First Timer

[games130]

Hey i am a first timer for building my own system. I finish building it around november i think. Well i am not sure if everything is working fine so is there any software that helps me check my system for hardware errors? Windows load up fine and everything but i just feel like something is wrong. Should i bring it to a pc shop to have them check it out?

Errrr... some problem that makes think why there is a problem:
-time to time laggg when i am watching films
-pc lagggs when i am doing nothing at all or just closing an application
-desktop icons sometimes take quite a while to come out
-hard disk unsual noise

this is my pc config:
AMD Athlon 64 4000 32/64Bit CPU S939 "San Diego" Retail inc Heat Sink Fan & 3 Years Warranty

128Mb Gigabyte PCI-E GF6600GT (NV43 Ultra,1000/500Mhz,128MB DVI,TV Out-SLI,VIVO GV NX66T128VP

250Gb Maxtor Maxline III 24x7 Reliability (7200rpm,16MB) SATA II Features NCQ - Lead (Pb) Free

1Gb 2x512Mb Corsair, DDR400/PC3200,128Mx64, non-ECC, 184 DIMM, unbuffered, CL2.5, Lifetime Warranty

Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe, ATX, DDDR400, PCI-E, 2 x Gbit Lan, USB 2.0, 1394, 8ch Audio, 4 x SATA, Raid 5

480W XClio-SCF aPFC Super Silent (21Db) 12cm Fan 8/20/24 ATX2/2.01 12vEPS + SATA+PCI-E Hi-End

[8bit]

Hi there,

The "hard disk unusual noise" you mentioned makes me wonder about obviously the hard disk for a start. Has it always done that since you finished building the machine or has it only started recently?

Check www.nvidia.com for the latest ForceWare drivers for your motherboard and graphics card. The motherboard driver set will have drivers for the NVidia storage controller to which your hard disk(s) are most likely attached and the current graphics card driver could be causing the general screen-freeze you describe.

Make sure you've got all the different cables from your power supply in as well. Some motherboards will start with just the 24-pin cable attached but not perform properly if another cable has been missed out. Make sure you haven't got all your hard disk and optical drives and a load of other stuff daisy-chained on one cable. If your PSU has a switch to select whether the 12v rail is split in two or combined, try combined (if it isn't set there already), my rig won't run stable with mine in split mode, I have to combine the rails. Switch usually on the back beside the power socket.

If this is something that you've noticed happening gradually over the last few weeks or so, it might be time to run defrag on Windows, uninstall some old programs etc or even back up all your data and do a complete reinstall of Windows. If you have a spare hard disk, you could swap the current one for the spare and just do a quick install of Windows onto that (with all latest drivers etc). If you're still getting problems with a correctly set up, clean install then I'd say you've got hardware problems.

See how you get on with that lot good luck!
8bit

[icq3800846]

I would be tempted to run scandisk to start with, and tick all the options so it performs a check for bad sectors. You can watch it do the test. With a 250 gig hard drive it is quite interesting and you should make a cup of tea for when you do it.

Then make another cup of tea, then give up watching it, then go for a bath, walk the dog, go to bed, go to work and when you come home the next day it shoudl have finished.

OK, so it doesn't really take that long, but it seems like it when you sit there watching.

I would also be tempted to run a full virus scan and a full spyware scan using the latest downloaded definitions, just for good practice, as a PC heavily infected with Spyware can do some strange things.

Once this is done, you might feel like downloading SiSoft Sandra which is free for personal use, and try running some of the benchmarking and testing modules to see if you can identify any particular aspect of your computer which is abnormally slow and indicative of a problem.

[games130]

thanks for the reply. My hard disk started making sounds after a few weeks of installation. I just ran a disk check. I got the software from Maxtor website. Its the Maxtor PowerMax 4.21 Well did this "Burn in test" From the description it says that it will take up to 30minute for each 'cycle'(forgot what the real word says) Well i set it to 30 before i went to bed. After 21 hours of it running its still not finish and i had to abort the remaining cycle. After counting the time taken by each cycle i found that they take rougly 78minutes... Have anyone one of you used this before? Is it supose to take that long or is something wrong with the hard disk which makes it slow?

