Well, luckily it wasn’t my primary PC, but it is still a setback for me. It is definitely some kind of hardware issue, because it would freeze randomly during POST (Power On Self Test) as well as in Windows. I was particularly annoyed by this as I was digitally recording stuff from my old audio cassettes when this started. I assumed that it was because the sound card failed, but removing the sound card from the system did not fix the problem. I went through the normal drill, removing components until I found the faulty component - it appeared to be a bad stick of RAM, but that theory was proven wrong when the freezing problem recurred during my testing. It got worse also - the machine would no longer POST at power up - just a black screen!

Well, now the PC is officially down. I have narrowed the issue down to one of three things - the Power Supply, CPU, or the Motherboard. Since I don’t have any spare parts for testing, I am stuck at this point. I am looking for some inexpensive spare parts to further test. I actually hope that the CPU is what died, since that is covered by a three year warranty. If it is the motherboard, it will be a little more difficult to find a replacement since it is a Socket 478 board with an 865PE chipset. I’ll probably go to the “For Sale/Trade” forum over at the AnandTech Forums to find one.

The thing about this that bugs me the most is that I built this PC, and usually, any PC which I build never acts up. Oh, well. There is a first time for everything, and there is no way of completely avoiding faulty hardware. (Not affordably, anyway.) At my last job, I built several PCs (The other techs did as well). When I completed and tested each PC, I etched my initials into each one. I did this in case any of them failed, so I could learn if I did anything wrong, or if it was just faulty hardware. As far as I know, none of them failed during my employment there.

I must have “Techie’s Pride”. But now that pride has been hurt! Oh well. It is a learning experience! I’ll provide an update to this entry when I fix the PC. Stay tuned!

UPDATE!

I have determined the point of failure to be the CPU. I am actually quite surprised, since outright CPU failures are rare. I obtained a spare CPU and swapped it with the original, and the system booted right up, no problem! Maybe the Pentium 4 3.20E Ghz was too fast for its own good, electromigration and all. For the record, I have never overclocked this chip. Now to go through Intel’s RMA procedure…

I’ll let you guys know how that goes as well! Laterz!

UPDATE 2!! (Groan…)

Apparently the motherboard has failed as well. Now it won’t boot up with the 3.2E GHz replacement I recieved from Intel, nor with the 2.4GHz part I originally used for testing the system. At first I thought that maybe Intel sent me a bad part, but I decided to obtain a spare motherboard for testing first. I got one based on the Intel 875P chipset from ebay at quite a nice price.

Lo and behold, with the new board in play, the new chip works. The most annoying this is that the old flaky motherboard may have been the only point of failure, and booted properly only by chance the two times I used the 2.4GHz part. But that is why I tested it twice, to eliminate chance! Arrgh! Without the old chip for further testing, I may never know. Well, the system is finally back up. That ends this chapter, and I won’t miss dealing with a frustrating two point system failure.

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