Motherboard or PSU problem

I recently upgraded my system to a better CPU and more ram, and also replaced my OS drive with an SSD. One of the reasons I did this was because my BIOS was sometimes, increasingly more often, not detecting my OS drive which was a regular HDD.

Since upgrading everything was running smoothly until today when BIOS was again not detecting my drive, but this time it wasn't detecting any drive at all (all SATA). I powered down and restarted a few times until it detected the drives and then went on to boot Windows 7. Then after a while it blue screened and restarted again, once more not detecting the drives. If I would try to, for example, go in to task manager the same thing would happen.

So I tried removing my ram, only this time the computer wouldn't power on at all. It seemed completely dead. I replaced the ram and removed my second hard drive to try and get at the cables that connect the power button to the motherboard and then tried booting without the second hard drive connected. It booted up fine and I could enter task manager, but then after a while it crashed, blue screened and restarted, not detecting the drives again.

Anyone have any idea what's going on here? It's really weird. Is my motherboard on the way out? Or is the PSU not supplying enough power/on the way out? The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R and about 5 years old. The PSU is a Corsair 550W and the same age.

System is:

Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R
Intel Core2Extreme Q6800
6GB ram
Nvidia 8600GT
Corsair VX550W 550 Watt PSU
128GB OCZ Octane 2 SSD
WD 500GB HDD
Windows 7 Pro

Thanks very much.

 

Thanks very much.

I think I updated to the latest BIOS before I installed Win 7, which was the same time as I upgraded to SSD. I could be mistaken though so I'll check now. I'm a little apprehensive about messing with the BIOS while my computer is crashing and blue screening... at least from within the OS from an exe.

I think I haven't installed the latest chipset and SATA drivers actually so I'll do that.

The thing is, this had been happening for a while with XP (before I upgraded to Win7), but it never blue screened. Which is why I thought it was an issue with the OS drive and hence why I bought a new SSD. Often the OS drive wouldn't be detected but as soon as it was detected it would boot to Windows and would operate normally.

Unfortunately I don't have a spare PSU to test if that's the culprit... Something weird did happen though; after I shut down a while ago the computer wouldn't power on at all. It seemed completely dead. I removed my second HDD and then it did power on, though after a while it crashed/froze, quickly blue screened and restarted.

I'll report back once I've installed the latest drivers...

Thanks again.

 

I installed the latest drivers and the same thing is happening. In fact, I had a lot of trouble even getting the drivers installed. It seems like after a few minutes of operation the computer totally freezes. In the middle of installing it will become unresponsive and when I try to open task manager the screen goes black. The mouse is still active but all else has disappeared. No BSOD now, just blackness.

Very strange altogether...

 

Ok.

So I looked in the BIOS and saw that the drives were running in IDE mode instead of AHCI. So I went ahead and changed the relevant registry item and then changed the BIOS settings to AHCI. I also updated to the latest BIOS using QFlash (I was on F8, the latest is F9a).

Everything seems to be behaving a lot better now. The POST screen is different now (being AHCI) and so far the one drive (SSD) I have connected has been detected every time. I've also successfully updated the SATA drivers.

There have been no hangs, freezes or crashes so fingers crossed that this has fixed it.

It's still strange though. The problem had gotten progressively worse while I was running XP up until I swapped out my OS drive and installed Win7. In fact, there was no problem under XP until about a year ago and then it started happening. Then when I installed Win7 it was fine up until today (about two weeks). I would have imagined that either the problem would have persisted or gone away completely, but instead it went away for a while and then came back with a vengeance.

Do you reckon it was the AHCI not being set that caused it?

Maybe I'm not out of the woods yet, I guess. I'll have to wait and see.

 

Thanks a lot for your help.

I'm running without a swap file right now, so I don't have any minidumps for analysis unfortunately.

The more I think about it, the more I believe it was that BIOS setting. I've got an inkling that the problem started occurring after I updated my chipset and SATA drivers when I was running XP, and I think at that time I updated the BIOS too. It seems to make sense anyway. I've been using SATA drives the whole time so maybe there was an incompatibility due to me not having it set to AHCI. Plus, at POST it was searching for IDE drives and failing to find them on occasion. Now that it's set to AHCI there's a different POST and it's worked every time so far. So it seems to be working alright.

Hopefully!

I suppose I'll just have to wait and see what happens over the next few days. Thanks for your input anyway, it was a great help.

 

You guys have worked through the problem and have things working again.

One thought is that when I see a five year old motherboard and problems with BIOS recognizing things is that a fresh CMOS battery might be a simple, cheap thing to replace to eliminate a weak battery causing problems.

Your changes in BIOS settings have set things right, but I'm wondering if when you shutdown if you completely cut power? Maybe some settings are being lost during that time and BIOS has to work harder to get things running again? If you haven't changed the CR2032 battery since the board was new I would replace it.

 

Thanks. Yeah, maybe I could do with replacing the battery.

Now that I think of it, there was the strange occurrence that time when I shut down, and then there was no power at all going to the system until I removed my second HDD. As in, it wouldn't start up at all, it seemed completely dead. That is kinda haunting me right now and making me think that my troubles might not be over quite yet.

Usually when I shut down the PSU is still powered on, I don't turn it off. Is that what you mean by totally cutting power?

 

Yes, when the computer is still plugged in it gets some AC power which keeps it from relying totally on the CMOS battery to retain settings. For most motherboards a bad CMOS battery is not a problem but I have had a few computers where instead of losing track of a few settings like date/time they wont even start with a bad battery. This is mostly after several months in storage. I don't know that your problems were related to a weak battery, they probably were not, but five years is the life of a battery and they are cheap to replace. I was only suggesting that you replace it to eliminate that possibility since in some computers a bad battery can mimic a PSU problem with absolutely nothing happening when you hit the power button.

Keep it in mind as a troubleshooting step if you have future problems. The ACHI change seems to have worked fine, so it was just a thought.

 

Well, a much appreciated thought it was! I'll definitely pick up a new battery.