Did my Processor just die? - Some Updates - Maybe its the Motherboard? [SOLVED]

FirmSkater

SOLVED - Looks like it was neither! A broken SATA cable seems to have been the problem :S

This should hopefully be a pretty quick answer. Hopefully this will just confirm my suspicion.

Basically, I'm playing WoW and my computer bluescreens. It tells me that the CPU secondary processor (I think thats what it said) missed a tick and so it shut down.

Stupidly, I didn't write down the error code. I had the pencil in my hand just decided not to do it.

When I restart it POSTs normally then hangs forever.

Motherboard: ASUS P6T LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard

CPU: Intel Core i7-920 [url="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202]Link to Info[/url]

I opened it up and found the CPU heatsink was secure, and there was some dust, but not nearly enough to have it overheat or anything like that.

- Am I correct in assuming my CPU just shit itself?

L Ron Howard

It might have.
Have you seen any magic smoke?
If you let it sit so that it cools down to ambient temperature, and restart it, what happens?
What exactly does the POST do? I mean, does it print anything? Where does it hang? Are you even able to launch into BIOS?

FirmSkater

It beeps once, just like it was normal, then hangs with the words EXPRESS GATE on the screen. I haven't seen or smelt any smoke.

I have had intermittent issues with the heatsink, however, because it is a literal piece of crap and does not stay locked. The lock is incredibly easy to take off (just twist it) and because of that I've had it actually fall off while the computer was on. In those cases it immediately shut off and gave a 'CPU overheat' error message. This has happened about two or three times in the last two years.

When that problem happened it was very different from this one. I never got a bluescreen message then, and after I re-secured it it booted up with no issue at all. Since then I have periodically opened up my case and made sure the heatsink was totally secure.

In the case of today, I opened it up and found it was secure, and there was no smoke or smell of smoke.

I'll let it sit for a few minutes and then try it again. I don't think overheating is an issue though.

FirmSkater

After checking again:

-POSTs as if everything is normal.
-Does absolutely nothing afterwards. It doesn't even get so far as to power the USB drives (and thus no power to the keyboard) so Ican't see if I can get to the BIOS. I suspect I would not be able to get to the BIOS even if it did have power, though.

I am pretty sure the problem is with the CPU

L Ron Howard

So it hangs right before it says "Press F2 (or whatever) to go into the BIOS," after it's checked the CPU, RAM and HDDs?

Was your BSOD something like this
http://www.faultwire.com/solutions-fatal_error/A-clock-interrupt-was-not-received-on-a-secondary-0x00000101-*1254.html

FirmSkater

Yes that looks almost exactly like what it was, except the error code was much, much longer.

FirmSkater

Okay so I've been messing with it on and off.

I tried about 20 more times to turn it back on and for some reason it booted up again about 10 minutes ago.

I had my friend over, and he ran Prime 95, which ran my CPU at 100% - in 5 minutes nothing happened again. He poked around for a while, and then rebooted it.

It hung again immediately after POSTing - as it had been before.

Any thoughts?

L Ron Howard

I have none.
It might just be your processor is going, or has a defective part on the chip.
Maybe you just have a loose component? Have you tried making sure everything's plugged in OK?

Dunadan019

Have you tried getting a separate hard drive (maybe from your friend?) to see if it boots up from that?

if that doesn't work I would say motherboard before processor.

you could always try to reapply the thermal paste as well.

FirmSkater

Unfortunetely I dont have access to another hard-drive. My friend lives 3 hours away and just happened to be in a town today.

I'm posting from my laptop now.

We've played around with it a bit more and have come across this:

-If we get into BIOS and disable Express Gate, it will hang on booting windows, seemingly forever.

-We are in the process of booting Ubuntu from a USB Drive now and it looks like its going to hang on that as well.

Once I see if it will boot Ubuntu (it doesn't look like it will) then I'm going to run a memory test. If that checks out I'm going to assume it will be either the motherboard or the CPU.

kaliyama

I'd try flashing your BIOS.

FirmSkater

I will try that next once I read up on how to do it without killing everything. I've never done it before.

Dunadan019

try removing all but 1 strip of memory as well.

I'd bet money it's the motherboard.

FirmSkater

Ubuntu would not boot. I have literally no idea what that means, because now neither Windows (which is on my hard-drive) nor Ubuntu (which is on a Flash Drive) will run.

I'm told that it is now safe to assume that it is not a software issue, and I don't think its a hard-drive issue.

Once the memtest finishes I'm going to try and flash the BIOS

Macro9

What tests did you guys use with P95? Was it Small or large FFT? Or was it Blend?

I doubt it is the CPU if you were able to run a five minute stress test.

Start taking RAM modules out and test them one by one. Reset the bios first if you haven't already.

For the love of God do not attempt to flash your bios until you fix the problem you have.

FirmSkater

A small update: I ran the memory check twice and it found no errors at all.

I'm going to try pulling out RAM one by one and see if that changes anything. At this point everything boots VERY slowly. It takes about 3-5 minutes to get to the windows loading screen at this point. I don't know why

FirmSkater

Pulling out the first stick of RAM had it booting but still very, very slowly. I'm going to run an hour of Prime 95 at FFT. If that passes I'm going to stop, take out a different stick of RAM and see how that goes.

Now, if for some reason I take out some RAM and it boots up perfectly, how will I know if the problem is with the RAM or with the memory slot?

L Ron Howard

Place RAM that you know is good in each slot.
Like, if Stick 1 is good, place that in each of the four or so slots, one a time, and see if you get any different performance when it's in each one.

FirmSkater

Okay I might be way out here but this is what I've noticed.

No matter what the configuration might be - RAM out or in different slots or whatever - while booting it hangs when trying to identify my secondary harddrive. It takes a long time to identify that, and when it does it boots up right away.

Sometimes when I get it to boot, it will ONLY identify my primary HDD. My DVD-ROM Drive, which definitely has power, is not there. My secondary HDD is not there. Rebooting will sometimes fix this.

But then, sometimes it will just hang on booting windows.

L Ron Howard

Switch their location on the mobo, and swap their boot order.
Try booting off of only the second one, and see what happens.

FirmSkater

Okay while trying to switch around the cables I noticed that one of the plugs on the SATA cable for my secondary HDD was slightly bent, and because of that wasn't staying quite secure in the slot. I replaced that cable and rebooted quickly with no issues twice in a row.

I'm going to try and replicate the booting issue again - and I will boot and reboot another 10 or so times to see if it happens again. Is it possible this cable caused all the problems?

I feel like this is way too easy.

L Ron Howard

Better that than a mobo or processor issue!

FirmSkater

Well I'm not having any issues booting to Windows at all now.

I still can't get Ubuntu to boot off this USB drive, but then I never tried to do it before the problem came up so I don't even know if that is an issue with my system or the USB or the install or what

FirmSkater

I'm going to call this solved. I've rebooted a few more times. Played some games. Downloaded some stuff, and nothing else seem to cause it to crash.

If anything happens again I'll make a new thread.

Thanks for your help everyone. I truly appreciate it!