Trying to diagnose a hardware problem

Hello All,

I am trying to diagnose what I think must be a hardware problem and can't seem to get anywhere so I am hoping someone here will have some ideas.

Every few hours my computer screen simply goes blank...no blue screen...just blank black. The fans are still running so the computer clearly still thinks it is on, but I cannot get any response from the computer via the mouse or the keyboard. Ctrl+Alt+Del does nothing. To get anywhere I have to hit the reset button. If that is all I do then the boot process fails while Windows XP is going through the initial loading phase (when it is a black screen with the Windows logo and a progress bar). The boot simple stops at that point and starts over (usually going to the screen where you can choose safe mode), never getting Windows loaded. If I try to boot in safe mode then the boot process stops just after loading C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\agp440.sys (note: am using a PCI Express x16 video card.).

If instead of just hitting the reset button I hit the reset button and then hit the power button to turn the computer fully off, and then hit the power button again to do a cold start then the computer boots up just fine. Sometimes Windows goes through its check process to look for problems during the boot phase and sometimes it finds things to fix, but in any case, the computer so far has always booted back up and run normally until a few hours later when it goes down again.

I have also occasionally been getting weird program error messages. For example, Norton suddenly said that one of it's DLL's was bad or not available and to fix that I had to use the Norton Cleaner Tool to remove all traces of Norton and then reinstall it.

In Windows, the ASUS Probe shows wildly out of range voltages for the +12V and +3.3V power channels (as in 0.064 instead of 12V and 0.016 instead of 3.3V). When viewed from the BIOS the voltages look normal. The temperatures on the Windows ASUS probe are also wildly out of wack. I feel pretty certain that the CPU and memory are not 33 degrees F!

I have not made any hardware or software changes recently. It has been a number of months since I made any hardware changes and the system has been running reliably during that time. When this problem started earlier this week I did try using the Windows System Restore to go back to last week when everything was working fine.

I am running Windows XP Home on a fairly new ASUS P5K-E motherboard with 2GB of RAM.

I first thought it was a problem with the video card because I thought that unplugging one of the monitors made a difference, but I was being mislead by the reset vs. cold boot issue. I replaced the video card but that did not fix the problem.

For a while I suspected it was a hard drive going bad but I could not work out why this would cause the computer to not boot if I just hit the reset button.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

Many thanks!
Bruce

 

It usually happens while I am using the PC, maybe mostly because I am using the computer most of the time when it is on, but it has happened when the computer is idle.

Thinking about it more, I am not sure that it has happened when the computer is totally idle, without at least the screen saver running. It has happened when I was not actively doing anything on the PC and has also happened at times when it very much felt like it was in response to something I did (for example, it happened exactly when I hit refresh while in Disk Management).

One more note, it just happened again and I was reminded that when it happens the screen goes black, as I described, but the piece I left out is that a "no signal" message appears briefly on the monitor.

 

You may want to read this thread. There are several threads that can be reviewed for possible solutions if you do an advanced search using agp440.sys as your keyword.



edit:

And, what were those changes? Was your current system drive migrated from your former machine? Was your current system drive ever used with an AGP video card or with different chipset drivers than those you are currently using on your "relatively new" ASUS board?

 

Thanks. Back in early February I replaced the motherboard, processor, memory and video card. I did not reinstall the operating system and so, yes, my current system drive was previously used with a different chipset and with an AGP video card. When I replaced the motherboard I thought that I might have to reinstall the OS, but in the end I did not because everything was running very smoothly on the old installation of the OS. Everything continued to run smoothly until a little over a week ago when the current problem cropped up.

I took a look at the thread you linked to and the key thing seemed to be the information from the Microsoft Knowledge Base about how to disable agp440.sys. However, that knowledge base article seemed to be talking about a problem that develops immediately upon installation of Windows XP and a problem that prevents XP from starting at all, which, of course, is not my situation on either count. Still, if you think it would be worth doing that, I can give it a try. I tried doing a search on agp440.sys and did find one thread where someone was experiencing similar problems and it turned out to be a bad hard drive, which is one of the possibilities I have been suspecting.

