Problem with a White Cobra

[John W]

Hi guys I purchase a White Cobra system from 3XS just over a year ago and in general have been very pleased with the system speed and stability.

For reference Invoice Number was 01377315

I have recently updated the operating system from the original XP Pro to Vista Ultimate and now I have what appears to be a hardware issue. I have ensured that all drivers are up to date and working.

The problem occurs after the PC has been running for some time it appears to freeze, the screen stops updating, there appears to be no HDD activity. Then after approximately 30-60 seconds the screen updated and the HDD lights flicked for a fraction of a second before freezing again.

The only way I have found of exiting this condition is to turn the power off then back on again at which point the PC will work again until it freezes again. The time it takes to freeze is variable and does not appear to be related to the applications I run it varies form as low as 20 minutes up to 4-5 hours.

Windows reports that there may be a problem with either the CPU, Motherboard or memory and has reported a problem with the GFX drivers.

To try and diagnose the problem I have run the nVidia monitor software and kept an eye on the CPU temps and GFX temp and these all seem to be stable with no wild variation.

Any help or advice would be welcome as to what I should look at to try and fix the problem as this is now starting to get very annoying.

John Walter

[Ben @ Scan]

Hi John

Sorry to hear you are having issues with the Cobra system, was it all working fine in XP?

Can you confirm if its Vista 64 or 32 Bit you are using ?

You can check the Memory using Memtest www.memtest.org

The CPU can be tested using Prime95 http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=103

CPU Temperatures and VGA temperatures can be monitored using Real Temp http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/

Make sure you have no conflicts in device manager and that all the drivers are installed and are the appropriate 32 or 64 bit depending on your Windows Vista Version

Regards

Ben

[John W]

Ben thanks for the quick response.

The system was OK in XP. I did have some issues but these I put down to software problems (single apps crashing) I never had a similar problem to the one I now have.

I installed Vista 32bit still need to have this due to some very old development systems I still use for work and they do not run in a 64bit environment.

I will try all the tests tonight and let you know the outcome.

As far as I am aware there are no conflicts and yes all drivers have been updated for Vista 32bit.

John

[John W]

Update after running the test suggested.

1. Memtest reported no problems

2. Real Temp showed the CPUs running at idle all about 30 Deg C and when running Prime95 a max of about 46 Deg C on one of the processors.

3. Prime95 reported an error very quickly on CPU #0

[Jul 14 22:14] Worker starting
[Jul 14 22:14] Setting affinity to run worker on logical CPU #0
[Jul 14 22:14] Beginning a continuous self-test to check your computer.
[Jul 14 22:14] Please read stress.txt. Choose Test/Stop to end this test.
[Jul 14 22:14] Test 1, 4000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M19922945 using FFT length 1024K.
[Jul 14 22:14] FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
[Jul 14 22:14] Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.
[Jul 14 22:14] Torture Test ran 0 minutes - 1 errors, 0 warnings.
[Jul 14 22:14] Worker stopped.

This error was repeated on every attempt to run the test on that CPU.

The other CPUs ran the test with no reported error.

I have also run 3DMark Vantage to test the GPUs and this test completed without error.

I presume that this indicates that I have a problem with the CPU and should consider replacing it. If this is what you recommend then would I be best served by replacing with an identical CPU or would an alternative be a better solution if so what would you recomend?

John

[Ben @ Scan]

Hi John

The Test failure could be due to Ram or the overclock settings, have you tried running Prime95 with the non overclocked profile loaded?

Regards

Ben

[John W]

Hi Ben,

I did not know there was a non overclocked profile. How do I load it so that I can test and then how do I load the overclocked profile?

John

[Ben @ Scan]

Hi

Our 3XS Systems using the Asus boards that are overclocked have a profle for the standard and the overclocked settings in the bios, to access this please do the following.

