Motherboard odd stability issue

[Doc Bac]

Here's my issue. I have an ASRock P55 Pro that I have been running for over 8 months. I started to experience a weird issue. When I would go to turn on the machine the MB would not post and the hard drive access light would remain constant. Then I would turn it off for like 10 seconds and it would run just fine with no issues. As long as I would keep the machine on it was fine. I suspected a power supply issue so I bought a new Coolermaster 750w power supply. Now the machine boots just fine and actually I notice a difference with the new power supply. Before the screen was dimmer and now it's like real bright, not to mention the board always posts!

Now I have a new problem. Sometimes when I turn it on from a cold boot it will boot to windows 7 desktop just fine but when I try to run a program like my browser to just reboots or freezes. Then when it reboots it works just fine with no issues. I figured that I would test the CPU and memory load so I have been running Prime95 for the last 3 hours with no errors. My CPU temps are running around 60c and it has been running stable. I am not running overclocked, just stock with turbo kicked in and it is running a 2.8 ghz. Everything is set to auto with speedstep on.

I don't think it is a driver issue because it only happens on a cold boot in to windows and then after restarting the system runs 100% stable! This is weird!

I was also thinking that with everything set to auto, the voltages are dynamically moving and causing a stability issue when I turn it on. Here is the only problem I have doing manual settings on the board is that I am not an OC guy and wouldn't know what to set manually or how to set it.

Any ideas?

I have also run burn test by passmark and it passes.

[Trevor Harris]

Re: Motherboard odd stability issue

you said your hard drive light was staying on when you first encountered the problem before you changed your power supply. maybe the hard drive has some bad sectors? try running CHKDSK /F /R in the command prompt [reboot required]

[Doc Bac]

Re: Motherboard odd stability issue

Actually it was an SSD I actually replaced it for 2 new SSDs in Raid 0. It was doing the same thing until I changed the power supply. Also, I know the board wasn't posting because the little led panel on the MB didn't light up. I actually thought of that at first but the LED would have given a number for the HD check stage of post and would have been stuck. Also, when a board post, usually a HD is one of the later steps so I should have at least gotten some sort of screen or the DrDos led should have gone active.

I already ruled out a possible HD problem....Thanks for the reply....

[Trevor Harris]

Re: Motherboard odd stability issue

yea that is a really weird problem. maybe it was (and still is) a power-related issue. maybe the electrical sockets that your computer is plugged into are faulty or something. do u ever have other devices in your home act strangely?

also if you suspect it might be that the motherboard is not supplying stable voltages, try using sisoft sandra or something like that to see how much voltage all your hardware is receiving.

that's all i can come up with right now. good luck!

[Trevor Harris]

Re: Motherboard odd stability issue

also try seeing if there are any errors reported in the event viewer. in windows xp u can run %SystemRoot%\system32\eventvwr.msc /s
haven't used vista or win7 in a long time but you can find it in control panel somewhere most likely