Damn you Murphy

[J1GOKU]

Heya Caus, :cool:

how are things? I hope everything is going fine for you. I guess most of you still play Eve, eh? Or is there any other game you guys are lurking around :p I really miss the days with you guys in MxO. :(

A well, for me it's time for some free days and guess what ... Murphy got me.

Since a couple of weeks I get mysterious reboots, freezes and blue screens. First thing that came into my mind - thermal problems. So I opened my computer case and for some time it seemed to work. A bit later I got messages like "Please insert a proper boot device .... blablabla" during start up. I unpluged / pluged the HDD cables and everything seemed ok ... again. Since last weekend it got even worse - blue screens, freeze in idle, reboots in idle, reboots while doing stuff (games, browsing ...) and so on. Sometimes I get the message with the "Proper boot device ...." and sometimes windows starts up without problems and yesterday it took me like 10min to start up windows.

So my system looks like:

MSI P35 Neo2
Intel E4500 @ 2,75 GHz
2x 1 GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-6400 @ 966 MHz
2x250 GB Maxtor Sata RAID 0 (onboard Intel Raid Controler ICH9R)
1x150 GB Samsung Sata
GForce 8800 GTS, 640 MB
620W Enermax Power Supply
Windows Vista Home Premium (32bit)

So any idea what Murphy did to my computer?

I guess that there is a problem with one of my Raid 0 HDDs, cause if I get the "Proper boot device ..." msg, the system also says that something with my Raid failed.

If the HDD is the problem, can you recommend anything else than Maxtor?
Some additional memory would be nice too, so can you recommend one that work together with the crucial? (similar timings, good oc capability, but not as hard to get as the crucial and not so expensive .... maybe 2x1024MB OCZ DDR2 800MHz CL4 EL Rev 2.0 Platinum XTC?)

Thanks in advance guys :)

[NovaBlack]

Lots of random wierd problems that seem to happen at almost any time and hard to recreate on demand?

Id advise checking your RAM. Try takin each stick out n runnin your system for say an hour , trying each one in isolation. More often than not (i know from my experience with problems souding VERY similar to yours) you'll find you can make the problems happen only when a certain stick of ram is operating. N then of course you chuck the bad ram n replace with new stuff n voila!

could be wrong though, but i know one time i spent like 3 solid days tryna ttrack down EVERY possible cause of problems
(overheating, faulty connections, gfx card drivers/hardware failure, HDD failure, not enough power etc etc) n in the end it just turned out to be a bad ram stick.

N believe me , bad ram can cause ALL SORTS OF BIZAARE problems that appear to happen at random (i had boot errors, saying it couldnt find the HDD, windows booting would hang, often requiring like 10 restarts, n then itd be fine, desktop locking, Crashes to desktop in game, gfx card errors, driver failure warnings, hanging in game, hard resets in and out of game etc etc)

[G0rF]

/agrees with Nova.

RAM first, then component by component, if it's not RAM.

Oh, and if you're buying more RAM, get the same as you already have, RAM runs at the speed of the slowest bank anyway.

[J1GOKU]

RAM was another thing that came into my mind, but my computer tells me now that on one of my Raid HDDs an error occured. :(

Btw, any idea how to save some of the data that are on the HDD? I stored everything except my mails on a seperate disk :( Linux Live CD? Anybody know a distribution that supports a ICH9R Chipset and Raid 0?

[G0rF]

Could it be your RAID controller that's fritzed?

Try Knoppix, CD only version.

[J1GOKU]

Well, the RAID itself tells me, that the RAID Volume is ok and that on one of the HDDs an error occured. Thats what the intel raid manager tells me on windows and what the system tells me during start up.

[Jekht]

Can you disable the RAID? Presumably one of your hard drives has a small fault and it's causing issues.
PS. We're playing BF2142, TF2, and, still Eve :p

[G0rF]

I was actually thinking of the RAID control chipset.

Problems there would look like RAM problems, but with a higher proportion of false positive "disk errors".

Usually.

[0x23]

RAM was another thing that came into my mind, but my computer tells me now that on one of my Raid HDDs an error occured. :(

Btw, any idea how to save some of the data that are on the HDD? I stored everything except my mails on a seperate disk :( Linux Live CD? Anybody know a distribution that supports a ICH9R Chipset and Raid 0?
I would try using systemrescuecd for backing up that HD data, http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page. I think it handles RAID configurations.

[J1GOKU]

To sum up, everything is fine now.

2 new HDDs and a day work to get windows on the RAID (XP + Raid - Floppy = pain in the ass) and my system is running without any problems now.