Strange consistent issue with new build. Please help!

[rv_el]

Hi, if anybody has any suggestions here i'd love to hear it. I dont understand this at all - i will try to descibe it as best as i can.

I recently built a new computer that i got the parts off newegg.com

Asus P5Q Deluxe (express gate seems to work just fine)
Intel Q9550
Zalman Fan
Thermaltake 850w TR2 RX



Those parts listed above are the only consistent parts in these tests. Everything else i have multiple parts of and have tried man different configurations

BFG GTX 260 and BFG 7950GTX

Sata DVD and IDE DVD

4GB Corsair 2x2 and 2GB Corsair 1x2 both ddr2-800. Tried one stick or two sticks and in different slots.

Install Disks for 32 bit AND 64 bit windows Vista Ultimate - even talked with tech support - guy ran me through tons of configurations and told me i best take the machine to a tech.

1 Seagate 750gig Sata3 Fresh Drive! brand new and 1 WD 500 gig Sata 2 (i think) with Vista already installed



No matter what i do, doesn't matter, i get the same behavior!!!!!!!!

The machine starts up fine and i can go into bios and no matter what i've ever installed it has been read by the bios. Ram, HD, you name it it all seems to run fine. I set the boot order to the DVD Drive and have either the 32 or 64 bit Vista disk in.

*The consistent activity is this:

1.When i boot it is normal and goes into "windows is loading files"
2.Then it does the Microsoft Corporation (TM) thing with the green bars going by.
3.After that is done the screen goes black, and sits like that.


*Deviations from activity

-One time when i had no hard drives hooked up it actually went to a Blue/Green gardient screen. I could move the mouse around on it. Then the screen "scrambled" and it just hung there.

-Usually the GTX 260 card the screen goes black and the monitor stays "active" whereas with the 7950 card the screen goes black and the monitor goes into power save mode.. (strange)

-On the previously installed Vista drive, if i boot from drive, a screen comes up with the whole "safe mode, boot normal" etc... options. If i choose to boot normal it does the same exact activity as specified above. If i do safe mode it loads up a bunch of .sys stuff for a while and the monitor goes into power save mode...



Every other config i've tried - you name it -... boot from DVD while previous installed Vista HD is in... anything. It always has the same / or VERY similar behavior.

I was thinking it could be the ram for some odd reason but i've tried 4 different sticks. *shrug*.

What could this be?

thanks in advance for any help

 

[artician]

My guess for what the issue is is the motherboard, or the CPU. The erratic behavior you're describing sounds like the windows install is setting everything up, gets to a certain point where it either calls on a certain device and the motherboard fails to communicate, or calls on a certain function and the CPU fails to perform it.
Then you get the crap you're currently experiencing. Sucks that the two largest components are most likely the ones causing the issues. I don't know how to deal with that in regards to what New Egg will say about exchanges/returns, but if you've got systems of a similar nature at your workplace you may be able to drag in those components and test them in their own environments there, to identify which one (if either) is the problem.

My guess though is that it's the motherboard. I've had flaky, flaky issues with motherboards lately. Particularly Asus ones, though I still think they're highest in quality.

Hope that helps.

 

[Naphtali14]

Well, if one of your hd's has vista already installed and it wasn't installed on that computer it shouldn't boot. You can't just swap hard drives between computers and boot into the operating systems. You have to install the OS on the computer that is going to be running it.

I've got a couple of questions..

1. So you are able to get into the bios just fine without any problems?

2. When you had no hard drives hoooked up and it went to the blue/green gradient was there a vista disk in the drive?

3. Do you have any old intel CPU's that you use in your tests?

4 Do you have any old MoBo's that you could swap out in your tests?

Btw.. NewEgg should let you rma your MOBO.. I'm not sure about the CPU. But its extremely rare for it the be the processor.

 

[rv_el]

Thank you guys for posting. After people started to bring up the Mobo i looked at some angry reviewers of the Mobo on NewEgg which lead me to the fix - that being that the mobo has problems with Q9XXX chips if you have a Bios version later than the 0803 one.

So a lot of people on the Asus forum have been posting about this on the P5Q - Deluxe and even state that 80% - 90% of people are having the issue and that most fix the problem by EZ Flashing back to 0803.

So i downloaded 0803 and USB Drive EZ Flashed it.. And proceeded to install Vista 64 which i'm sitting in right now. YAY! (fingers are still crossed)

Apparently the problem is common although the symptoms can range with most people (i saw) complaining about BSOD within the installed OS and people having problems after days of solid usage.

Naphtali: I know, i didn't expect the OS to run properly or anything, I was just doing it to try to help see what the issue could be, and it kinda ruled out that it was the hard drive doing it. And some of the issues i was having with the Vista Drive were very close to the issues with out it, so i guess i just did it to have more information to play with in determining what might be going on. That drive is for another (older AMD) machine i have here. The original plan was to always install a new OS on the brand new drive i got at the same time as eveyrhting else i bought.

Also sadly even though i have tons of little parts to play with, mobos and CPUs are none of them . If this bios thing didn't work i was thinking of just buying a new Mobo and going from there.

And just to answer your other questions. Yeah everything else worked great like the bios and express gate, and yeah with out the HD in i had Vista in the DVD drive.. it just made it a little further that time before it failed.