Sounds like my mobo is going out

[The Great Destroyer]

for the past 6 months or so, my hard drives would crash on me. first, i got NTLDR errors, then i got pop-up messages on bootup (in XP) saying that "[file] could not be saved to [OS drive]". i would get about 30 of these per boot, and 2 days later my drive refused to boot. so i took my backup drive, partitioned it, installed XP Pro, 64-bit, and Win7 RC. this lasted until about 3 weeks ago. i get the NTLDR error again, but when i hit the "any" key, it allows me to boot into the OS selection window. THEN, my computer started freezing up and BSOD. on startup, it would either NOT read my main drive (the "corrupted" backup had been reformatted and left unplugged) or the POST screen would freeze while trying to read my SATA drive.

(continuing in case of PC crash)

this happened more and more often, to the point where i could only run XP for 5 minutes before it crashed, and i got so frustrated i left the computer off all day. this morning i decided to play around with it and plugged my second drive, and my mobo LEDs are telling me that i have a Memory Error. so i unplug my second set of RAM and it boots. then i remembered this happening when i moved here 3 weeks ago. i had to take out my ram and put it in one at a time, boot, put another one in, and so forth or it would give me the error and wouldnt boot.


so, am i right to think that my mobo is going bad, or is this some fluke where my ram and both HDDs are bad?

[Luke122]

I'd check your power supply, it could be the cause of all these failures. Poor power can make all sorts of weird things happen.

[The Great Destroyer]

yeah, that was another conclusion my friend and I came to. i've been planning on replacing that anyway because the cable management sucks.

is there a program or something i can run that shows me how much power my PSU is putting out?

[Luke122]

www.cpuid.com

Check out Hardware Monitor.

[The Great Destroyer]

hmm, the -12v and -5v seem to be running a bit low

[Luke122]

The -5 is within range, but yeah.. that -12 looks odd.

Do you have another PSU you can test with?

[The Great Destroyer]

no, but im hoping to get one pretty soon.

[slaveofconvention]

idn how much notice I'd take of that program - this is what it claims I have....

If my 12v was running at under 5v my system would fall over constantly - as it is, it's rock solid, folds 24/7 and laughs at pretty much any game I throw at it....

EDIT: Upon further inspection - it's giving readings on my fans - the thing is, look at this (excuse the blur, autofocus locked on the HSF not the board)

All 3 are empty - all my system fans are connected by molex, not 3pin connectors (which I hate btw lol)

[The Great Destroyer]

well, ive been running it almost 24h with only 2gb of RAM, and that seems to have solved the problem. im gonna swap the ram around later to see if its the RAM or the slots.

[x88x]

memtest86 is your friend. It'll tell you if the other sticks are bad faster than waiting for symptoms to replicate.