File transfer causes reboot

[BonezOz]

Hey all, Just a quick query to get others opinions.

Recently when my PC performs LARGE file transfers between drives or during decompression, the PC will reboot. This has been really frustrating. At first I thought it was the RAM, but Memtest shows no errors, rearranging didn't make a difference either.

Then I remembered, a month or so back I had an incident where the CPU fan got blocked from turning, and it took me several reboots due to overheating to realise it.

Now I'm thinking that this overheating issue caused problems with the in built memory controller in the CPU, and I don't think that there is any damage to the motherboard or the RAM. What do you think? I'll be purchasing a replacement CPU in the next couple of weeks to confirm this issue, but right now I just want anothers opinion.

Cheers,
Bonez

 

[Nimrod]

I had this problem before, and it was with a VIA network adaptor, is the large files going across the network to and from another pc?

 

[BonezOz]

I had this problem before, and it was with a VIA network adaptor, is the large files going across the network to and from another pc?

No this is all from within the PC. I have it set up where torrents/downloads download to one specific directory, then once thats complete I move/copy the files to their corresponding folders, mainly on different drives. Or say I've got that copy of FarCry that is compressed, if I decompress it using WinRAR it crashes the system.

I can, using the kids PC and shared folders, copy/move/decompress files remotely. It's bit bizarre but I can only associate it with the time that the HSF was blocked.

Specs (FYI)
AMD Phenom x4 9750 @ 2.4GHz
2 x 1GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 1066Mhz
2 x 2GB G.Skill Pi DDR2 1066MHz
Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DS5 (GIGABYTE - Product - Motherboard - Overview - GA-MA790FX-DS5 (rev. 1.0))
2 x ATI Radeon 3870 w/ 512MB GDDR5 crossfired

I won't go into the hard drives just say there are 5 of them totaling 2.2TB
1 OS/Programs
1 Movies and Music
1 Data/Apps
1 Games
1 Emulators

It's all getting a bit frustrating, specially when decompressing files.

 

[Titcher]

Disable automatic restart on failure if it's on. Control Panel, System, Advanced, somewhere under there. See if you get a BSOD instead, if not it's something a bit more involved like you expect. Maybe it's a power issue? You might be pushing your power supply just over the edge when your hard drives work harder.

 

[BonezOz]

Disable automatic restart on failure if it's on. Control Panel, System, Advanced, somewhere under there. See if you get a BSOD instead, if not it's something a bit more involved like you expect. Maybe it's a power issue? You might be pushing your power supply just over the edge when your hard drives work harder.

Another thing I've thought about, and tested, removed all but two drives, OS and the Emu drive (has the boot sector for Windows on it) and decompressed a file, same issue.

 

[Titcher]

Okay, then how about we determine if it's the software at fault. Get an ubuntu LiveCD, Ubuntu supports NTFS these days, try an extraction or massive file copy, see if you get the same thing. If you don't it's either ubuntu being more efficient or some sort of driver issue.

 

[BonezOz]

Okay, then how about we determine if it's the software at fault. Get an ubuntu LiveCD, Ubuntu supports NTFS these days, try an extraction or massive file copy, see if you get the same thing. If you don't it's either ubuntu being more efficient or some sort of driver issue.

See if I can find a copy lying around, I know I have on somewhere. That's a great idea! I rebuilt Windows about 3 weeks ago from scratch and set up all the drivers, but you never know there may be something that Windows 7 doesn't like.

I really hope that it's not the CPU, as I'd rather get a new video card for my PC and a motherboard for the kids PC, then I can upgrade their video card with my old one, but if it turns out to be a CPU issue, well there goes some of my plans.

 

[InsaneNutter]

If you have no luck with the Ubuntu live cd another thing you could try after that is to swap the sata ports the two drives are plugged in to.

I have seen motherboards in the past that have had a bad sata port and this has caused all sorts of problems.

 

[BonezOz]

OK, bit of an update. I ran Ubuntu 9.10 32 bit Live CD last night, it found a stack of bad sectors on one of my hard drives, which I am currently in the process of fixing. From within Ubuntu I moved the files on that drive across to one that had plenty of free space, and NO CRASHES! Weird.

Well thinking that it may be this that's causing my issues, I disconnected the drive after a shut down and booted back into Windows and ran a test. Prior to testing I also disabled reboot after System Failure, but it still reboot.

Here's some of my current thinking:
1. Issue is caused by a damaged core in the CPU
2. Windows 7 default drivers can't handle what I do with my PC - However Gigabyte and ATI don't put out drivers for the chipset, they suggest running the default ones from MS
3. Something weird with Crossfire??? - I'm going to test this tonight.
4. Bad SATA ports? - Thanks, Nutter, I'll be testing this as well fortunately I have 2 free plus the eSATA ports I can use to test.
5. Bad motherboard, possibly damaged by the overheating issue that I think is the root cause of this whole annoying nightmare.

