I've had nothing but trouble over the years with my wife's Shuttle computer. It was running fine for a year or so now, after replacing the PSU, but now it's doing another odd thing.

I'm attempting to simply set up a fresh OS install, but the computer is shutting down. At the moment, I can keep it turned on for about 3 minutes, then it just shuts off (almost the opposite of the problem I was having before!).

I don't even have to be doing anything to have this happen. The last couple times, I just went into the BIOS, waited, and eventually it just shut off. Those times, I watched the CPU temps to see if they were slowly building too high. Correct me if I'm wrong, but 56 degrees isn't outrageous for a Shuttle, right? It seemed to waver between about 54 and 59, mostly staying on 56.

To further clarify, when the computer shuts down, it doesn't let me turn it back on. There's a red light on the motherboard, and no matter how often I press the power button, it won't let me turn it on again. The only way to turn it on again is by unplugging the power cable, or by holding the power button down until the red light shuts off and then pressing the power button again.

Any thoughts? What might be failing?

It may well be overheating. I have several shuttles, and I have to blow the dust out of the PSU, main fan, chipset fan, and heatpipes about every six months. Shuttles seem to collect dust, and the symptoms are often what you're describing.

Pca

Is there a motherboard manual that describes what that red light means?

Thanks for the input guys. I think I sussed out the problem.

At one point, I had attempted to put an Athlon XP 3200+ CPU in there, but the motherboard only supports just shy of that after firmware updates. I replaced it with the 2100+ CPU I'd originally removed from the computer and things run MUCH smoother (well, that it runs at all is an improvement). The CPU temps are reading in the high 20's, too, so that's great.

I was easily able to get Windows 7 to install. I'm repurposing the PC as an HTPC and want to try a bunch of OSs to see which one I like the best. I'll be dual- or tripple-booting it with Windows 7 for Media Center, Ubuntu with Boxee, and maybe Sage or MythTV. Any opinions on those options? I really think that MS has a great product in Media Center, and it would of course jive the best with the other computers on the network. I'm not above trying other options, though.

Check the capacitors on the motherboard. Every Shuttle motherboard I've had ended up dying because of bad caps.

Wow, more computer problems. Unpleasant coincidence that my PVR server has also acted up again. The POS Crucial memory seems to have gone tits up again. And the ASUS mobo can also complain of "invalid overclocking settings" and "needs a new BIOS" after power cycling the machine.

My solution is a muti-step process and step number one happened last night.

I snapped the first Crucial dimm in half. That allowed the system to run over night. Next I will buy a new complete PC from some crappy vendor like Dell. I'll get garbage hardware, but I'll get a warranty that will allow me to have the whole thing replaced or repaired for years to come.

My next step is to snap the other dimm and then crack the whole motherboard in half.

I'm thinking about sending the fixed parts back to their manufacturers. I'll reiterate what I've said in the thread I started about this long ago... ASUS = CRAP. And now as I see, Crucial = CRAP. Selling low-quality RAM with invalid specifications posing as higher-quality kit is a pretty shady way to do business.

That said, my Shuttle system (SS51G-something from like 8 years ago) is still running like a champ.

I would say that I've had good luck with Corsair, but I have another thread brewing as I write this I just have a few things I need to try first, and it might not be a problem with the memory (though I kind of hope it is because the alternatives suck). Ugh.

I definitely think my next computer is going to be a Dell. A self-built pc is just not worth the hassles (and yes, Bitt, you get to deliver a big "I told you so" ).

No. As explained before, you're getting exactly what is advertised. Not their fault if you're not running it at the recommended settings. If you want RAM that runs at standard voltages and standard timings then pay more for it and stop buying the cheap stuff which needs increased voltage.

No, Trevor, in fact I'm running it at UNDER advertised rates/settings and have been all along. I thought I was quite clear about this in the previous thread.

Its advertised and promoted at the higher over-clocked ratings and it's not disclosed that this RAM is being pushed above its specs to achieve those ratings.



