]

Well I still am not sure whats up. Over the last two days it's been freezing up a lot, every couple hours.
Today I pulled all the hardware out and reinstalled. I put the ram back in different slots.
Fired it back together, o/c'd it back to 3ghz.
Ran in XP, it seemed to be fine playing TF2. Hopefully it behaves tommorow for the lan. If not I guess I'll use the supplied systems.

[GreenEnvy]

FYI, it was faulty ram. Swapped out the old sticks with identical ones and everything is cool again.

[ArchAngel2]

I totally win!

:))

I'm glad to hear you got everything sorted out.