Is my PSU underpowered?

[echostorm]

Hey all,

I have been experiencing random problems with my computer lately, things that are pointing to psu faliure. Things like...

Blue screens when plugging in usb ports
Windows not loading
Windows loads but NIS doesnt
Programs failing
eventually blue screens very often
Finally WIndows complete faliure.

I thought maybe I had a virus so I did a fresh install only to discover errors when installing (saying that my cd was damaged when it wasnt) So after trying several googled posts a low level format and much frustration I took one of my memory out and VOLA it installed, only to discover that upon reboot it said OPERATING SYSTEM FAILURE! After losing more hair and a bit of pen throwing tantroms (it had been 14hrs now) I unplugged 3 HDD's that werent in use and it booted. It was working for a while so I tried plugging the drives in and to my suprise the computer was working fine! Well for about 15min, now its stuffed again and I am thinking seriously that it is either a bios problem or a psu problem. I say BIOS because now its searching for FDD in the boot sequence when I had it disabled. Is my psu underpowered and failing or could it be BIOS or both? I am running the following...

430Watt Coolmaster PSU
AMD 4400x2
Nvidia 7800GT
RAID 0 36gb Raptors for OS
RAID 0 200GB Sata storage
320GB Storage

 

[echostorm]

Well its not psu, i have tried changing the psu, the memory resetting the cmos and begging but still with no luck.

I managed to install and run windows for a little while without plugging anything in except the RAID 0 raptors which are serving as OS. but when I plug the other drives in (making sure the boot sequence is the same) it says "opertaing system error". I unplug everything again and it doesnt work. Could it be a faulty HDD?

UPDATE: I just changed from RAID to single drives, one of the Drives has OS error the other doesnt... however if I have too many other drives plugged in I get the error on the working one. What do you think? This is all so confusing!

 

[leedsit]

HI,

I had some of those issues above when I installed a new Maxtor Diamond Max 10 Drive.

Windows not loading
Programs failing
eventually blue screens very often
Finally WIndows complete faliure.

I formatted the drive initially with Windows XP and that was the issue, I used the Maxtor drive format utility that I downloaded, then reinstalled windows ( setup a NTFS Partition but did not format ) and all worked well from there to this day ( touch wood )

LEEroy
MCNE6,CCNP,CWNA,CCSA,Project+

 

[echostorm]

Well originally it would seem my problems almost certainly were faulty memory. In my bid to try and fix the RAID drives before I did a low level format on each drive, could I have just made matters worse and ruined the drives hense why I am now getting these Opertaing System Errors at boot

 

[PyroTyger]

Echostorm, it's unlikely you'll have ruined the drives by reformatting - re-writing is what they're designed for! The only way to ruin a drive is physical damage, either through shock (dropping it), warping (hot/cold) or scratching (heads crashing into platters - v nasty). Formatting and such are just normal use so, unless you've been very unlucky, the drives should be perfectly useable.
It's possible that you've developed some bad sectors or minor surface damage, but running any old disk-checking utility will identify and fix these problems.

By what you've described with adding/removing drives, it sounds like your RAID drivers could be a bit messed up by now. Honestly, with the un-methodical approach you've taken to diagnosis and fixing, you've sort of obscured the problem a little.
I'd recommend you flash to the latest drivers for your mobo (chipset as well as BIOS), get the latest pre-install RAID drivers, check and wipe your disks completely using a live linux distro or another PC or something, and start from scratch. You've hopefully eliminated the faulty hardware (RAM) by now so everything should be okay from here on in.

 

[echostorm]

I ran memtest 86, and fair enough it was one of my memory sticks that is faulty. THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP! I will test the CPU and HDD tonight.

Could my underpowered PSU be the cause of what damaged the RAM?

Plus

My mate rekons I will have slowed my raptor down considerably by doing a low level format as they set the sectors up to the optimum performance in the factory and a bios based low level will butcher these optimum settings... is this true?

 

[echostorm]

Well after running 'ok' (had to do a few restarts from hanging occationally) without RAID and without the faulty memory stick its now back to the regular blue screens. It has gotten gradually worse. Programs hanging, and standard tasks were very slow with random errors. I ran chkdsk on all drivers (got a blue screen at the end of the system drive chkdsk), I ran prime95 with positive results. However after coming back in the morning I had got another bsod. Here are the dump results.

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

*** stop: 0x000000D1 (0x044FED48, 0x00000002x 0x00000000x 0xB85A5994)

*** HTTP.sys - Address B85A5994 base at B858F000, Datestamp 441a0bf9

This is seriously starting to annoy me to the point where my computer is going to be used as a boat anchor. Its only 6months old and it has been nothing but problems! ARRGGHHH!!! Can anyone offer any other suggestions, or ways to troubleshoot the problem to isolate the cause? At this rate it seems its my motherboard, but that means I have faulty memory and a faulty motherboard? help!!

 

[echostorm]

Anyone?

 

[carpeliam]

I know this doesn't answer your question, but the next time you're not sure if you have enough power in your system, here's a good resource:

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp

I'm just throwing that out there because before I found this, I was constantly just guessing, and other times doing serious research to find out how much voltage a certain part required. Now there's much less guesswork!

Again, not so relevant, but hopefully helpful down the line.

liam morley

http://www.carpeliam.com