random reboots in Win2k

[Shink]

I built a system around an Athlon XP 1500 and an AK31 3.0 last year. At the time, I bought an Enermax case w/ 300W p/s which was enough at the time. Now, I've gotten into digital video, and have added another hard drive, and a dvd-rw. I have been having random reboots either when using the dvd-rw, or when copying from one drive to the other (they're on the same channel). Here's my setup:

AK31 3.0 w/ XP 1500+
256M Crucial
40G Deskstar 60GXP (primary master)
120G Western Digital (primary slave)
8x cdrw (secondary master)
4x dvd-rw (secondary slave)
Voodoo3 pci
wintv pci
pci sound card
1394 card
network card
Win2k pro

Did some research last week, and found that I was very close to maxing out the 15 amps available on the 12V rail of the Enermax, so I upgraded to an Antec True430, which I thought should give me plenty of power, with room to spare for a radeon in the future.. But I am still having random reboots, during the same operations.

I've seen others post here with similar setups (2 drives, cdrw, and dvd), who claim to run fine with 300W p/s's. I know that a good p/s is critical, but I know that both the enermax and the antec are good, so I'm stumped.. Short of reinstalling Win2k, I'm not sure what else to try.

This all started when I added the second drive, so it seems like it must be the power.. Unless the 2 drives don't like each other? I am close anyways to adding a controller card for the hard drives.

 

[mechBgon]

Hmm, here are a couple questions: are the optical drives running in Ultra DMA mode or PIO mode? You can check by going Start > Settings > Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager > IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers > Secondary > Advanced.

Semi-related to that, is your CPU cooling fairly good? If the drives are running in PIO mode then I believe the CPU has to get its hands dirty quite a bit more and perhaps is running a little hotter than it can take. I have reboots if I don't cool my overclocked 1600+ enough, where the system is stable until I do a certain thing, and then wham, I get a reboot. It's repeatable, and more cooling fixed it.

Also, you sure are loading that PCI bus up. It's got the video card, TV card, sound card, Firewire card and network card all wrestling for the same 133Mb/sec bus. You look like a candidate for an nForce2 board with integrated video and the MCP2-T southbridge, which would take everything off your PCI bus except your TV card (Firewire, USB 2.0, NIC and audio all integrated into the southbridge, not on the PCI bus). Just a notion

 

[Shink]

The optical drives are set for DMA if available, so I assume they're using it.

When I first got the cpu, I got a delta, which was too loud for me, so I replaced it with a sunon 80mm fan placed diagonally on the h/s, which seems to work well. After I first installed the sunon, the cpu ran at around 45C idle, but the last 6 months or so it has been running at 50-51C idle, which I know is a little on the high side.. Maybe I need to reseat the cpu & reapply more arctic silver?? I do still have the delta laying around, so maybe I'll throw it back in and see what happens.

The only reason I doubt that cooling is the problem is because the reboots -only- occur during either dvd activity, or heavy drive activity on the 120G. It never crashes during cpu-intensive activity, like running tmpgenc, which taxes the hell out of the cpu.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Shink
The optical drives are set for DMA if available, so I assume they're using it.

It will say right below that, Current transfer mode. That should say whether it's using DMA or PIO for each device. If you can't force them to use DMA, try reversing their Master/Slave roles and see if either/both of them can now be forced to use DMA.

I agree, the cooling thing may not be correct, just a brainstorm I mean, on my system, who'd think that clicking the mouse wheel to anchor in a web page, then sliding the mouse back and forth to scroll up and down, was going to crash a system that can run SETI@Home just fine? But that's the case, and more cooling fixes it. Pretty odd, but that's life

 

[Shink]

Interesting, I see that the cdrw is running at dma, but the dvd is ultra dma.. Ok, not so interesting, since I suppose the cdrw is only capable of dma (plextor 8432).. Still, wonder if I should make the dvd master and see what happens..

 

[AlmightyBob]

Hey, I have exactly the same problem, even to the point where it doesn't reboot itself when stress-testing the cpu, although it frequently decides to when playing games or during DVD playback.
The cpu was peaking at over 72C so I have underclocked it until I get a better cooler, and now it peaks at 62C although it still keeps on restarting.

I have the following configuration:

Athlon 2400 XP (underclocked to an 1800XP)
512M PC2700 RAM
Aopen CD-R 48x16x50 drive
Samsung DVD 16x drive
Chaintech APOGEE deluxe mb
Chaintech GF4 Ti4200 128M (AGP 4x) vga card
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 60G Hard drive
FSB is underclocked to 100MHz

Can someone please help, because it's getting effing annoying. As previously requested, the hard drive is running with UDMA 133 yet the cd/dvd drives are at UDMA 33. I feel it could either be down to improper cooling, a faulty hard drive or a lame psu. If it matters it is a TUV Tsunami Switching Power Supply rated at 350W. It has the following specs:

+3.3V 28A
+5V 30A
+12V 15A
+5VSB 2A
-5V 0.3A
-12V 0.8A

Is this enough for my comp? I would really, really apreciate any kind of help because it's driving me mad. Another thing is that the comp itself is in a badly-designed desk; it is surrounded by thick slabs of wood on three sides with virtually no where for the hot air to go except back into the comp. If you've managed to figure it out shrink, please tell me the secret!

Thanks

 

[Shink]

A few updates-

I went back to the manual for my new WD 120G to see if anything jumped out at me, and I noticed that it said to put the master drive on the end IDE connector, and the slave on the middle connector.. This sounded vaguely familiar to me, so I checked my cabling, and both the hd's and the cd's were cabled the opposite (slave on the end connector).. and also the hd cable had a bend which looked like it might have had a bent pin.. So I replaced the hd cable, and changed the cabling positions on both cables. The new setup is:

WD 120G : primary master
Deskstar 40G: primary slave
DVD-R : secondary master
cd-rw : secondary slave

Also checked out my heat sink/cpu fan, and there was a bit of dust on the h/s. Cleaned that out, and it is amazing what mere dust can do to your cooling (or lack thereof). My idle temp is down to 43C (from 50-51C) !

UJnfortunately, the problem persists. Sometimes, it's just a hard reboot (again, during either DVD access, or intensive h/d operation (just the WD- my deskstar has been fine). Sometimes, it's just a hard reboot, but others, I get the BSOD with an IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, which indicates a driver problem. Several resources say that you can track down the offending driver by comparing the mem. address in the 4th parameter of the error msg. with the list of drivers/base memory addresses in the driver list on the STOP screen.. but on the STOP screen, there was no driver list. I looked through all devices in device mgr and looked at the 'resources', but found no addresses close to the one specified.

I have loaded quite a few freeware apps/drivers in the past month, trying to get going with video capture, etc. One of the drivers was a freeware aspi driver, which I fear may be hanging around and causing trouble with the dvd. It doesn't show up on add/remove progs, so I'm about to try a clean install of win2k..

Bob- from my research the past 2 weeks or so, It's not so much the overall wattage of the PSU that matters, but the ratings on the individual rails (the 12V is the most important)- the cpu (p4 & athlon), hard drives, optical drives, and I believe AGP as well all pull power from there. I don't know much about TUV psu's, but you can't go wrong with an antec..

This article was really helpful to me:
http://firingsquad.gamers.com/guides/power_supply/default.asp