Hello,

I recently BUILT a machine and have a few questions about the inevitable unforseeable screw-ups that come along with it.

1. I had to partition a 250 GB Western Digital drive into 137 GB and 113 GB respectively. The reasons for this are pretty silly, I think, so I'll skip that for now. In any case, I have another one on the way. I want to put them in RAID. Can I put two HDDs in RAID while they are partitioned? I obviously don't know the answer, but something tells me it isn't the best idea...

2. Since the first day I completed the build, the comp. has been suffering from random complete reboots, i.e. it boots DOWN to the initial start-up in BIOS and boots back up independently to WINXP as if nothing happened. I've noticed this happened when using my web browser (Firefox, but I doubt that little badass is the culprit) and when using Yahoo! Messenger. Recently the reboots have started happening when playing movies in WMP, and BF2 has been suffering load-up problems as well. The load-up problems may be UNRELATED, though. And twice, I've gotten a prompt in windows warning about a "Memory Sanity Check". This got me thinking the problem was with my DDR2. So I took one stick of RAM out, and have gotten only a single reboot since, whereas with both sticks of 1GB I would get between two and five reboots every day. I switched the sticks around and had the same result, so it seems neither stick of RAM was corrupted or that when used in tandem they tend to screw up. But since I got the single reboot with just one stick of RAM, it made me think it was a power issue. When I have both DDR2s in, maybe they're drawing too much power. The single reboot I got with just one stick may have happened because in that instance my comp was drawing more power than normal (VGA card, processor, etc.)

I have fully updated BIOS, and drivers and firmware are solid as far as I can tell. I can't think of any conflicting programs that may be causing this reboot problem, nor is the problem specific to any single, absolute program (because it has happened using three separate, completely different progs.) I think it's hardware doing it. And I think it's either incompatible RAM, or a power issue. I thought a 550 watt PSU would handle all my needs, especially since it's advertised as being SLI capable and whatnot. Anyhow, enough with the small-talk.

Here's my SPECS:

CASE: Lian LI PC-65B Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

OPTICAL DRIVE: LITE-ON DVD Burner Black ATAPI/E-IDE Model SOHW-1693S - Retail

MOTHERBOARD: ASUS P5ND2-SLI Deluxe Socket T (LGA 775) Nvidia nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

POWER SUPPLY: Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 ATX12V 550W Power Supply - Retail

PROCESSOR: Intel Pentium 4 630 Prescott 800MHz FSB LGA 775 EM64T Processor Model BX80547PG3000F - Retail

VGA CARD: XFX N 7800GT 256M PVT70GUDF7 R

RAM: GeIL GX22GB4300DC 2GB Kit DDR2-533 PC4300 DDR 2 Series Dual Channel Memory w/Heat Spreader Retail

CPU COOLER: ZALMAN Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler CNPS9500 LED

HARD DRIVE: Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Additional note: GEIL RAM is not listed in my MBs manual as a "Reliable Vendor", and that may be true...but I've come to realize that ASUS seems to know very little about the products they release. The P5ND2-SLI Deluxe has some kick-*censored* capabilities, but they SEEMED to have released it WELL BEFORE working out any bugs, and do little about fixing them with BIOS updates....anywho, thank you very much in advance for having the patience to get through all that crap I wrote above to get to the end here. The hardware companies rock when it comes to innovation, but it always seems the end-users are the ones that end up helping each other out.

Thanks



I had a similar problem some time ago where the computer randomly rebooted. The problem turned out to be a difference between the MB manual and the actual motherboard as to placement of clock speed jumper settings. What this caused was overclocking of my chip. I reset the jumpers to achieve the proper clock speed and never had another problem with it. The script on the motherboard is so small that sometimes you need a magnifying glass to read it. Also your Main Processor chip may be at fault or not getting proper cooling.