This memory is sold as DDR2 1066MHz memory. I've tried it at its advertised specs, but have been running with the computer's BIOS set to "auto" for everything which lets it run at DDR2 800MHz.

This is the type of comment you will see at *ALL* the review sites (which I'd only discovered after my last problem):



Crucial is just Micron's junk consumer brand. And as far as ASUS goes, I've never not had one of their mobos go bad. All this junk is built for the tweaker who replaces all their parts multiple times per year unfortunately.

No idea. Not going to dig through that massive thread. I don't know what exactly you're doing to it but I'd just throw the entire system into the trash and start over from scratch. Something somewhere in there is killing components regularly. Your attempts at fixing it piecemeal aren't working.


It is advertised as DDR2 1066MHz memory but with some specific voltage requirement. It is being overclocked but they are disclosing this fact. Every major memory manufacturer does this. It isn't specific to Crucial. If you want DDR2 1066MHz memory that runs at standard voltage then pay more for it.


Never had any problems with Crucial or Corsair memory.

But it isn't advertised as requiring a higher clock. If you search hard enough, you'll find the information on some sites (it may even appear easily on some others). But it isn't obvious nor is it even available at all on some sites, including NewEgg.com nor the place I purchased it from locally. Once bought, you can see "2.0v" on the sticker, but there's nothing in the packaging nor literature that says this is an "overclocked" rate. One may just assume that it's a 2v part and that the mobo can deliver 2v (which it can).

It was priced at "around" the same price as other memory. I would have most definitely bought another part if I had known the facts about these modules. I simply (and blindly I suppose) trusted the "Crucial" brand.

My experiences only echo what others are seeing - rampant failure of all Ballistix branded modules in a wide assortment of configurations and motherboards. They're guaranteed for life if you feel like wasting time and money on postage. I think I'll send Crucial the "pieces."

I've been building PCs for 15 years and have never had any other memory go bad. ASUS mobos yes, but memory, no.

Not Crucial's fault if the resellers aren't advertising it correctly. Looking at the newegg.com site, they clearly show what voltage each memory module requires. Whether they've added this feature after you've purchased your memory I do not know.

You're complaining about Crucial because you didn't know that 2.0V is a higher voltage than standard.

I'm complaining about crucial because their products don't work reliably at any voltage.

The parts should work reliably at 2.0v, but the problem is that they're not actually 2.0v parts. Running at that voltage you're overclocking the parts.

But again, there was nothing indicating the voltage of the memory on the site of the store I bought it from nor on the packaging - only on a sticker on the modules themselves. Newegg at the moment do not specify any details about voltage on the page for the RAM I have BTW. But again, that's all irrelevant. It's up to Crucial to sell a product that's not complete garbage. And I've been through 4 modules that indicate they can't do this.

I'm not even sure the prebuilt Dell route is going to provide a better experience. Sure, you get a warranty and one manufacturer to deal with, but it's still a hassle when the components keep failing.

Over the years, I've watched the following Dell systems just fall apart:
1. A friends Inspiron 5150 laptop from a few years ago. It was so bad, Dell lost a class action lawsuit about it. Of course, the lawsuit was well after my friend had junked the system due to being unreliable.
2. Multiple Dell Inspiron 9100 laptops owned by myself and friends. Every single one of them had at least one failed power supply. Beyond that, I had a bad IDE controller, one had bad memory, and one failed both a graphics card and the hard drive.
3. Too many to count Dell XPS desktops needing motherboard replacements. Various models of the 600 and 700 series have just failed to work under a development workflow. SATA speeds are so horrible, a Velociraptor performed just as badly as the stock hard drives. It's bad enough that I know two companies that have dumped them and bought the Precision workstations.
4. Dell XPS laptops, M1300 series. Also saw plenty of these fail, though this time it's NVidia's fault with their bad GPUs. Vista also didn't help the situation, because when the GPUs weren't busy failing, wireless networking was horribly unreliable. XP on the same hardware worked fine.

I think the race to the bottom in general has really hurt the industry as a whole.

Something about your system or environment is causing failures.


The parts are tested for operation at 1066MHz at 2.0V. It doesn't mean that they're overclocked.

