Nomad of Norad
Extraordinary Member
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2009
- Messages
- 209
- Thread Author
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- #1
One week ago, my machine spontaneously started misbehaving, after having no problems for more than a year and a half. I was using a MSI K9A2 Neo motherboard, AMD Phenom II X4 920 CPU, with a fairly beefy power supply and lots of ram. I am on Win7 Ultimate 64 bit. I have progressed through multiple betas, the RC, and eventually purchased the full release version. I started out using an ASUS EN6200LE PCI-E display card, but about 6 months ago replaced it with a GeForce GT240 1GB DDR3 PCI-E 2.0 display card, and it ran without a hitch for months. I switched because I spend a lot of time on places like Second Life, and someone I knew on there recommended this card. The SL viewer programs complain the card isn't good enough, but it runs great.
Well, last Wednesday, I logged into SL, and was there only a few moments when the viewer suddenly disappeared out from under me. Just, BOOM! Gone. I logged back in, was in there a few minutes, and the whole computer display suddenly went dark. I thought it was the screensaver inixplicably switching in.... but no amount of mouse waggling would bring it out. Unfortunately, the ones who put my machine together goofed up and failed to connect the drive-activity light, so I couldn't look to see if there was activity.... but after several moments of no response, I finally powered the machine off and back on.
Fairly soon I got errors at startup, before the OS had loaded, with the mobo claiming there was a failed overclock attempt. After multiple restarts, I could not get this error to go away. And no, I did not attempt any kind of adjustments to the CPU.
I also started getting more and more bluescreens, at startup, during operation, during windows repair at startup... sometimes the sort where it states it had detected a problem activity and shut the machine off to protect it.
I described the problem to an acquantance who used to teach computer repair and used to run a computer repair place. He suggested it was likely a problem with the mobo, perhaps the capacitors going bad. The next day, I bought the machine to him and... he couldn't find any sign of bad capacitors. On the other hand, he could not get it to display anything on the monitor there, and couldn't hear any POST beeps, but the machine was clearly turning on (the fans were coming on, and stuff).
Anyway, long story short, I rushed out and got a replacement mobo, there were only 2 makes on hand at CompUSA that would support the old AM2+ CPUs, so I grabbed the ASUS M2N68-AM PLUS mobo, brought it back, and we switched it out, transferred the CPU over.... and at powerup it popped up a warning that this CPU was not supported. He was like "That's nonsense, it should support all CPUs of this family or none of them. The CPU must be bad." He figured the CPU had gotten damaged enough that it was misreporting itself to the mobo. He HAD noticed that the CPU fan was all gummed up and wasn't turning very well, or at all (I'm not sure which it was), so it seemed likely the thing had overheated and croaked.
On the other hand, upon placing the new mobo in, he noticed there was NO speaker inside the machine.... so, nothing that would have produced the POST beeps. He grabbed one from another machine and installed it. Then we saw the error about the CPU not being supported, and he decided it was probably knackered. He also states that often, if the CPU is bad, it takes the mobo with it, so to be on the safe side he usually replaced both. oO
Anyway, I ordered another of the exact same CPU (AMD Phenom II X4 920, remember), but it didn't arrive until Monday. He has been out of town this week, so I haven't been able to get back to him... however, when I inserted the new CPU into the mobo, it gave the exact same this-CPU-is-not-supported message, telling me to go to their website and look up the list of supported CPUs. I finally did, and discovered that, in fact, this exact CPU was not supported.
I was trying to find out a source for another mobo that could take the place of this one and let me use all the existing componants (ram, display, CPU, etc)... but finally just said, "Oh screw it!" and grabbed a different CPU that WAS on the supported list for that mobo, because I was going totally stir crazy watching the time slip away from me without the machine to be back up and running, so I grabbed an AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition Dual Core Processor AD785ZWCJ2BGH, brought it home and installed it.
First power up, it claimed failed overcloaking, even tho all I did was insert the CPU, my guess it was complaining because it saw the CPU response had changed... but I restarted it again, leting the BIOS go to default, and it didn't claim that again.
Windows then wanted to do its restore, but after multiple attempts at it, it couldn't complete it. So I reinstalled Win7, and spent the next few hours reinstalling various software packages.... got back onto SL, and onto one of the OpenSim virtual worlds I spend a lot of time on, and was on there a number of hours without technical issues. I even got an account on another OpenSim world and hung out there awhile.
I then powered down and went to bed. Before it completed shutdown, it did some Windows updates and stuff.
Today, I turned the machine back on... walked away... came back to find that Windows had locked up on startup. It was stuck at the splash screen where it shows the colored dots coming together to form the Windows 7 logo. I powered it off and back on, and it locked up again at a different point in the startup. And then at one point it bluescreened.
