I believe my rig is possesed

[flakbait]

For the history of my rig, see this thread

Yesterday the strangeness began again. I was playing HL2: EP2 and my CD-burner suddenly came to life as if the game wanted something off of a disc. Small problem: my DVD player is the primary source. Earlier tonight I tried playing an old favorite, Warcraft 3. In that game I had some hard snags reminiscent of a hard drive failure many years ago. But I just replaced this hard drive and it has been sailing along with no trouble at all. Also, after trying to play Warcraft, my DVD player doesn't work in Windoze. I can open and close it, but Windoze doesn't see the disc. Rebooting solves this, but I still can't play Warcraft 3. Even more strange is I can play the Frozen Throne expansion pack, but not the original.

Now, a moment ago, I tried playing Portal and the CD-burner came to life along with some hard game snags. Just like what happens in WC3.

Does anyone have even a foggy idea what the problem could be? I don't smell burning dust from any parts. Hell, it still smells faintly of new computer parts, but my voltages are varying somewhat. Just about every plug is being used except the square 2x2 plug. My high and low voltage rates are listed below.

12v: 11.986 - 12.032
5v: 4.815 - 5
3.3v: 3.216 - 3.264
Vcore: 1.664 - 1.68

Specs:

AMD XP 3000+ Barton (333Mhz)
2x 1GB Crucial PC3200 DDR
Asus A7N8X-E mobo
nForce 5.10 international drivers
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro w/ Omega 5.10a
Antec TruPower I 430w
Seagate Barracuda 80gig HDD (IDE)
Lite-On DVD-CD player
Mitsumi 48x CD burner
Rosewill RC-403 dial-up modem


Any help would be appreciated.


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Flakbait [Delta6]

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Not to sound alarming but if your computer smells like 'computer parts' after this time it's likely that you have a bad condenser or something that's slowly leaking out its juices.

A properly working computer is odor free. Any smell is a sign of trouble, usually overheating.

[flakbait]

Actually it has always smelled like new computer parts. Nothing is overheating at all. My power supply runs fairly cold, processor temps never exceed 52C, mobo 84F.

Update:

Just finished running a checkdisk after it outright stopped when loading Portal. Identical to my last drive failure minus the zip-click sound. Attempts at rebooting resulted in Windoze stating that "C:\Windows\system\..." was either corrupt or missing. I forget the exact folder, but it was under that directory. I ran an install repair and that seemed to fix the problem. It booted fine (or I wouldn't be here now).

The checkdisk was odd, though. It would get to 72% and reset to 50%. It did this three times before finally coming back with a very basic report. Disk used, percentage free, that kind of thing. Nothing about recovered files was reported.

Either my "new" hard drive is a lemon or there's something really wrong here.


Edit: My DVD-ROM is no longer working. Windoze does see it, but doesn't recognize any disc inserted even off a fresh boot. I'm off to toast some major back-ups.



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Flakbait [Delta6]

[Tigger29]

Try unplugging the DVD drive power and data cables, and rerun the check disk.

Sometimes one drive going bad will somehow mess up another, especially if they are both connected to the same data port.

[flakbait]

The DVD rom is set as slave to my CD burner on IDE 1, the HDD is set as master on IDE 0 with no other devices connected. And it locked up again with the same zip...click! the old one made, a few moments ago while loading MidwayUSA's site. A toggle of the reset switch got it turning again, but I don't know for how long. I did try unplugging both the CD burner and DVD rom, one at a time, to see what happened. Same problem.

The zip-click sound makes me really suspicious of a failing drive. The last Seagate I replaced, one month ago, made the same sound. This one is absolutely silent when it runs, no noises indicating a bad bearing or off-set heads at all.



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Flakbait [Delta6]

[zmeg]

If you have the nforce IDE drivers loaded try uninstalling them and run on the windows drivers instead. I used to have a similar problem with my old nforce3 board, but it only happend when using nforce IDE drivers.

[flakbait]

Started it this morning to check a few things and it is now running fine.... making me even more suspicious. Ran several programs from Portal and WC3 to just browsing and sitting at idle. No lockups, weird noises, or other glitches. My voltages are still varying by the amount listed above.

On checking the voltage history (Asus Probe) I found that it holds steady at exactly 5v and 12.098v until a few minutes after boot. That's when the voltage starts to bounce around. I checked the voltage variance against Antec's spec, and all of the above voltages are within tolerance except the 5v. It's off by 1%. Unfortunately I can't measure amps; hell, I don't even know what the amperage draw for my system is.

Could my power supply be causing this intermittent hiccup?


PS: zmeg, I've had the nForce IDE controller installed since I built this system a little over 2 years ago. Never had a problem with anything until late Nov when the original HDD went nuts.


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Flakbait [Delta6]

[OOZ662]

Do note, however, that everything wrong is IDE related. Drivers can screw up after time, just like hardware.

[Jouster]

sounds like its very well spyware or virus related. let me tell you of my exploits along those same lines. after the patch to 3.11 (for aces high 2) I also downloaded some extraneous stuff and some of the websites I go to can be suspect (get your mind out of the gutter! not that stuff, never!). anyway, shortly after the 2nd update ah2 started locking up on me at random times, complete lockups. since it is usually the only game I play I assumed it was this game. Note that the only time my computer ever acted strange was playing games. So I got with Skuzzy and we started working together to fix the problem. He is a brilliant computer guy, but nothing he suggested, worked. Some stuff would work for a bit, but never more than an hour. I swapped drivers, reloaded stuff, reset stuff, you name it. I've got a good bit of experience with computer issues myself to boot (pun intended). suffice it to say I have been having strange computer problems since august of last year. I have been running Adaware SE personal and AVG antivirus for many years. neither of them found anything suspect, but I got in the habit of running adaware anytime before I ran ah2. even though it would find tracking cookies, none of them were apparently the problem. Up until last week I was having lockup issues. Then I found someone on another forum that suggested running both adaware and Spybot SD one after the other to make sure your system is clean. I had forgotten about spybot sd. I already had it (its free as well), so I updated it and ran it. Guess what? spybot found 5 cookies and items that adaware had never found. Once I had it fix those items, I havent had another single lockup. If running all of these three free programs doesnt help, come back here and we will see what we can do.

[Jouster]

make that 2.11 not 3.11 as in above mssg for ah2 version.