Intel and AMD have varying CPU core voltages depending on what speed grading the CPU is. The 3.0GHz part might require 0.3V more than the 2.5GHz part. Is it also overclocked in your opinion?

I can't say that I'd recommend Dell. I had a hell of a time trying to order some Dell Mini 9's where they simply failed to fulfill the order and never bothered to tell us why we never got anything. (We canceled the order, went to a local store, and bought HP netbooks instead.)

I certainly can recommend going with some sort of high-volume integrator. That doesn't necessarily have to be Dell. It could be GamePC or Apple or anybody else. Just find somebody who does enough volume that they'll have some hope of knowing that a given batch of {RAM, disk, etc.} is busted and will have that issue sorted out before you ever make your order.

Probably better that you got the HPs anyhow. The Dell mini 9 keyboards are horrible, worse then even most netbooks. For some reason Dell decided to misalign the top letter row. They do make decent hackintosh netbooks though.

The HP 2xxx series was what I eyed for a bit. For a netbook, it seemed well built, but with the oddity of having the mouse buttons on the sides of the trackpad.

Ugh, I hate that. I've been a huge fan of my MSI Wind, so I would probably get another of those.

I haven't had any of the problem that you guys have had with Dell, though I'm certain this is another one of those situations like we've had many times on this board before: "I've had nothing but problems with Seagate/Western Digital/Maxtor hard drives. I had 12 of them fail on me in two hours. Never buy from them!" I personally see a lot of problems with HP's hardware (especially laptops), and they overload their systems with software (though they all do that to some degree).

I'll agree, though, that the narrowing margins in the industry are a big problem. Companies tend to skimp in areas that consumers don't realize (most consumers find it difficult to make the connection between their $300 desktop computer and the poor phone support they get when it breaks).

In the end, though, I think I'd rather take my chances there than do another self-build. Down the line, when the finances of a young married guy trying to start a business become a little more stable, perhaps I'll get a Mac and at least put Windows on it For now I'll live with the computer I built and mostly love. I'll post about the rest in another thread

This is one of my main barriers to ordering HP. I can take my generic Dell XP disk and get rid of vista and end up with a nice clean install in about 45 minutes. I haven't ordered a lot of HPs, but I've never seen any similar OS install disks, and usually all you've got is a restore partition, which is useless to consumers once the hard drive crashes. It's also my experience that they come with a an extraordinary amount of crap, but for all I know it's the same amount as Dells come with, but I'd never know.

Is there an easy way to get a clean XP installation on a new HP?

Matthew

PC Decrapifier?

PC Decrapifier is fantastic. I've always been impressed with it, especially for its ability to remove Norton and McAfee from a new system, which is no small matter.

Sadly, Matthew_k, Dell does not provide you with a disc either. At least they haven't in the last several new machines I've seen people get. Fortunately, the last time I checked you can just call them up and have them send you the restore disc. It won't be the full Windows install disc you USED to get way back in the day, but you're right, it's way better than a recovery partition.

HP, on the other hand, charges you something like $15 for a freaking recovery disc.

All the HP machines we've ordered at work lately have come with restore DVD/CD, and it's also been possible to downgrade to XP Pro without getting all the crap at the same time. I can't remember the model number, but it's a microtower PC.

The spec for DDR2-1066 (PC2-8500) is 1.8v. Applying a greater voltage to achieve the spec is over-clocking, whether it's tested or not. Again, reports of the Crucial parts failing are rampant on the net. This isn't an isolated case with my system. These parts are being pushed above their nominal operating parameters to achieve the specs of higher quality parts.

CPUs and GPUs are often binned down, but that's just about the reverse of what we're seeing with the memory we're discussing. That is, when a part doesn't pass testing at its designed clock rates, it is rebadged or relabeled and clocked lower while being sold at a lower price point. Same goes for blown transistors and pipes, etc. Case in point, AMD's 3-core chips and more Radeon products than I can count.

