XP machine freezing….. and more.

MSI K9N Neo MB

Enermax 330W PSU

AMD Athlon 64 2X 6000+ CPU

8 GB Ram

3X 500 GB Sata HDD (Seagate NTFS), (WD Fat32), Hitachi NTFS/EXT4)

Dual boot Windows XP Pro SP3 / Linux Mint 19.3



About 2 weeks ago this machine starting freezing up mid operation. Sometimes while running several app’s, other times when nothing was running at all and I would find the screen/pointer frozen in the morning and had to restart. Keyboard and mouse did nothing. After the 3rd event I opened the case to check if the HDD cables were seated properly, and they were all fine. But I did note that there were 3 blown capacitors. I had just replaced 5 Cap’s 9 months previously, so that ticked me off. (I guess this is a common issue with MSI MB’s?)

Then I began doubting the reliability of this machine and wanted to backup certain data to my laptop, which I first attempted by transferring files to a thumb drive. The machine would always freeze during file xfer to the USB drive. Then I tried booting into Linux Mint to xfer files, but Linux would not boot at all. (“Lfence Not Serializing”) Eventually I did an F8 start into “Windows With Networking” and did my backup that way. (I should have done this first). Over the next couple days I booted into Safe Mode more than once and the machine never froze up even after several hours of backing up files using my Home Network.

Eventually I tried to boot off of my WinXP install CD and go to the Recovery Panel, but after many attempts the CD would not boot. Then I tried my trusty USB Rescue thumb drive (which has a dozen utilities on it), and some of them would start to load, but eventually they all froze up. I think my very old CD-RW might have issues, but that doesn’t explain why I cannot boot off of a USB flash drive.

I noticed more than once now, the PWR LED on the front panel blinked on and off in 2 second intervals until I hit the PWR button or unplugged the cord. This was right after a failed boot cycle. I can’t find any information if this is a diagnostic indicator of what might be wrong.

At the moment the machine will not boot off anything except the C: XP drive. If I try to boot normal the machine will eventually freeze up. Actually I can force it to freeze by copying files to a USB drive. That does not seem to be a problem though using a WiFi connection to my laptop. On the other hand, if I can make it to the F8 menu and start windows in “Safe Mode with Networking”, then the machine has run for several hours without any freeze issues.

I don’t know how long those cap’s have been blown, or how to trace a MB circuit to identify what they might all be affecting. I’m not even sure the blown cap’s are the sudden freeze problem since I had previously run with blown cap’s for at least a year.

Along the way I have reinstalled all the chipset drivers, the RealTek audio and Ethernet drivers, and went into the BIOS and set “Optimal Defaults”. No joy.

Any suggestions?
Wolf

 

You could run memtest86 to check the ram. Bad ram can have weird effects on the computer. You could also try Aida64 to check if the smart data from the HDDs registers bad sectors. You could also use gsmart from linux to check that as well.

 

Ran Memtest86 off a floppy for 2 passes with zero errors. I'm shocked that it not only booted but ran for 4 hours without freezing up. (at the end though, ESC did not end it and I had to turn the machine off/on.)

First time I ran Aida64. It froze up after normal boot but ran for as long as I wanted in Safe Mode. "Storage>Smart" didn't show anything abnormal for any of the 3 HDD's. What I noticed at "Motherboard>CPU>CPU Physical Info" was a red lightning type icon at the "I/O Voltage 1.2 V + 2.5 V". (I thought most CPU's need at least 3V?).

Can't boot into Linux Mint, so no Gsmart for me......

Thanks,
Wolf

 

Good luck and I hope you figure this out.

In addiction to what was mentioned about, you could also give this tool a try and its portable and no installation required. I've used to several time to remap bad sectors on my drive.

https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/Victoria.shtml

And also, of course..

chkdsk c: /f
chkdsk c: /f/x

And if you have a lot of time to allow your computer to be offline do the long scan.

chkdsk c: /f/x/r

I also have be memory. I technically have 3GB (one 2 GB stick and two 500MB stick) but the only reliable is the crucial 2 GB so I roll with that most of the time, but I do put in the faulty once so they don't oxidize.

Keep us posted

EDIT: We actually posted at the same time =P

 

I'm tempted to run Macrium Reflect and over write my E: Mint drive with a backup image, but I'm really not sure if Linux boot keeps failing for other reasons. Is there a schematic of my MB out there somewhere so I might get some sort of idea what these 3 blown Cap's have affected?

Thanks,
Wolf

 

I tried running the "chkdsk c: /f/x/r" earlier from "Safe Mode" but it won't mount C:..... asked me if I wanted to schedule at next boot so I chose YES. It didn't happen.

Not sure what kinda damage can be done if I attempt to run it after normal boot and the system gets stuck again. I rather run this from the CD Repair but I still can't boot with that drive or a USB port.

Wolf

 

Ran ChkDsk again from Safe Mode, and again said Yes to schedule at reboot, and this time it took off running. At least 2 hours later the only "fix" it performed was;

Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 234 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 234 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 234 unused security descriptors.

Then booted back up normal.... running for an hour now.

Wolf

(haha.... froze up a few seconds after the above post.)

 

Yes, I also get:
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
and Cleaning up unused index entries from index

Usually this happens to me and I'm unsure why this happens.

Were you able to salvage your windows partition?