If anyone else has any suggestions, area's I can test, let me know.

Bonez

 

[Icharus_Falling]

i still wouldnt rule out overheating, especially if you have 5 hard drives in your PC. if you have a regular house fan (a large fan that you can plug in), open your case and have it blow in there while transferring the files.

also, dont use the fact that the files transferred using ubuntu to rule out a hardware problem. windows vista and windows 7 have some sort of ass-backwards file transferring systems. large files that take 5-6 minutes on XP take me 15-20 min to transfer on vista/7. your power supply can also overheat (by itself, with nothing wrong with your other hardware), which would be a possible cause, if in fact youre machine is overheating. i've had it happen several times.

 

[BonezOz]

i still wouldnt rule out overheating, especially if you have 5 hard drives in your PC. if you have a regular house fan (a large fan that you can plug in), open your case and have it blow in there while transferring the files.

also, dont use the fact that the files transferred using ubuntu to rule out a hardware problem. windows vista and windows 7 have some sort of ass-backwards file transferring systems. large files that take 5-6 minutes on XP take me 15-20 min to transfer on vista/7.

Overheating now isn't the issue I don't think, I run SpeedFan on the system to keep an eye on the temps, nothing ever gets above 45c.

Now I can use a free "file copy" application to move data around the PC as needed, which works, the real issue comes when I need to decompress large files.

Actually come to think about it, this morning I was trying to "reformat" the bad drive when Windows crashed. Rebooted the system, logged back in, went and had a smoke, came back and the system had crashed again. Not sure what happened there, and checking now remotely, it looks like it's been on since.

I'm also going to run a anti-malware scan tonight and see if maybe I missed something somewhere as well.

Hmmm, interesting. Still suspect hardware....

 

[Titcher]

Not to rule out hardware entirely. But if things worked correctly in ubuntu, it very well could be a software issue. Windows falls over itself when it encounters hard drive errors, in XP I can get random freezes and stutters, over 16k of bad sectors.
I wouldn't be surprised if Vista/7 had nasty behavior on corruption. So I reckon running chkdsk on a few of your volumes might help, it's surprisingly fast if you don't run thorough checking, chkdsk /F /X should be good enough. Plus, it never hurts.

Also, the chipset being damaged sounds feasible, these normally have poor cooling anyway, and I can't imagine they handle well in a system that's overheating, so it may have sustained damage. If a CPU was at all damaged you'd get some more hardcore problems.

 

[BonezOz]

I've still not fully ruled out hardware, but the things look to be pointed more and more at a software issue.

Number 1 - running Windows XP under a VM and performing file transfers and decompressing files works fine. The only thing up in the air here is the fact that data is being manipulated over a virtual network and not physically on the PC.

Number 2 - same as number 1, only this time the VM is Ubuntu 9.10. Both VM's are 32 bit, which may be question number 3....

Number 3 - ran hardware diagnostics within Windows 7, physical box/non-VM, using SiSoft Sandra and all hardware reported back as no errors. Though the app recommended turning off Acoustic Management on the drives.

Next steps:

1. Disconnect OS drive and install Vista on either a portable drive or on one of the physical drives in the box to see if it suffers the same issues.

2. If the above shows issues, will try XP, might as well...

3. If 1 and 2 have the same problem, I found an older CPU (AM2 Sempron 3400+ single core) to test with.

Also, the chipset being damaged sounds feasible, these normally have poor cooling anyway, and I can't imagine they handle well in a system that's overheating, so it may have sustained damage. If a CPU was at all damaged you'd get some more hardcore problems.

Yeah, you're probably right about the CPU, but as for cooling for the chipset, have a look at the cooling on the motherboard:

Plus my HSF has a duct that directs air over the top most section of the chipset heat sink.

 

[Titcher]

Your chipset should definitely be fine. And those testing methods sound perfect, you're well on your way to a fixed issue by the looks of things. As you're busy testing software issues and fixes, try updating the chipset drivers, if it's nForce, which it might be because of the two PCI-E16x, get them from the nvidia website instead. But anywho, good luck, thanks for keeping us updated.

 

[BonezOz]

Issue solved???

Bought and installed Malwarebytes Pro, and you should see the amount of IP's that have been blocked because of it. Updated the BIOS as well and so far so good.

Tested uncompressing a large 4 part 15GB file, then moved it another hard drive, NO REBOOT.

I'm thinking right now that I may have had a bit of spyware or something on the PC that nothing could find, but Malware has been blocking access to it. Might even keep my net usage down as well.

So were resolved, at least for now. I'll keep an eye on things over the next week or so and see if it stays good.

Thank you, everyone, for all your help and suggestions.

Bonez

 

[Titcher]

Glad you finally got it sorted. Be sure to keep that ubuntu disc handy, it's perfect for testing whether Windows is broken or not.