Last night, my wife told me she couldn't access my unRaid server from our PS3. During the last year, that has happened 2-3 times but I only had to reboot the darn thing and all would be OK.

 

I tried rebooting a few times and it failed every time. I was tired so I turned it off and went to bed. Today, I've been trying to get this thing working again and haven't been successful.

 

First, on top on the disks mentioned in my signature, I also have 2 WD 500 GB drives. Those are the oldest drive I currently own and although they're installed in my server, they have been unassigned for a while now as I don't trust them. I thought one of them might have gone bad so I unplugged the Sata cables from them and tried rebooting without success.

 

Some of the time, I wouldn't go pass the boot menu (unRaid and Memtest) and I would hear the monitor shutdown as if I'd turned the computer off even though the fans and the HDs were still spinning.

 

Not wanting to take any chances, I unplugged all HDs and was able to boot the server at least twice. The first time, the monitor went dead only a few minutes after booting properly. The next time, it functioned properly - without a single HD connected - for at least 15 minutes. Having reseated all cables and memory sticks, I thought everything would be fine so I properly shut it down in order to reconnect the HDs and reboot it. Guess what, it won't boot again. I've tried booting it with 1, 2 3 or 4 HD connected and it's just not happening.

 

I've tried changing USB connectors and even tried booting from a second USB drive with various rate of success. It seems that the longer I wait to power it back on, the better are my chances for a complete reboot but after a while, it freezes again.

 

So now my question is: The entire house is running on Apple computers so I don't have spare PC parts to play with. Since something if most definitely wrong, where do I go from now ? Change the CPU, the MB, the memory sticks or the PS

Try booting with just one memory stick, and then the other.  If it is a memory issue, it might get you booted up (on half the RAM but booted)

Sorry for the long delay but I had not had time to test and come back here. Unfortunately Joe, when it wants to boot, it boots fine with either one of the 2 sticks or with both of them all at once. However, I thought it might be a CPU over heating problem so I removed the heat sink and found out then the thermal compound looked very dry, to the point of looking and feeling like the grey scratching stuff found on lotto tickets.

 

Tomorrow, I'll go to my trusty PC parts store and I'll get fresh new thermal compound and I'll reseat the heat sink and try rebooting my server and see how it reacts. I just hope I haven't fried my CPU... Should know soon enough. 

Make sure you clean off the old goo very well.  Use qtips and isopropyl alchol.  After you get the bulk of the stuff off, use 10-20 more qtips and scrub as well as you can - both the heatsink and the CPU until the qtip stays pure white after rubbing it vigorously, with force, for 20 seconds.  Use the edge of the qtip - not the tip.  There are some better ways to clean it, but if you're not shooting for an overclock, this should be fine.

 

Also wanted to mention that I have never heard of frying a CPU becuase the thermal compound wore out, but it is recommended to replace it periodically.  I lapped my CPU and HSF on my workstation and overclock the heck out of it.  Have never replaced the Arctic 5 compound.  That was about 3 years ago.  Still going strong and cool.

 

But if you have removed the HSF from the CPU you HAVE TO replace the compound.  No choice at this point.

 

Good luck!

Well, it's still a no go !!!  :'(

 

Cleaned the CPU and HS as per bjp999's procedures below, applied new TIM and rebooted. With my flash drive in one of the back USB connector, it booted up properly up to the Memtest screen and rebooted on it's own and then shut down right after having completely rebooted. Tried rebooting once more and it wouldn't work.

 

Put the flash drive in on of the front USB connector and it booted up properly and started checking the parity then at 1.3 %, it shut down again.

 

Again, by shutting down, I mean all the fans (CPU and case) still work, every thing seems normal but the screen shuts down - as if no more video was being transmitted - and I can't log in or access shares from another computer.

 

Damn this is frustrating !!! Not having any spare parts is another problem. I can't switch parts trying to find what's going on and I'm not going to buy another full set of part just for this one time situation.

 

Anybody has had something similar happen like this ?

I understand your frustration, Seen similar problems... I think you could try the power supply.... See if you can cool it down some.. Power supplys can get hot and if they do they can kill parts of the power but not all the power.

 

Do the hard drives power down?

If you have a meter look at the 5V side of a plug when it dies what is the voltage?

If you dont have a meter do you have any thing pluged in to the USB that has a constant light? Is it still lit? is it dim?

 

Hope this helps

Clearly you have a hardware problem. Likely the PSU or the motherboard. Based on your symptoms I am thinking that a cap on your motherboard is failing.

 

Not good news I know. Only way to figure out is to swap parts or take to a computer store. There is a local Mom and Pop near me that I use for stuff like this. They charge like $50 to do a diagnosis. Might be worth checking out someone similar that is local to you and has good references.

 

Good luck!

I understand your frustration, Seen similar problems... I think you could try the power supply.... See if you can cool it down some.. Power supplys can get hot and if they do they can kill parts of the power but not all the power.

 

Do the hard drives power down?

If you have a meter look at the 5V side of a plug when it dies what is the voltage?

If you dont have a meter do you have any thing pluged in to the USB that has a constant light? Is it still lit? is it dim?

 

Hope this helps

Before testing it, I had doubts because it seemed to stay cool to the touch and the air coming out of the exaust fan was cool too but you never know with this kind problems right ? So I rebooted it once more after letting it cool for a while. I had it doing it's parity check for 10 minutes before it shut down again and I can report that it stayed cool the whole time and neither the 5 volt nor the 12 volt rails failed. Same thing for the USB ports.

 

Clearly you have a hardware problem. Likely the PSU or the motherboard. Based on your symptoms I am thinking that a cap on your motherboard is failing.

 

Not good news I know. Only way to figure out is to swap parts or take to a computer store. There is a local Mom and Pop near me that I use for stuff like this. They charge like $50 to do a diagnosis. Might be worth checking out someone similar that is local to you and has good references.

 

Good luck!

Since I have ruled the PSU out, I guess that leaves me with a motherboard issue. These Gigabyte boards have a 3 year warranty so I will send it back to the company but the newer versions of the board only have onboard 4 SATA connectors !?!?!?! I currently use 4 but will need to expand to another disk soon since and I don't feel like starting to replace my 1 TB drive just now. Also, I'm not sure I wanna go back to Gigabyte with this HPA issue. Maybe I'll put it on eBay once I receive the new one from the company.

 

In the mean time, that ASUS M4A78L-M mobo (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131608)seems pretty interesting so I'm very tempted to buy it. Any other affordable motherboard I should be looking at ? I want at least 6 onboard SATA connectors and great durability.

That ASUS board is a good choice.  ASUS makes a few other similar boards that area all around the same price, but for simplicity's sake I would probably go with the one you chose as it lets you reuse your DDR2 RAM.

I have a ASUS M4A785-M AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard, and it is rock solid booted correctly the first time every time. 6 sata ports too.

 

At new egg it is on sale 69.99 plus 10 percent off with promo code MBTEN923.

Just pulled the plug on this Asus M4A785-M mobo. Here in Canada it costs 79.95 $ but I get free shipping so it's a good deal. I'm off to start disassembling the Gigabyte motherboard so I can send it back under warranty ASAP.

 

I'll let you guys know how my server is doing once I get my new motherboard.

I got my new mobo 2 days ago and installed it last night. Holy crap, this thing rocks !!! It boots much faster then my previous Gigabyte mobo and it just feel much more everything. I was a bit numb when I saw all those options in the Bios but I managed to figure them out and everything is working fine now.

 

Now I need to go change my signature and everything will be fine and dandy !