Author Topic: Bizarre Behavior (Read 326 times)

flakbait · « **on:** November 30, 2007, 02:04:14 PM »

About a week ago we lost power here for roughly five seconds. Nothing major, just enough to shutdown my rig. Except it wouldn't come up from a cold boot. The HDD (80GB Seagate Barracuda) made a zip.........click! when it tried to boot up. That got my undivided attention! After several more attempts, it finally booted and ran a checkdisk. A large number (15+) of files were corrupted and repaired, and then it fired right up. I ran a second checkdisk from the command prompt outside windoze to verify everything was hunky dory. It was. Neither light on the surge protector was off, meaning the breaker did not trip and the surge circuit didn't trip.

Fast forward to last night. I shut down to clean the tower out, and again the HDD was making that zip...........click! sound as it attempted to boot. And again, after several attempts it fired up. This time with a single corrupted file which was fixed. I downloaded SeaTools for DOS which will run on boot, made a 3.5" floppy, and tried running it. Wouldn't go, because the BIOS is set to boot off the first available device. In this case, my HDD. So I duck into the BIOS to change the boot order.... only the keyboard doesn't work in the BIOS. Which is funny, because it works fine to get in to the BIOS, do a three-finger salute, and (obviously) all the time otherwise. It is not a USB 'board; standard PS/2.

Here's where things go weird. For this entire week I've been fighting a dial-up modem problem as well. It would retrain even though there is no line noise, drop connections, and require me to constantly ping a server in order to keep the connection alive. In some cases, I've logged in at 52k and because of retrains, logged off at 7,600! Now get this: I'm on right now at 53.2k without ping plotter banging away, and it hasn't booted me in the past hour. No snags, no hang-ups, nothing; it works just like always.

I have no viruses, no trojans, no mal- or spyware. Voltages are all green, as are temps. I've been tempted to reset the BIOS to see if that will fix the no keyboard problem, but I'm hesitant to proceed without advice. Especially since the HDD is causing me trouble at a cold boot.

Later today (bloody errands) I'll bag another HDD and get my data copied over ASAP. However, I'd like to know what you folks think about this. Is it a mobo glitch or strictly a HDD problem? Will a BIOS reset fix all (or none?) of these troubles? System spec is listed below.

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe mobo
AMD XP 3000+ CPU
Seagate Barracuda 80GB HDD
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb 8x AGP vid
1GB (512x2) Crucial PC2700 DDR RAM
Antec TruPower 440W P/S
Windoze XP SP2 Home

Thanks in advance,

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Flakbait [Delta6]

MrRiplEy[H] · « **Reply #1 on:** November 30, 2007, 05:39:57 PM »

Actually this kind of short power outage is the worst thing that can happen to your hardware. Usually they break when you snap power off and on in a short time (sometimes accompanied with a nice voltage spike too).

I'd back up everything on that HD immediately because any 'zip-click' sounds from a HD are about as promising as 'cachooka' sound from a pump-action shotgun wielding hillbilly.

flakbait · « **Reply #2 on:** November 30, 2007, 05:47:02 PM »

I found it a little strange that a rapid loss and restore of power would hurt this thing, since its set to stay off in the event of a power failure. Add that in with the surge protector circuits not tripping, and I figured there'd be no damage. However, a new HDD is inbound and I'm (not!) looking forward to three days of bliss getting everything settled in on the new drive. Hopefully it isn't the mobo, since replacing it and the processor is not within the mystical powers of my wallet.

Thanks, Ripley!

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Flakbait [Delta6]

SD67 · « **Reply #3 on:** December 01, 2007, 04:07:36 AM »

I killed my mobo by doing a bios update.
It wouldn't even post anymore

Turns out the FDD controller was not 100%.

Roscoroo · « **Reply #4 on:** December 01, 2007, 05:39:40 AM »

bios reset wont do anything exept set up your bios settings to default.
then you have to go in and setup your cpu,ram,vga appature ,ect again

id say you have a hard drive going out or bad ram ....sounds like hd though.

all mine if they dont freeze up they will do the same yours is ,,,corrupting its data til it cant or wont boot.

put the new hd in ,format ,ect and then go after your old drives info (dont run that drive til your ready )

when you have your pc open it would be a good time to check all your capacitors for swelling or leakage on your mainboard . these A7n8x's are getting old now .

NHawk · « **Reply #5 on:** December 01, 2007, 06:15:44 AM »

I don't know whose surge protector you're using but be sure it has an equipment protection guarantee.

My UPS has a Lifetime $150000 equipment damage guarantee. And it hasn't failed me yet. Lights go out, computer keeps chugging along.

Fulmar · « **Reply #6 on:** December 01, 2007, 09:58:48 AM »

I run my system off a APC UPS 1400* and I can't believe I didnt look into getting a UPS in the past. I've had it for about 2 years and have never actually needed to rely on it for more than 2 minutes. I actually have 2 extra UPS 1400's just lying around, but no use for them yet as I have my linux firewall computer on a smaller UPS and my back up server computer on another small one.

*I've had about a dozen high end UPS's in the last two years. One of the perks of my part-time college job working at Batteries Plus. Companies just want to recycle the whole UPS unit (when the batteries are bad). Costs me about $40-50 for new batteries and you have a used but perfectly good $500-800 (new) UPS. I've kept friends and family happy with giving the excess ones away.

Everything to me sounds like a back HD. One of the two HD failures I've had in the past resulted upon a cold boot. The other one went back when I was playing X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter. So its been a while.

doc1kelley · « **Reply #7 on:** December 01, 2007, 10:39:19 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by flakbait
I found it a little strange that a rapid loss and restore of power would hurt this thing, since its set to stay off in the event of a power failure. Add that in with the surge protector circuits not tripping, and I figured there'd be no damage. However, a new HDD is inbound and I'm (not!) looking forward to three days of bliss getting everything settled in on the new drive. Hopefully it isn't the mobo, since replacing it and the processor is not within the mystical powers of my wallet.

Thanks, Ripley!

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Flakbait [Delta6]

The one thing that you are overlooking is the dial up modem. I've had many a modem fried through the years and even a motherboard or two. Power travels along the phone lines. I used to have the worst luck with segate HD's years ago with them lasting a year or two and then the clicking sound and data loss and then total failure. But with all thing being equal, a power outage will make you loose whatever data was being written or in memory at the time. Before I did anything drastic, I would run the chkdsk and then do a defrag on the HD and see if you still get the unwanted sound from the HD.

All the Best...
Jay
awDoc1