It does appear this over-spec clocking is the case with most memory (of this type) out there right now. A search on NewEgg for DDR2-1066 at 1.8v yields only two products. There's a large selection of DDR2-800 at 1.8v. The Ballistix are overclocked DDR2-800 parts and nothing more.

I give up. Feel free to continue to rage at Crucial because you didn't know.

I don't count business builds in this. Most of those that I've seen either come with the restore discs or they were ordered to. You can also order any number of Dells from their business side and get XP Pro downgrades.

I was talking about the home user, who is bombarded with preinstalled software and left to hang when their hard disk fails, having to wait for a recovery disc to be shipped to them.

The HP and Sony laptops I've used all had the ability to create a set of recovery discs from the hidden partition on the HD. Whilst it is a hassle to have to do it, it still beats having to order one at cost. Some users might not know that it is important or even necessary to do this however.

Back to Matt with the Media Center questions... I still think the best way to run an HTPC is in a client-server fashion. Let the PC record, store aggregate (or whatever) your media files and use one or more streaming devices to actually control playback and connect to your TV(s) and/or stereo system(s). Whether the streamers be Sage, Popcorn, WD, etc.

Yeah, that's definitely my opinion too. I was just trying it this way because I had the computer so it was either "free HTPC" or "$200 extender." Free won out, but...

I had the computer all set up and attached to my home theater. Unfortunately I had forgotten about one thing about Media Center: I had to deal with codecs again. It's incredible what you forget when you've been using VLC for years. On my desktop PCs, I usually install Windows, install VLC, and that's it for getting set up for video.

Then there were the issues of:
- noise
- multiple interfaces for my wife to use
- all the other little tweaking needed for any HTPC

I briefly considered preordering this, but changed my mind. For now I'm going to stick with my Tivo for getting media off my PC. pyTivo does a good enough job.

In the future, I'd love to try having a central Media Center server recording and serving the video, with extenders on all the TVs, but for now I'll stick with my trusty Tivo.

There are three options.

1) Use the restore function, which uses the data in the restore partition to make your HP factory fresh. (with all the crapware)

2) Before problems happen, take the option and spend the time needed to have the HP burn restore CDs. Though for some stupid reason, the option to burn a CD is only allowed once. Restore from rescue CDs also makes you HP factory fresh.

3) If desperate enough, you can buy restore CD's from HP. ~$30us

But all of those three options leave you with a crapware infested Vista install. Dell packages OS install disks with most(all?) systems. It's a plain XP/Vista install except it's not subject to activation as long as it's installed on any Dell. The XP CD gets a workout with all the vista machines dell keeps shipping.

If you're talking about home computers, I haven't seen a restore disc included in about 4 years. At most (and even more annoyingly), I've seen them include a friggin' picture of the restore disc on a little glossy piece of paper, informing you how you can order one.


I believe (correct me if I'm wrong, people), that the disc sees a special partition on the drive for verification.

In my experience, it checks the DMI (or BIOS) data. There are fields specifically for "Manufacturer".

The DMI check would be the basic one that prevents you from going past the initial screen on a recovery disc. The actual activation of Windows has moved on now. I've not seen a partition check though.

Vista and Windows 7 use special certificates called SLICs which are embedded into the BIOS now. Each manufacturer gets a SLIC for each edition of Windows they bundle. This hasn't stopped people since there seems to be a growing number who modify their BIOS to include one of many OEM Windows SLICs.

nVidia SLI support uses a similar mechanism to enable itself on non nVidia chipsets. If the manufacturer pays the necessary license fee then they include the certificate into the BIOS. Again, people have been busy modifying their BIOS to enable this.

Well, regardless of the details, it's all BIOS/firmware related, and replacing a hard drive doesn't make it impossible to recover from those discs.

Wow, this reminds me of someone trying putting a lock on a chain-link fence to keep out flood waters.

Pretty much. At least breaking in via the serial number route is usually detectable from either using a known bad key or detecting all the patches to the activation system. The OEM activation method however isn't quite as easy to detect unless they start messing around with a big table of known BIOS hashes or known hardware for each OEM config.

They'd likely come out ahead if they just stopped bothering.