P4P 800SE Problems

[thatguy]

I built a new system using the Asus P4P 800 SE motherboard. The system has never been quite right. When I first builld it I had 2 gigs of non ECC ram in it and it was generating a lot of errors which destroyed the hard drive. I replaced the ram with 2 gigs of ECC and replaced the hard drive. Things where smooth for a while (one of those sticks of ram recently burned up and was replaced). Lately on boot up (this happens about once a week now) the system crashs when it gets into Windows. Looking at the event viewer I see either hard drive controller errors or atapi errors or paging errors. My fix has been to unplug the power supply from the motherboard then plug it back in. The system boots up fine for about another week then I get the above mentioned errors again. Sometimes on boot up I will get disk read errors, so when it eventually goes into windows I run scan disk and the hard drive comes up clean. I am afraid that if I keep going like this I am going to burn up another hard drive. I have the latest BIOS revision which hasn't really helped and may have made things worse, but does anyone have any idea what could cause this? Is it the motherbaord or is the power supply that is bad? Specs below.

Asus P4P 800SE motherboard
Kingston PC 3200 ECC RAM.
WD 74 gig Raptor HD
Plextor DVD burner
Intel Prescott 3.2 gig processor
Rosewill 580 Watt power supply

HELP.

 

[iss]

I have two systems running the Asus P4P800SE. I had issues with both with symptoms like you describe. the first ( the system with 1GB of PC3200) turned out to be a power supply that had gone bad and was delivering erratic voltages. replaced the PSU and no more problems. the second was the system with 2Gb of ram acting exactly as you describe. I tried every troubleshooting method I could but the only solution was to run just 1gb of ram in it. with 1GB it runs just fine.I have not replaced the 1GB that was casuing the problem yet so it may have just been bad ram.

In your case I ssupect the problem is the fact you are running ECC ram. the P4p800SE DOES NOT support ECC ram.

 

[thatguy]

Thanks for the heads up that, The system is very unstable with out the ECC ram in there. So your suggesting I should swap out the power supply? Thanks for your reply I really had no idea what the problem was.

 

[iss]

Before you swap it out boot into the bios and check under "system health" it will show the temps and the voltages there. if any of the rails are fluctuating widely or going out of spec immeadiately remove that PSU.

 

[CMH]

Crap, I have a P4P800SE mainboard doing the exact same thing..... I thought it was just my comp....

 

[MetalX]

Good thing I didn't buy one of those a while back... I almost did but i ended up getting the P4P800E-DX and it ran great.

 

[thatguy]

Actually, it is the motherboard. I have heard of others having the same issues with this board. The last time it did it I said if it ever does this again I am getting a new board well, it did it and my new board arrived today. Good riddance. The thing was garbage from day 1. The thing burned up a stick of RAM and HD. I just bought my first Intel board.