Intermittent no POST issues

[Venthe]

Hey All... not entirely sure this is in the right section as I can't seem to pinpoint where the issue is, but I believe its the bios or motherboard.

So I have a couple of intermittent issues, and a few annoying issues, that occur starting with:

1. If starting the PC from being shut down for a long period of time, the computer will not post.. sometimes it will hang with the fan blasting at full speed, sometimes it will shut back off in 10 seconds or so. Odd thing, if the room is very cold (AC on) it happens nearly 100% of the time, if the room is warm it has sometimes booted up properly, sometimes freezes on the windows loading screen. An interesting bypass that works 100% of the time when this happens, if I press the cmos reset button in the back of the PC, it will boot up properly 100% of the time.

2. Not sure if it's by design or a bug in the BIOS, if my computer fails to boot properly, the next time it boots up it sets the CPU at 1.80 GHz (3.0GHz Intel Quad Core processor) and I have to enter the BIOS and exit or reboot again to clear it back to 3.0GHz.


My Computer:

ASUS Striker II Extreme LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Yorkfield 3.0GHz LGA 775 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80569QX9650.

8GB CORSAIR XMS3 DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) TWIN3X4096-1600C7DHX (will only run at 1333.. /frown).

OCZ GameXStream OCZ1010GXSSLI 1010W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready Active PFC Power Supply.

2X EVGA 512-P3-N841-A3 GeForce 8800GTS 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI
in SLI.

2X Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10000 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive

1X Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive


Not really sure if any other information is needed to help diagnose the problem but I'll supply whatever it is. I've done memory testing and everything has come up clean. I've updated the BIOS, no change. I've taken out 2GB of ram and tested it out, problem persists. I can't figure out the problem for the life of me, my only guess is that it's a glitch in the motherboard and without one to swap it with I can't really test the theory. What do you guys think?

 

[mailpup]

I once had a similar intermittent problem except my workaround was to turn off the power supply at the rocker switch (or unplug it) for a minute or so. I never made a room temperature connection but that doesn't mean there wasn't one. I also didn't have a problem with the CPU downclocking. Anyway, after swapping out various spare parts (psu, graphics card, RAM, HDD) it turned out to be the motherboard. I replaced it and installed all of the old parts and it was fixed. I happen to be on that PC now.

The motherboard was a Gigabyte P35 and I replaced it with a Gigabyte P45 because by then they stopped making the P35.

How does it behave if you shut down the power supply for a bit instead of resetting the CMOS?

 

[Venthe]

Yeah, like I said I was assuming it was the motherboard too... but I'm not positive. A few other things that I forgot to mention:

If I have my Ipod plugged in to the front panel USB, my computer will Hang at Post indefinitely until I remove it and then it will boot up fine.

When I put my computer to sleep and resume from sleep, the network card (wireless PCI card) spazzes out. It will drop connection every other second and sometimes upon resuming from sleep my mouse pointer will freeze for 1-2 seconds every 5 seconds for about a minute (not sure if this is connected to the network card or just something else entirely).

My pain about it being the motherboard is that they discontinued my mobo and I can't seem to find a decent board that supports my processor, SLI, and is DDR31600. /sigh

 

[mailpup]

Try going into the BIOS and check to see if the hard drive is the first boot device. A USB device hanging up the boot can mean USB devices are ahead of the hard drive in the boot order.

 

[tipstir]

I remember a client employee system had the same issue. Ended up replacing CPU and the issue was gone. It might be in your case is the CPU is not locking down the correct speed. But what you could do it either replace the CPU and MOBO.