On the suggestion of a friend, I ran memtest and it did not find any memory errors.

 

Yes, I would suggest you follow the instructions from Microsoft. Note the reference to reinstalling your correct chipset drivers after disabling agp440.sys

 

Thanks. I am a little confused about the video chipset drivers piece. When I go to the ASUS website and look up downloads for the P5K-E/WiFi-AP Motherboard running Windows XP and go to the chipset section it lists 4 available downloads:

1. Intel(R) Matrix Storage Manager Driver V7.5.0.1017 for Windows 2000/XP...

2. Make Intel ICH9 RAID Driver Disk Version 7.5.0.1017 for Windows 2000/XP...

3. Intel(R) Chipset Software Installation Utility V8.3.0.1013 for Windows 2000/XP...

4. Intel Chipset Inf Update Program v8.3.0.1013 for Windows 32bit 2000/2000 server/XP...

As far as I can tell, none seem to have anything to do with the video chipset.

Thanks!

 

Make yourself a restore point then run 3 & 4. Then reboot. That should do the trick but you'll have to monitor this and keep us posted. I'm assuming you already disabled the agp440.sys

 

Thanks. I disabled AGP440 and rebooted. That went fine. I then created a restore point. I then downloaded updates 3 and 4 from the ASUS website. I ran the first and that went smoothly. I then rebooted to make sure everything was ok with that update before proceeding to the next one. That apparently was a mistake because now I cannot boot to Windows even in safe mode and if I go into the recovery console it apparently does not dedect a Windows installation. If I act as if I am going to try to reinstall Windows on the current C drive it says the drive is full/damaged/not formatted or fomatted with an incompatable file system. Note that I did not actually proceed with formatting the drive.

So, I am guessing that the installation of Windows that I was using is history.

So, I have physically disconnected the hard drive that I was using to run Windows on the off chance that it can be recovered and I have started installing Windows on partition I had set aside for that purpose on another hard drive.

 

OK...So here's the latest. I'd hoped that a new installation of XP on a different hard drive would solve the problem, but no such luck. The problem is still occurring in pretty much its original form. Windows just suddenly goes to a black screen and if I just hit the reset button then the boot process fails when it is trying to load Windows. If I then do a full shut down and restart, Windows loads fine.

So, it seems to me that it is pretty unlikely to be a software problem since I am now running on a fresh installation of Windows XP. It also seems unlikely that it is a hard drive problem since my OS is an a different drive than it was before. (Incidentally, I am able to access files on the old system drive now, once I have booted up using the new installation of Windows).

I ran memtest and it did not turn up any memory errors, but I can't run it overnight because the system shuts down due to the basic problem I am trying to track down.

So, if anyone has an ideas about what steps to take next to diagnose this problem, I would love to here them. Many thanks!

- Bruce

 

I'd tend to agree with your assessment except ..........

Again, if it was a clean installation on a single drive that had been freshly formatted, I'd tend to be in agreement. Regardless, I'd now be questioning your BIOS version and would investigate any and all releases since yours was written. You may also want to delve a little deeper into the history behind Intel's Chipset Software Installation Utility V8.3.0.1013. Is there something newer available? Is this matched with the chipset on your board? Has this been problematic for others? For reference, chipset software also controls how your machine "talks" to the video card.

That Utility Version is well over a year old and you may be better served by searching things out on the Intel site. Try this and run their chipset identification tool, then look for a more recent chipset driver. Those 8.3.0.1013 drivers have been posted, withdrawn and reposted according to some of the information I just read on an open driver site, This could be indicative of a problem but I don't know that to be the case.

Wish I could be of more help but Intel is not my home turf.

 

Many thanks for your help.

Things are starting to get downright strange. I ran the Intel Chipset Identification Utility and it was not able to identify the chipset. I am not sure what that's about.

In any case, I have bounced this to ASUS tech support since it seems highly likely that it is a motherboard/chipset problem. So, we'll see what they say.