New PC, need help

So, in the spirit of Christmas, I went out and bought myself a new PC to put together. Unfortunately it's giving me a ton of trouble, and since the store is closed until Wednesday, I look to RFD members for help and advice. Here's the hardware

Gigabyte M55SLI-S4
AMD X2 4200+
2 X 1 gig DDR II 533
BFG 7300 GT OC
WD 320 SATAII

First off, put it together, press the button, as expected it boots fine. Put in the windows vista rc1 dvd, install, no worries. Then about 6 hours later, I turn away from it for 5 minutes, and it just dies. Power off, no activity, no BSOD.

I turn it on again, no problems, everything is fine. In event viewer it mentioned ACPI errors, so I thought it was just related to Vista. I left it on overnight, and it ran fine until around 8AM, at which point there was no log until I turned it on again around 10:30AM.

At this point I decide to go back to Windows XP. I throw in the CD, goes through the process, format, install. Then at the second process of the install, it will randomly shut down. Again, no BSOD, no power outages, nothing. It's not at a specific point either, sometimes it will go further along before dying.

Here's what I've done so far;

-tested the system with one of the sticks of ram removed, then the other. Ran MemTest on it, no errors.
-format re-install, as mentioned, no luck
-Flashed the BIOS with the most recent build (released a couple weeks ago)
-I've ran a bunch of diagnostics from the Hiren boot cd, no problems there. I'm running a surface scan of the HD right now, and it's not restarting at all. It's been running for about 2 hours now doing various tests without problems.
-The CPU is running in the 20 degree range, so it isn't heat issue. No overclocking either, so it's not a stability issue.
- I don't have another PCI-E video card to test, but I don't think that would cause the whole system to die.

I'm leaning towards a bad MOBO, but wanted to know if there were any other tests I could run. Any ideas?

maybe its your psu

first of all... did u put the pc together urself or did those people get it for u... check if ur windows Cd is broken/scratched, try putting and plug everything all over again... always make a boot disc and show them to fix any problems before taking it home.

Originally Posted by aZnDeViLbOi

first of all... did u put the pc together urself or did those people get it for u... check if ur windows Cd is broken/scratched, try putting and plug everything all over again... always make a boot disc and show them to fix any problems before taking it home.

yep, I put it together myself. I tried 2 fresh installs (vista and xp) and both were fine discs that I have used on other machines.

The weird thing is that it doesn't show if I'm just running stuff off a boot disc. Since posting this it's still been doing a surface scan on the HD, and there have been no crashes.

As far as the PSU is concerned, I don't think that's the issue. It's running fine now, so long as I'm not back trying to install windows. When it cuts out the power doesn't die either, because the light on the keyboard is still on, and the light for the lan is also on in the back of the machine.

any other ideas?

no suggestions? I was able to run super pi on it last night, and it was fine for the longest calculation, but then started it this morning and 30 seconds after getting to the desktop it died.... I'm definitely thinking it's a mobo problem

Some thoughts.

The abrupt shutdown leans towards insufficient power being supplied, or some sort of electrical problem.

hmmm... it could be some sort of grounding issue: some vibration that shorts something?

I too would start heading towards a PSU problem. Can you put another psu in it? Lights being on doesn't mean that the PSU is good: one of the line voltages coming out of the PSU could be bad and the rest could be good: what kind of PSU did you buy?

430w thermaltake psu. TR2 430w to be precise. Unfortunately I don't have another psu to try, I'm using a dell 700m laptop right now to type this....

I've double checked all the connectors, so AFAIK everything is plugged in properly. When I got the tools installed it showed voltages around 3.1 for the +3V and between 11.9 and 12.1 for the +12V.

As far as something vibrating and shorting, well I'm not moving the machine around at all. There are 4 fans in the case, but even when I tried running it with all the fans unplugged the same problem was there. If it was a short, would it be a PSU problem, or a problem with the connections, or both?

Originally Posted by puff_daddy_58_99

430w thermaltake psu. TR2 430w to be precise. Unfortunately I don't have another psu to try, I'm using a dell 700m laptop right now to type this....

I've double checked all the connectors, so AFAIK everything is plugged in properly. When I got the tools installed it showed voltages around 3.1 for the +3V and between 11.9 and 12.1 for the +12V.

As far as something vibrating and shorting, well I'm not moving the machine around at all. There are 4 fans in the case, but even when I tried running it with all the fans unplugged the same problem was there. If it was a short, would it be a PSU problem, or a problem with the connections, or both?

well, it doesn't seem like a psu line voltage problem.

I am still leaning towards some sort of power delivery problem; be it cables, connectors, PSU, or something of that sort. Unfortunately, these are probably the hardest problems to troubleshoot: at least BSOD's give you some sort of cryptic info. If it is a weird connector problem or a short, that would be nearly impossible to find. Unfortunately, abrupt shutdowns and that your memory passed memtest seem to point to this type of problem.

Was googling for answers and found this article saying Windows XP sometimes has a hard time detecting ACPI compliant hardware, causing it to install an inappropriate HAL:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/shutdown_issues_in_xp.htm

Also, perhaps to eliminate the OS variable, try running off a Linux live CD for a while.

If you do solve this, please post an update. Curious to see how it turned out.

what I'm worried about most is taking it back to summit direct and being hastled by the people there. I know what I'm talking about, but they are pretty bad at customer service most of the time.

I'll try and see if I can scrounge a PSU from a buddy's system, and try that out. I guess if it still had the problem with a new PSU it would be mobo for sure, or if it worked with the different PSU it would be the PSU that needed to be replaced.

well, unfortunately, when I tried a different PSU, it booted, got to windows, and 30 seconds later died. To me, that rules out a PSU problem and says that it's a MOBO problem. Any other tests that I can try before I return it for a new mobo tomorrow?

well I replaced the mobo this afternoon, 4 hours uptime and still going, looks like that was the issue. Thanks for the help on diagnostics everyone