PC has Pregnant Pauses!

[Methanoid]

My PC is driving me nuts. Sorry if I cannot be specific as to what the problem is but I'll describe and indicate what I have checked and hopefully someone has a clue.

Problem:

The machine pauses for anything up to 10 seconds and then (normally) returns to life. During the pause nothing responds. Occasionally you can get a beep if you have press the Mouse button too many times. Occasionally it just barfs and reboots.

Spec:

Gigabyte DS3 mobo
2 x 1Gb Corsair PC800 DDR-2
C2D 2.13ghz (used to clock to 3.2 but not since machine flakey)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 (I think from memory)
3 x 500Gb Samsung HDs, cooled by 120mm fan on intake
120mm exhaust

Checked:

Temp on CPU (40C)
Case Temp (35C max)
OS - re-installed XP
Mem - ran Memtest for 30 mins (several instances to fully load all the mem)
Power Saving - none enabled in XP
God - prayed regular



I'm thoroughly pissed orf with the machine right now and look loving at my 2nd machine, Opty 146 which never barfs at all but just is slower!

Any help earns lots of virtual brownie points...

Thanks guys/gals.

[alsenior]

try running memtest86 from cd boot. it will be able to test all of the ram better also leave it for around a day or so so it has run lots of runs. also make sue all of your drivers are up to date.

[Methanoid]

Thanks, my drivers are current. I have not tried Memtest from CD which I will but I may have found something. The CPU cooler isnt mounted brilliantly and when I took off to reseat I couldnt get it back tight to my liking (so ordered a new HS/F)

My temps never got above 63 even under Prime and it never throttled. Also when Intels TAT reported 55C temps the BIOS said 37C... confusing as hell.

Anyway, new cooler on way arriving tomorrow...

[pands@scan]

I had this problem a few years back, turned out being my board was giving the wrong memory timings automatically, i set them manually and I had no issues

[directhex]

check the windows event log

i had this with a dodgy IDE controller

[Kumagoro]

Have you tried only attaching one HDD? mine seems to spin up the second drive sometimes and it freezes the computer.

Seeing as the HDD are so quiet you may not even notice.

[timread]

Similar to the above posts - have you got those drives in a RAID config? Is the pagefile on a separate partition from the system partition?

Could be like Kumagoro suggests, that at least one of the drives is spinning down prematurely.

[Methanoid]

check the windows event log

i had this with a dodgy IDE controller

errrr how do I do that pls?

[TiG]

Start\Programs\Administrative Tools\Event Log.

or via Control panel, Administrative tools, event log.

TiG

[Hottentot]

I'd put my money on hard drive problem, pretty sure there is a utility (from Samsung) you can run to check the drives indvidually.

http://www.samsung.com/Products/Hard...ties/hutil.htm

[Methanoid]

Well, the result was the mobo was faulty.

I bought a new GA-G33M-DS2R and all components transferred fine and worked perfectly in that. I then moved all components back to the GA-965P-DS3 which by this time decided to stop even bleeping or even provide a video signal although it still powered fans etc.

Its dead as dodo so been RMA'd to Scan. Hopefully won't take too long to replace.

[Methanoid]

Well surprisingly the mobo tested "No Fault Found" Unbelievable!