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Certif1ed View Drop Down
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Points: 7559 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2006 at 03:43
Originally posted by Tony R Tony R wrote:

@Cert, re:

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t19530.html

a lot of talk about power supply overload...

    

Indeed - and you'll note that this was NOT the issue in ANY case - it rarely is. One poster reported issues with a brand new super-duper high power PSU.

Whenever anything goes wrong, it seems, someone will cry "Not enough power!!!".

In most cases, this is utter baloney - it's something in software either misbehaving or fighting for CPU time with something else.

I've been down that route many times, and I have a super-duper high power PSU that I keep in its box primarily to test for low power issues. I've yet to see one - when I switch to the high power unit, the issues always remain and I have to explore a different path. Troubleshooting is an inexact science - more like an art!


Since you only identified a single process, it's most likely that the issue is caused by something trying over and over to perform a particular function.

To find out exactly what is it, you can run Process Explorer from http://www.sysinternals.com, which will give you a tree view of processes and the executables and dynamic link libraries that they are calling.

Trouble is, unless the issue is immediately obvious and/or you're a trained software troubleshooter, it won't be immediately obvious what to do about it - but it will give the heavy clue that something in the software is doing something it shouldn't - so we can fairly safely blame the software.

To get the best idea of what's going wrong - note we can only really be vague and fluffy at this point, and everything that any computer expert can say will be a guess - because in all likelihood your system already has tons of software on it, and we can't identify with any precision what is causing DVDs to stop playing and CPU usage to go up.


Therefore, the *best* way to troubleshoot would be to try it on a clean system - if you've got a spare hard disk drive then you can perform this test quite easily - rather than wipe your existing system (NOT recommended!).

If you haven't got a spare, then you can get "small" ones cheaply - http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=88999 (This link is to a 120Gb drive!). I'm very keen on Western Digital and Maxtor drives, as I've yet to see one actually fail, unlike Seagate or IBM models, which, in my experience at least, frequently build up bad blocks and eventually keel over. There's always a first time, of course...


The procedure is:

1. Open up the case.
2. Find somewhere to install the "small" test drive.
3. Disconnect your existing drive.
4. Connect your test disk to the same connections as your main one.
5. Install Windows and the graphics card software, then your DVD playing software - hey presto, *clean* test machine on which you can try to replicate the issue.

*Fluffy Steps*
6. Troubleshoot issue as far as you can.
7. Decide what to do.
8. Disconnect test disk.
9. Reconnect original disk and perform fixes.


I hope this helps - it'll certainly keep you out of mischief
    

Edited by Certif1ed - November 13 2006 at 03:46
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Points: 7559 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2006 at 03:52
Here's a quick question to my fellow l337 h4X0rZ;

I installed a motherboard, CPU, RAM, GFX card, HDD and DVD writer into a case, with a 400W PSU.

The motherboard is an NVidia 6100S based AM2 board, the CPU is AM2, the RAM is Corsair TwinX DDR2 arranged for Dual channel operation, the GFX card is an NVidia 7300GT model, and the HDD is a 250GB SATA II 3.0Gb/sec job.

When I switch the machine on, all the fans spin up, but nothing appears on the monitor.

The monitor is a nice LCD screen that works fine with all other PCs in my house.


What could be the issue?

All parts are brand new!
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Tony R View Drop Down
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Points: 11979 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2006 at 10:14
Thanks Cert.
I used Plan B and took the card back and said I bought the wrong thing.


Lovable Scan gave me a full refund!!


I am going to upgrade my PC....
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Points: 21149 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2006 at 11:18
^ today I checked various stores and saw that currently there's only one real fast hard disk - Western Digital Raptor, 150GB, 16MB cache, 5ms, 10,000 rpm, for 200€.

As much as I also want to upgrade my PC just now, I will wait until the whole christmas hype is over.Cool
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Points: 11979 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2006 at 11:22
Me too! I will wait for Vista in Feb and if my CPU fries in the meantime,then I am no different position..

What about Cert's question???
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Points: 21149 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2006 at 11:24
It's very difficult to say. If the fans spin up, the mainboard is working to some extent ... next step would be to see if the mainboard shows any error code. Some mainboards beep different patterns which are described in the manual ... newer ones have a set of LEDs (usually 4) which show a code. From this code you can tell at which stage of the initialisation the error occurs ... CPU, memory, AGP/PCI-Express, etc.
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Points: 7559 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2006 at 17:43
It doesn't POST; there are no beeps (yes, the speaker is connected), and the board has no LEDs on it at all - which is quite unusual for a modern motherboard.
    

Edited by Certif1ed - November 14 2006 at 02:33
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Points: 21149 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 14 2006 at 03:14
^ usually the LEDs are not on the mainboard itself - in my case (Gigabyte 939 board) they're on the auxilary USB panel.
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Points: 7559 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 14 2006 at 04:43
Originally posted by MikeEnRegalia MikeEnRegalia wrote:

^ usually the LEDs are not on the mainboard itself - in my case (Gigabyte 939 board) they're on the auxilary USB panel.

    
It depends on the manufacturer - ASUS boards have a single LED and some ABit boards have an LED display that shows a 2-digit number on the mainboard. These are great for troubleshooting, as the numbers are listed in the manuals and can easily be cross-referred.

MSI have an optional back plate with 4 LEDs that can be used for troubleshooting - the board I have here is a Gigabyte, but there are no extras with it, or LEDs on the board, optional back plates or anything... the only light that appears is the power light.

The HDD, DVD and keyboard lights do not come on - as one would expect from a machine that does not complete its POST.

Given a choice, I would have picked an MSI board.
    
    

Edited by Certif1ed - November 14 2006 at 04:46
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