Hardware Problems - The strangest problem ever encountered.

[phai]

Hey guys.

I bought my computer in May 2009, so it's more than a year old now. I never changed anything regarding Hardware.
Spec:

Hardware:
- LAN-BOX Lite VF6000BWS
- DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS, 775 (mATX)
- Silverstone 600W Power Supply
- Intel E8500 (3.16GHZ @ 3.34Ghz)
- Mushkin 8500 2 x 2 GB RAM with Heatspreader
- nVidia GTX 285 by Gainward
- Samsung F1 640 GB
- DVD-RW Nec Sony

Features:
- Thermaltake® Blue Orb II CPU Cooler

OS:
- XP Home (fully patched and updated)


So, here's the story:
In early August 2009 it happened the first time: While I was playing WoW, the loading times went high like mad.
It took me nearly 15 Minutes to take a Portal from Dalaran to Ironforge. Holy cow. It was loading, but extremely slow.
Everytime I opened my bag the computer froze for about 2-5 Minutes. The Harddisk sounded like normal, just like
it was reading extensively. No strange noises. No scratching.

I shut it down and started again. The first thing I glanced on was my boot screen, where my devices got listed.
First device: Harddisk, Samsung blabla...
Second device: ÅÅÅ7§Å!ÅÅÅ1|3ÅÅÅ!ÄÄÄ?ÀÀÄ (or something like that, should obviously be the DVD Drive)

My thought: "Okay, the DVD Drive is fucked up and blocks the HDD somehow." I disconnected the SATA cable from the DVD
Drive and restarted. It worked. Wohoo.

But only for some months. In November last year it happened again. My PC froze while playing, I was unable to do
start it up again because of an "Unable to read disk" error. I tried to change the SATA Cables to another SATA Port
on the Mainboard - and it worked again. The computer was running. Phew.

Few months later, same scenario. After I changed the cables back to the original position (when I received the PC)
it worked again. This happened over and over again, and everytime I just switched the cables, without connecting
the DVD drive again. I took the cable off my disconnected DVD Drive to connect the HDD and back again to the
original cable.

But now, 2 days ago something strange happened. I was fishing in dalaran when my PC froze again. I rebooted
and then there was this DISK BOOT FAILURE. I tried reconnecting the cables, but it didn't work.
After I got back from work I turned on my computer and as funny as it sounds: It booted. Without an error.
The hell?

Now, yesterday evening, there was it again. DISK BOOT FAILURE. I opened my case and switched BOTH cables
to a never used SATA Connector, switched the RAM slots for both RAMs and connected my DVD drive again, since
I needed to restore my Windows Boot Sectors or something with the repair tool.

But there was no need to. It booted. Woot.

So, I rebooted it again, with the Ultimate Boot Disk in my Drive and ran some checks through RAM and HDD with
the tool from Samsung, ABSOLUTELY NO ERRORS. I got suspicious and inserted my Windows XP CD after I rebooted...
but suddenly, while it was loading the Setup, my DVD Drive began to read like crazy. The setup got slower and
slower and finally stopped with an error:

"halaacpi.dll could not be loaded.
Error 7"

So I rebooted and tried it again. The same thing happened again. I removed the WinXP CD and booted from HDD,
it worked. I raided the whole evening and everything seems like normal. No freezes, no errors when booting.

What the fuck is going on? :/
Could anybody help?
The problem is that I can't even fix MBR - I can't even enter the setup from the WinXP CD because of the error.

If you need more information on the scenario just ask, but I am definately at the end with my knowledge.

[vesseblah]

Quick googling found out local Finnish overclocker forum where somebody had the exact same problem as you do with the same motherboard but Win7. The guy also solved the issue by shuffling sata cables around and switching cables, but hadn't found any permanent solution.

Apparently same/similar problem comes up with Asus P5Q motherboards according to the forum and there the reason is suspected to be memory compatibility issues, especially when memory voltages are tweaked for overclocking.

Pulling stuff out of my hat I guess the board(s) use SATA controller which doesn't like certain brands of RAM or RAM OC/voltage tweaks. I'd suggest swapping RAM sticks into different brand and/or disable all memory/chipset overclocks to try out if it helps. Or just take this as an excuse to upgrade whole mobo/cpu/ram for newer models.

[phai]

Oh wow, thank you so much for finding this thread in a finnish forum, atleast I'm not the only one who has this problem.
That makes me feel quite comfy

my RAM is not overclocked, but my CPU is.
I guess I have to get a new MoBo, RAM and a CPU then, and I think I'm heading directly for a new i7
Oh well, the only sad thing about this is that I can throw away my little cute LAN-BOX Case :<

[vesseblah]

There are mATX motherboards for i5/i7 too.

[phai]

There are mATX motherboards for i5/i7 too.

But not as Powerful as I might like them :/
Well, I'll contact the guys from my favorite store and ask them what I should do.

[vesseblah]

One more thing that occured to me, something that costs nothing but time and sanity to try out...

You could try disabling ACPI from BIOS and see if the WinXP disc boots through like that or keeps on crashing like so far. ACPI is the power controller thingy in motherboards that handles stuff like hibernate/sleep modes, turning off harddiscs and so on. Disabling it will turn off most of those power saving features, but it did cause some problems especially for linux some 2-3 years ago with certain laptops/motherboards.

Bad thing is that you might have to reinstall windows if it works, I'm not sure at all if XP can stay sane when you disable ACPI and try to boot it again.

edit: Because the error message points to ACPI crashing (halaacpi.dll)

But not as Powerful as I might like them :/

Asus Rampage III Gene should be enough really

[phai]

Asus Rampage III Gene should be enough really

Yeah, this board is awesome, but I REALLY dont want to pay 300€ for a single Mainboard o_O
The second problem is that my Computer Case really has a little to zero free space inside now,
so I need a bigger case anyway.