GA-MA790x-UD4P problems, where do I start?

[martel]

Hi Everyone,

I built a new system in late August. Specs are as follows:

AMD Phenom II X3 720
Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P board
4 gb (2x 2gb) G.Skill DDR2 800 memory
XFX Radeon HD4850 1gb
Corsair HX520 power supply
Vista 64

It was my first time using a Gigabyte board and I was very happy as I had no problems to speak of. About 2-3 weeks ago, however, my computer started acting strangely - upon waking it from sleep it started to hang, with no visible hard drive activity on the indicator LED, and constant "explorer.exe is not responding" errors. The problem remained after several resets.

Since the hard drive was also making noises (audible whirring up and down, an occasional chirping sound) I thought I was facing a drive failure and picked up a new HD, and attempted to reinstall Vista on the new drive. Doing so was a real struggle, as the system wouldn't recognize the drive and the installation would freeze at various points. It was only by unplugging all SATA devices except the hard drive (other SATA devices being a secondary HD and an optical drive), and removing one stick of RAM, that I was able to reinstall Vista on the new hard drive.

I thought my problems were solved but soon enough I was facing the same hanging/explorer.exe not responding type issues that I had originally. Since then I have occasionally gotten it working by removing a stick of RAM and all the other SATA devices, but this is usually temporary at best and it becomes unbootable after a few resets or sleep/wakes. I hear the hard drives spinning up and down and chirping, it may hang during the Vista loading screen, just all kinds of problems.

Since the problems are so varied I am assuming this is a motherboard issue. I have flashed the BIOS, cleared the CMOS, rearranged the RAM in all sorts of configurations with one and both sticks, and still am unable to get it working more than once or twice (always with just the one stick, mind) before I'm back to where I started. I have a sinking feeling I'm going to have to RMA the board but I saw this forum in my searches and thought it would be a good place to turn. I appreciate any help!

[wazza300]

have you overclocked cpu? try loading optimized defaults in bios and save and exit then try booting up

[PhenomII Dude]

check the system error log (event viewer) for critical error entries - it usually gives an idea what is wrong.

[PrairieDawg]

A couple of thoughts:

You mention removing RAM helps ... could be faulty RAM stick(s)? Have you tested the RAM for errors ( Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool )?

You also mentioned removing other drives as well as RAM seems to help ... could be a dieing PSU be causing issues? Do you have another power supply unit to try using your system with?

[artdrivers]

Which Gskill memory do you have?
G.SKILL-Products
http://www.gigabyte.us/FileList/Memo...a790x-ud4p.pdf

[martel]

Thanks for the responses, guys.

Wazza - no, I haven't overclocked, and I've tried loading the optimized defaults.

artdrivers - I have two sticks of F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ, which are on the list.

Since I posted this thread I've actually had a bit of luck in getting the system back up running - with a new hard drive and a fresh Windows 7 install I've had only occasional problems, although this morning it seems like it might be getting worse again. What happens on occasion is I'll hear a short chirping noise - not like a POST beep, much quieter and shorter - and then the system will freeze. Since the beep immediately precedes the freeze, I want to say that it's the hard drive making this noise but I'm not sure hard drives can beep. I can still move the mouse and usually it'll unfreeze after about 30 seconds, but sometimes it persists. While it's frozen, if I look closely at the hard drive indicator LED I can see very faint and regular flashing, like maybe twice per second, and very steady.

This seems to occur whether I have 1 or both sticks of RAM in. Unfortunately I don't have another power supply to test it with, does this sound like a PSU issue?

Thanks again for the help.

[wazza300]

you know in bios select first boot device as hard drive,second as cd-rom and the rest select none,dont include floppy drive as it waits to check for a floppy drive if its selected try that and see if you have any luck,also select your boot disk priority as your hard drive first device then cd-rom but dont select floppy

[martel]

Thanks for the tip Wazza, it seems to have worked! Rebooted and just got done playing a game for a while, no problems whatsoever.

[wazza300]

glad its fixed it (fingers crossed)