[mfurse]

There are issues with the NF4 and Maxtor drives running at SATAII, think Maxtor have a "firmware" fix for the drive, i.e. the small bit of software that runs the drive. You can see the issue here.

Its also worth disabling NCQ by going to system properties > hardware > right clicking the drive > properties > UNTICK command queuing.

It actually makes most single-user's drive performance decrease by having NCQ enabled.

The other thing if neither those issues fix it is to see if there is a "jumper" (the little bits of plastic that you slide over two pins on the back of the actual drive) to force the drive to SATAI instead of II - this helps with Western Digital drives.

If you have problems I would suggest contacting Maxtor they have been helpful to many people who have posted issues on the web.

Matt

[games130]

Ahhhh.. i did not know that there was an issue with NF4 and Maxtor drives :S Well i just finish the sandra burn in test for 20 runs. Had a problem with one of the test though. Its the Physical Disk test. I can't get the write part of the test to work.. the is an error "Disk must be empty to be write benchmarked for security"

Well my hard drive is acutally SATA I i think it only have SATA II features. mfurse the link that you put.. i don;t seem to experience any of those problem so a firmware update is not necessary i guess.

Since i am using SATA for my hard disk right... can i plug my cd and dvd roms into the primary IDE or do i have to use the secondary IDE? is there any difference at all?

[Koolpc]

Your problem is a faulty hard drive mate. Get a new and RMA that one.

[mfurse]

Your eide channels are seperate to your SATA ports - it doesn't matter what port the CD-drives get put on...but if it actually installed windows and can read files off the disk but is failing burn in checks the odds are the drive may be faulty like Koolpc says.

Sometimes random drive behaviour can be part of another conflict i.e. had a problem with some WD400JD 40Gb SATA drives when they switched to SATA1.5 connections...VIA and some SIS chipsets wouldn't see the drives and the newer SIS chipsets had abismal performance. Jumpered the drive to force SATA1 and presto! worked fine on all the platforms....

If you can get the 'maxblast' utility that runs off a floppy disk and boot to it, run the tests and see if it gives you an error code. If it does then your drive is likely faulty and Maxtor will accept the drive as a rma with that error code.

I have also had a case where I kept getting faulty drives got error codes everytime and kept sending drives back to maxtor before realising the powersupply unit was undervolting massively and that was causing the errors...changed the PSU and the drive worked fine also.

Its not always just a faulty drive is the moral of the story! I would tell Maxtor what you have done, the symptoms and details of your rig and see if they can help any. If they draw a blank or don't come back to you then I would send the drive back to your retailer if its fairly new, or maxtor under warranty if its not.

Matt

[games130]

okie yesterday i open up my pc and tried to make it into SATA I but unfortunately there is no jumper settings for me to set. I guess its already at SATA I since the transfer speed is only 150.

As for my PSU there is no switch to choose whetherthe 12v rail is split in two or combined.

I was wondering... does the case makes sound? you know there are two lights rite. 1 indicating the power and the other for the hard disk i think. It was noisier when the hard disk light was blinking like hell

I ran the MaxBlast diagnostic before but was unable to complete it as it took such a long time. I will put it for another test but this time less cycles.

[Koolpc]

Have you tried a differnt Hard Drive?

As i posted above, i am sure your Hard Drive is Knackered! Try a different one.

[games130]

nope i haven't try a different hard drive... I will RMA it as soon as i find a decent price for shipping it. This is my only hard disk so i cannot just get it RMA. If i do then i got no pc to use for a few days. I saw that manufacture website offer to send me a new hard disk first so that is a very good option However i have to send the faulty hard disk to ireland. I chekc a few delivery service like dhl and tnt but they cost wayyyy too much.. more than the price of my hard disk. I am going to check with royal mail.

I think i also found some of the main cause of my slow pc.. apparent my anti virus is slowing it down. I only notice it wheni try to install something today. I am not sure what the anti virus does but the installing stop and all the CPU usage gets eaten by the anti virus.. i think it is trying to scan all the files or something. :S

[games130]

yeah.... getting my replacement hard disk soon. Well i made the RMA from maxtor already.. hope they will ship me the replacement soon. and this time i hope it solves all the problems.