My friend built himself a computer a while ago, and has never been able to enjoy it fully due to a strange issue that he's been having. I don't remember the exact specs, but here is the gist: Q6600 (the good stepping) MSI P6N Diamond 680i 2900XT Corsair XMS 2x2GB DDR2-800 Some Seagate 500gb HDD Corsair 520HX Antec 900 WinXP MCE The PC basically began to start stuttering for about ten seconds at a time, once every few minutes while mosts applications are running, and then started freezing upon logon, then stopped booting completely. He reinstalled Windows, which fixed the problem for a few days, and he bought new RAM, which also temporarily fixed the problem.. I went to his house last night with my computer, and swapped the RAM and video card, and it let him log in perfectly fine. He started up Oblivion, and within a few minutes the stuttering started again. What could be the problem? I'm going over again tonight, and will probably swap the hard drive out and install Win7 (the only OS I have on hand). If that doesn't work, I have no clue what could be wrong, nothing is overheating..
He hasn't overclocked it or anything has he? Despite heat, if the voltage is going too high (or low) then it may be running into issues and causing the lock ups. Alternately, bad drivers could be causing it or there might just be a fault in the firmware. Try checking if there is a BIOS update for the board. There may be something wrong with the motherboard as well. Without more information or being able to see it in action myself I really couldn't say for sure. I say try and get a new BIOS flash on it if there is one, and then go ahead and try that WIndows 7 install. For the board you quoted, the downloads for the new BIOS firmware flashes are here: http://tinyurl.com/mpx76e If you run into any Windows 7 specific issues you can check on the technet forum section for the official Windows 7 RC Support Forum located here http://tinyurl.com/9fhdl5 . Let us know here if it changes any.
First thing i would do is run a full diagnostic on the motherboard. Check the manufacturers website and see if they have a diagnostic disk download. Also do a full diagnostic on the hard drive if possible.
We already tried running the hard drive diagnostic provided by Seagate, it said nothing was wrong. What other info could be helpful? I'll be happy to provide.. I'll stop by his house again tonight, and will try out Win7 and possibly a BIOS flash.
How old is this seagate hard drive? I ask because i had a serious issue with a pc i built for my GF's family. It would stutter, lockup, Bluescreen, randomly corrupt the windows install etc. Turns out the drive was affected by a bad set of firmware. Worse still, the serial number of the drive could not be read so it took me ages to register the drive on seagates firmware upgrade supply plan. In the end i added seagate to my list of manufacturers i will not buy hardware from again and returned it for a western digital drive. See here: http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931&NewLang=en it is a known issue and quite common on baracuda (sp) 7200.11 drives.
680i.. his mcp (southbridge) is probably overheating.. go in the bios and see how hot it's running with the case closed- it should be in the 50s if it's normal other thing like rans suggested is the hd.. could be failing- test em both out if possible (prime and chkdsk)
Turns out the drive is actually a Western Digital. :-/ Probably there was a similar problem, I didn't end up going to his house today, I will this weekend. To do: -Check NB temps -HDD firmware -Flash mobo