And now it bluescreens frequently. Sometimes during repair, sometimes when I have been logged into SL for a few moments. Sometimes just went websurfing. Sometimes the sort where it states it saw something bad happening and shut the things off to protect it.
This is driving me bananas. It is now clear there was probably nothing wrong with the previous mobo or CPU. I have attached several minidumps in a zip file. Windows has done some more updates since these earlier today, but it is still giving some problems. I really hope someone can help me here.
Addendum: have added the info from msinfo32.
Well, last Wednesday, I logged into SL, and was there only a few moments when the viewer suddenly disappeared out from under me. Just, BOOM! Gone. I logged back in, was in there a few minutes, and the whole computer display suddenly went dark. I thought it was the screensaver inixplicably switching in.... but no amount of mouse waggling would bring it out. Unfortunately, the ones who put my machine together goofed up and failed to connect the drive-activity light, so I couldn't look to see if there was activity.... but after several moments of no response, I finally powered the machine off and back on.
Fairly soon I got errors at startup, before the OS had loaded, with the mobo claiming there was a failed overclock attempt. After multiple restarts, I could not get this error to go away. And no, I did not attempt any kind of adjustments to the CPU.
I also started getting more and more bluescreens, at startup, during operation, during windows repair at startup... sometimes the sort where it states it had detected a problem activity and shut the machine off to protect it.
I described the problem to an acquantance who used to teach computer repair and used to run a computer repair place. He suggested it was likely a problem with the mobo, perhaps the capacitors going bad. The next day, I bought the machine to him and... he couldn't find any sign of bad capacitors. On the other hand, he could not get it to display anything on the monitor there, and couldn't hear any POST beeps, but the machine was clearly turning on (the fans were coming on, and stuff).
Anyway, long story short, I rushed out and got a replacement mobo, there were only 2 makes on hand at CompUSA that would support the old AM2+ CPUs, so I grabbed the ASUS M2N68-AM PLUS mobo, brought it back, and we switched it out, transferred the CPU over.... and at powerup it popped up a warning that this CPU was not supported. He was like "That's nonsense, it should support all CPUs of this family or none of them. The CPU must be bad." He figured the CPU had gotten damaged enough that it was misreporting itself to the mobo. He HAD noticed that the CPU fan was all gummed up and wasn't turning very well, or at all (I'm not sure which it was), so it seemed likely the thing had overheated and croaked.
On the other hand, upon placing the new mobo in, he noticed there was NO speaker inside the machine.... so, nothing that would have produced the POST beeps. He grabbed one from another machine and installed it. Then we saw the error about the CPU not being supported, and he decided it was probably knackered. He also states that often, if the CPU is bad, it takes the mobo with it, so to be on the safe side he usually replaced both. oO
Anyway, I ordered another of the exact same CPU (AMD Phenom II X4 920, remember), but it didn't arrive until Monday. He has been out of town this week, so I haven't been able to get back to him... however, when I inserted the new CPU into the mobo, it gave the exact same this-CPU-is-not-supported message, telling me to go to their website and look up the list of supported CPUs. I finally did, and discovered that, in fact, this exact CPU was not supported.
I was trying to find out a source for another mobo that could take the place of this one and let me use all the existing componants (ram, display, CPU, etc)... but finally just said, "Oh screw it!" and grabbed a different CPU that WAS on the supported list for that mobo, because I was going totally stir crazy watching the time slip away from me without the machine to be back up and running, so I grabbed an AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition Dual Core Processor AD785ZWCJ2BGH, brought it home and installed it.
First power up, it claimed failed overcloaking, even tho all I did was insert the CPU, my guess it was complaining because it saw the CPU response had changed... but I restarted it again, leting the BIOS go to default, and it didn't claim that again.
Windows then wanted to do its restore, but after multiple attempts at it, it couldn't complete it. So I reinstalled Win7, and spent the next few hours reinstalling various software packages.... got back onto SL, and onto one of the OpenSim virtual worlds I spend a lot of time on, and was on there a number of hours without technical issues. I even got an account on another OpenSim world and hung out there awhile.
I then powered down and went to bed. Before it completed shutdown, it did some Windows updates and stuff.
Today, I turned the machine back on... walked away... came back to find that Windows had locked up on startup. It was stuck at the splash screen where it shows the colored dots coming together to form the Windows 7 logo. I powered it off and back on, and it locked up again at a different point in the startup. And then at one point it bluescreened.
And now it bluescreens frequently. Sometimes during repair, sometimes when I have been logged into SL for a few moments. Sometimes just went websurfing. Sometimes the sort where it states it saw something bad happening and shut the things off to protect it.
This is driving me bananas. It is now clear there was probably nothing wrong with the previous mobo or CPU. I have attached several minidumps in a zip file. Windows has done some more updates since these earlier today, but it is still giving some problems. I really hope someone can help me here.
Addendum: have added the info from msinfo32.
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