Untitled thread

[excession 0]

I've just put together the following system:

 

Asus P2B-D motherboard (rev 1.06 with 1013 BIOS)

Dual P3-600 Coppermines

256 (2x128) ECC PC100

Adaptec AHA-2940UW SCSI card

Dual Intel Pro/100 NICs

Matrox G200 AGP

Antec TruPower 430

 

and the problem is, when running XP, the system will suddenly enter suspend mode or something similar (windows doesn't say 'preparing to stand by'), even when the system is busy (ie i'm sitting there using it). By 'suspend' I mean the following. Monitor blanks, CPU fan stops, CD-ROM light stays on (odd huh), PSU fan stays on, power light blinks. This always happens after about the same time (10mins or so, haven't timed it). It's very hard to wake it up from this state. Pressing keys does nothing. It powers off via the front switch but goes straight back to the same state when you hit the power button again. It takes a CMOS clear (or sometimes fiddling with the SMI (suspend) switch header does it. The SMI header isn't connected to a switch. I tried leaving it shorted but then the boot wouldn't continue after detecting IDE devices.) or cold power-off and leave for several hours. XP is installed non-ACPI, couldn't get it to work with ACPI even though this is a rev1.06 board.

 

I've tried the following troubleshooting steps:

 

Disabled power management in BIOS and in XP (already had to disable ACPI or XP wouldn't install)

Changed PSU (also tried a Suntek 300W jobber)

Changed BIOS battery

Checked for overheating (nothing is hot to the touch, only warm)

Updated BIOS

Ran Windows Update

 

Any bright ideas would be very much appreciated

 

[Xenocrates 0]

I have had similar experiences with my old computer-- but instead of suspending or blacking out, it just completely froze at random times. What I found was rhat my problem was due in part to heat, because myo room is really hot and it crashed quite a bit less when I stuck a big blowing into the case.

 

You can't always just physically feel the components to tell if they are overheating. In some cases, checking the BIOS right after the computer crashes will reveal an obvious problem, but that is not always the case. I assume from your description of your solutions that you are currently running with the case open. In that case, the first thing to try would be to either stick a fan in front of your computer, or if the room is excessively hot, just open a window or move the computer to another room.

 

I also suspect, however, that there could be a problem or defectin your mobo or CPU. You can obviously test this easily if you have another mobo or cpu you can substiture in for the current. Otherwise, it could be a real pain to find out. Also try removing one of the processors, see if that fixes the problem (I hope I didn't misread that-- this is a dual processor system, correct?). Along the same lines, you should try swapping out every single peice of hardware you have, if at all possible, and just rule out everything you can.

 

Besides this, the best thing to do is just to try random things (take the whole thing apart and put it back together, try using a different OS like knoppix, a live linux distribution, meaning you can run it off a bootable cd without installing, anything else you can think of). This is the fun part of working with computers, the tedious troubleshooting of some strange problem.

 

And no, I'm not sure I'm right, in fact, it wouldn't surprise me in the least bit of someone else knew a much easier solution right away after looking at the problem (I personally don't have a ton of experience with the specific hardware you are using, except, of course, the P3s).

[excession 0]

Hey.

 

I have considered overheating, and yes, i'm running with the case open. Will try some extreme cooling

 

I am gonna swap RAM and graphics tomorrow, and then try a IDE disk subsystem instead of SCSI. The RAM's ECC and passed memtest86 so i DOUBT that's the issue.

 

I don't have any other Slot 1 CPUs though, i guess i could pick some cheapo ones up off eBay.

 

It's just weird though. Crashing, yeah, can generally troubleshoot that. But when it randomly decides to suspend and won't wake up? meh!

 

Cheers

 

james

[Sampson 0]

I am not familiar with that Bios, but does it have a standby function?

If this is a dual processor system, why are you running XP? W2K is the preferred OS for dual processing. Did you use W2K previously and switch over? XP generally does not address both processors. Its forte is being able to access HT enabled systems in the P4 line.

[excession 0]

Sampson:

 

Supposedly, it's fully ACPI compliant. I'm not convinced. I'm also going to install 2000 tomorrow to see if that makes a difference. Didn't have the CD to hand today.

Eventually I'm going to run OpenBSD on it, but it's often easier to troubleshoot hardware in Windows - or i suppose more accurately, if Windows is stable on it, so will everything else be

[excession 0]

Hey,

 

Solved this! It was a case short somewhere. I noticed because i stubbed my toe on the system as it lay on the floor and it promptly dropped into the 'suspend' state. Dissasembling and reassembling with cardboard spacers below the motherboard seems to have solved the issue.

 

Thanks for all the help!

 

-james