Restart the system and Tap Del to enter the bios

Goto Tools
Asus OC Profile

Load from Profile 2 (For Overclock)
or Load from Profile 1 for Standard Non Overclocked Settings

Press Esc then F10 and Save the settings and exit

Regards

[John W]

Sorry to report but the BIOS has the overclocked profile saved in position one and the the second profile save is empty. So unless you can help me manually change the profile to run with no overclocking then all testing would have to be done with the overclocking in places.

I have re-run the Prime95 test a few more times to see if the original results where 100% consistent.

In most tests it was CPU#0 that failed most often but have also seen the other CPUs fail in a similar same way but usualy after running the test for some time.

Setting the test to use small FFT minimizing the RAM test cause the CPU#0 to fail almost instantly.

The longer FFT tend to fail after more time up to 7 minutes of running the test.

I have also re-run the memory test for a few repetitions and again with 0 errors.

John

[Ben @ Scan]

Hi John

If you load the standard profile (the blank one) I will check on the memory voltages and timings at work tomorrow UPDATE *(The timings should be ok according to our records)

Off the top of my head the volatges are 2.1 Volts for the Ram and the memory if Dominator is 5-5-5-15( you can always load the overclocked profile and double check the memory timings & its also printed on each memory stick

With these settings set in the bios as long as the system is booting off the correct hard drive (hard drives if in Raid) you should be able to run PrimeLy 95

Regards

Ben

[John W]

Hi Ben,

I will try this when I get a chance over the weekend and will let you know the results as soon as I have done this.

I also noticed that the version of the BIOS that is currently on the PC is 1101, there is version 2102 available for download from the Asus web site. Should I upgrade the BIOS? If i do upgrade the BIOS will the saved profile still be valid or will I need to record and re-enter the overclocked settings?

John

[Ben @ Scan]

Hi John

Please do try a bios update, you can use the Asus OC profile section to save the Profiles to a Pendrive before a bios update, you may not need to do this as the board may retain the overclocked and standard profiles but its better to be safe than sorry

Regards

Ben

[John W]

Ben,

I have over the weekend done the following.

1. Updated BIOS to rev 2102.
No obvious improvement in system

2. Removed all overclocking settings.
The Prime95 test ran for 10+ hours with no errors (previous best was 10 minutes).
The Windows system appeared more stable but still crashed a couple of times. One of these caused Windows to fail to properly update and subsequently fail to start.

3. Due to Windows failure I did a complete re-install using Vista 64bit Ultimate and updated all drivers for the system devices.
The PC now appears stable (has not frozen in about 8 hours of use) but this is still using the no overclocking setup.

I have not as yet tried the overclocked setup to see if it remains stable with all the new drivers etc.

John

[Ben @ Scan]

Hi John

Please test the system with the overclock settings and see if the problem occurs, make sure you have Vista updated including SP2 and are using the drivers for the VGA and Soundcard off the manufacturer and not the microsoft versions

Regards

Ben

[Philipp]

Currently, no research data are available to provide guidance as to whether or not to include a surfactant when Cobra is applied for white mold control. In the Cobra supplemental label, a surfactant is listed. In the first two years of the regional white mold research project, treatments without surfactant were not evaluated

[Madafwo]

[John W]

Ben,

Over the last few days things have been getting worse for the PC.

The original problem of the PC freezing returned and worse than before, at some times Windows would not even start before the system would start to freeze.

Nothing seemed to be the trigger for this until I started updating data from the PC onto backup storage. This seemed to trigger problems.

I had in store a spare HDD and to test I removed all the drives and installed Windows on the new drive. The system started and ran with no problems.

If I re-installed the 2 drives that made up the RAID the system resumed its freezing almost immediately and again I had trouble starting Windows. The secondary SATA drive when re-installed worked perfectly.

The PC has now run for 4 days with no problem (I am still using the No Overclocking setting).

I plan this week to re-install the applications I need on the PC and continue to test, if all is still stable then over the weekend I will re-instate the overclocking and test.

Changes made to system
Removed 2 150G WD SATA 10k RAPTOR drives
Installed 1 500G Seagate Barracuda drive

John