 

Windows is on my C: drive, and I haven't done anything with it except the CHKDSK, and I used MiniTools to rebuild the MBR. (somehow it got over written with another Grub).

Last night, for lack of anything else to try, I ran Macrium Reflect (installed in Windows) and over wrote the entire E:Mint drive with an image I took shortly after Mint was all squared away. (that took about 90 min's probably because I ran it from XP Safe Mode?). Mint actually got to the LM splash screen this time, but then it froze up. After that it gave me the error: "Spectre Mitigation: Lfence Not Serializing." and froze there. I've seen this error b4, but I can't find anything on how it was resolved.

Wolf

 

OK..... Sad but true I am losing my mind!!! I had this same problem 9 months ago and posted about it right here! LOL

https://www.xpforums.com/threads/machine-dying-during-boot-or-after-os-loaded.934587/#post-3268264

I'm waiting for 10V 1800uF Cap's to arrive.

Wolf

 

Also, I've been chatting over at Tom's, and becoming more convinced that my PSU might be the culprit behind all the blown Cap's this case (and MB's) have seen. Got any suggestions for a good, cheap PSU that will work for me?

MSI K9N Neo V2.0
AMD Athlon 64 2x 6000+
4x 2G DDR2 Ram
3x 500G Sata HDD
1x CD-RW
Nvidia Gforce 7600 GT
Soundblaster AWE 64 Audio
USB Mouse and Printer
Enermax 330W PSU
3x 80mm Fans
Dual boot 32bit WinXP SP4 / 64bit Linux Mint 19.3

Thanks,
Wolf

 

Any luck?

 

Nothing more to do at the moment but wait. I have replacement capacitors on the way, and I also ordered an upgraded PSU. They won't arrive for about a week.

I'm kinda nervous about doing the cap replacement again. Last time, those old cap's did not want to come off the board very easily. I kept turning up the heat on my iron hoping I wasn't burning something I shouldn't be, and eventually was at full blast. I still had to hold the iron on the solders for a long time before they broke loose, and on one of the cap's it actually broke off at one of the terminals so I had to get that out of the board. No fun.

 

Esoteric problems can be a nightmare to solve. Here are some suggestions to help you through your nightmare. Just spent 48 hours trying to solve my own esoteric problem with an Asus GTX 970 Turbo OC with hacked drivers and 16GB of Ram on a 32Bit XP system and wondering why I had lost the Network – All along the problems was my Win 10 machine, which had auto-disabled SMB 1.0/CIFS Server.

. . . . .Dam you to Hell SMB 1.0 CIFS . . . . Took half a litre of Jack Daniels to solve that problem I can tell you. (Unbelievable - Office 64Bit 2021 can’t even spell litre)

Anyway back to your problem.

1. Antec . . . Are in my opinion the best PSU’s. I use Supermicro’s, which tend to be really finicky about power supplies. Antec tend to be a better and smoother. Think of them like a Pure Sine Wave Inverter compared to Enermax, which is only like Modified Sine Wave invertor. Capacitor fail because of unstable power and surges and overheating.

2. Using Fat32 and NTFS on the same system can be a problem especially transferring high compression files from one to another. IE Zip files, DWG files and any kind of back up files. Madeleine Takam had massive problems with file transfer from Fat32 to NTFS because of the kind of high density files she was using. Disabling “Checksum Offload” solved her problem, but it won’t solve yours.

3. Best back up software is Ghost always has been always will be. That is why it is the most expensive. I have put the 64Bit and the 32Bit versions here for you.


https://1drv.ms/u/s!Apci65LbEXUMg0yx1vacS58-ncJx?e=D7H6UW


Lovely Antecs below. I have another 3 in office.

 

As I recall, I played with Ghost (and a few others) b4 settling on Macrium. My Enermax PSU might be the root of why I've been seeing blown cap's for many years now... it's actually a very poor component. I found a used SeaSonic 550 for under $20 that hopefully will put a stop to that issue.

 

What version to use?
I tried memtest86 & it said "not a valid 32 bit etc"
DL'd "memtest86-4.3.7-usb.img.zip", got a "imaging failed" several times

???

-c-

edit: 2 gig thumb, fat32
edit II: tried with a larger 32Gig thumb, samo samo

 

MemTest86 is a boot option if you have Linux installed. On my machine it's MemTest86 V5.0.

Recently however, (since my machine was not entirely stable), I did a search for an XP version and ended up D/L a floppy boot zip file which was also V5.0. You extract the zip, put a 3.5 floppy in your drive, and run a batch file to create the bootable disc. That ran without any hickups for over 4 hours.

 

Your situation has a lot of similarities to what happened to me:
https://www.xpforums.com/threads/re-capping-a-motherboard.934656/
Regarding removing stubborn caps: despite reading beforehand and forgetting I used my 50w conical head instead of the recommended chisel head (disperses heat over greater area). The conical worked on 5 of the 6 but the last one left a leg in which I micro-drilled out and thankfully did not damage.
badcaps.net forum is a great place for what you're going through.

 

[Solved]

Did the re-cap today and swapped out the PSU. Got everything back together about an hour ago and so far everything seems like old times..... My CD-RW is still not reading discs in either Windows or Linux, but that drive has been suspect for a while now. I'm waiting on a cleaner for it... we'll see what happens.

 

Cool!!