User Name
Password

Go Back   Planetarion Forums > Non Planetarion Discussions > Programming and Discussion > Hardware and Tech Support

Reply
Thread Tools Display Modes
Unread 8 Nov 2002, 13:53   #1
meglamaniac
Born Sinful
 
meglamaniac's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Loughborough, UK
Posts: 4,059
meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.
What the....?!

I was using my PC last night (had it playing music when we got back from a parteh). When I'd finished with it, I hit the suspend button on my keyboard as I usually do, and it went down fine (it goes into suspend to ram, so is basicly off).

I turn it back on today. Start up winamp, hit play. Nothing.
Hmmmm.
Check the system volumes - all on max. Try and play stuff in media player. Nothing. Try the radio on my TV/radio card - its very very quiet. I cranked up the volume on the speakers and could JUST hear a very corrupted version of the MP3 in winamp playing.

I figured that maybe the card didn't come out of suspend properly, so I shut the machine down, waited a minute, turned it back on, and waited for windows to start.
Try again - same thing.
Reboot and choose Mandrake instead of windows this time.
Still the same thing - so that rules out drivers.

By now I was suspecting hardware failure, so I shut down, opened the case, and looked at the card without taking it out - there was no visable sign of anything up with it (burn marks etc) and nothing against it that was shorting it.

I connected a second pair of speakers to channel 2 (its an SB Live 5.1) and booted windows again - this time I got sound, but out of both channels - so both sets of speakers were working now.
Sure enough, MP3s pay, all is fine and dandy etc.



For 10 mins or so.

When it starts doing it again.

I noticed it did it just as the fans on my PSU powered up a bit more (its a thermostatically controlled jobby). Afaik, the PSU fans run off seperate channels to the one the motherboard uses, but even so I figured maybe there was a power shortage to the soundcard. So I waited 10 mins for everything to cool down again, and started back up (windows), muttering profanities to myself.

I waited for the temperature to get high enough for the PSU fans to power up a bit more, and it carried on working.
It is still working now, 20 minutes since I powered back up for the final time, and the temperature is way above where it was when the failure happened for the second time (60C proc, 33 mobo - pretty standard idle temps for this machine in this room) - so that must have been coincidence.

So as far as I can tell, I've ruled out visible power shorts, low power, speaker faults, driver failure, and visible hardware failure on the card.

That leaves some kind of hidden power short (in the PCI slots itself for example, if that's buggered) or some wierd intermittant hardware fault on the card.

Incidentally, the PSU is 400W (not a cheapo one either) and should be more than powerful enough for what its supplying, which is:
Athlon XP 2000+
Zalman Silent CPU cooler, fan @1500Rpm
2 Seagate Barracuda IV harddrives.
Leadtek TV/radio card
Standard 10/100 nic.
GeForce3 Ti200 64Mb
And the bloody soundblaster of course.

I've only listed the "always on" stuff there.

Does anyone have any ideas what could have caused it? I don't like the idea of a randomly working soundcard.

__________________
Worth dying for. Worth killing for. Worth going to hell for. Amen.
meglamaniac is offline   Reply With Quote
Unread 8 Nov 2002, 13:56   #2
Cocaine
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
We should put your soundcard in the same machine as my 2 randomly sized hard disks.
  Reply With Quote
Unread 8 Nov 2002, 14:01   #3
meglamaniac
Born Sinful
 
meglamaniac's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Loughborough, UK
Posts: 4,059
meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.
Random computing - the new way to keep techys permanently employed! \o/

Seriously though - any ideas would be appreciated. I've shut down, taken it out, looked at it closely and blown off the dust, looked in the PCI slot etc, and there was nothing visibly up with it.
__________________
Worth dying for. Worth killing for. Worth going to hell for. Amen.
meglamaniac is offline   Reply With Quote
Unread 8 Nov 2002, 14:07   #4
Leshy
Mr. Blobby
 
Leshy's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Belgium
Posts: 8,271
Leshy has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.Leshy has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.Leshy has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.Leshy has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.Leshy has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.Leshy has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.Leshy has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.Leshy has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.Leshy has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.Leshy has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.Leshy has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.
Have you tried replacing the sound card with another, or putting this soundcard into another box? That should give confirmation of whether it's your soundcard buggering up, or whether it's another component, like the mobo.
__________________
http://www.leshy.net
Leshy is offline   Reply With Quote
Unread 8 Nov 2002, 14:11   #5
meglamaniac
Born Sinful
 
meglamaniac's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Loughborough, UK
Posts: 4,059
meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.meglamaniac has ascended to a higher existance and no longer needs rep points to prove the size of his e-penis.
I havn't got another box handy - I'm at uni and everyone else in this flat who owns a computer owns a laptop.

I would if I could.

__________________
Worth dying for. Worth killing for. Worth going to hell for. Amen.
meglamaniac is offline   Reply With Quote
Unread 8 Nov 2002, 16:13   #6
CjC
Throwing Shapes
 
CjC's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2000
Posts: 797
CjC has a brilliant futureCjC has a brilliant futureCjC has a brilliant futureCjC has a brilliant futureCjC has a brilliant futureCjC has a brilliant futureCjC has a brilliant futureCjC has a brilliant futureCjC has a brilliant futureCjC has a brilliant futureCjC has a brilliant future
Have you tried simply putting the soundcard into a different slot. When My machine decides to be an arse and juggles all the IRQ's around etc.. I just remove all the PCI cards and swap em about. This forces windows and the bios to go "Ooo, new stuff" and reload drivers and configs.

9 times out of 10 this works, however sometimes certain apps have to be reinstalled as the software doesnt see them properly (Firewall software hates net cards being moved).
__________________
Time is an Illusion, Lunchtime doubly so.
CjC is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Forum Jump


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 07:18.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2002 - 2018