Acpi Corruption

[relicwre]

Last week I lost my 4-year-old board, a PCCHIPS M810LR, due to an ACPI corruption from this program.

System is as follows:
Athlon 1.1GHz
XP SP2
512MB PC133
(ask for more info)

I've done lots of DVDs with this program and DVD Decrpyter in the past and had absolutely no problems whatsoever with it until now.

I got another board, an M811 and put the same hardware on that board. It ran fine lastnight until this morning when I left for work while it did the job and it CORRUPED MY NEW BOARD.

Any suggestions or fixes as to what I can do to possibly save ONE board because I'm not dishing out more money on anymore hardware.

[blutach]

This is the first time I have heard that DVD Shrink has killed hardware! You say you have done plenty of other backups without trouble. So, something else is wrong. The hardware experts may be able to help you.

Regards

[anonymez]

first i've heard of shrink killing hardware too. methinks this should be moved to the computing sub-forum

what exactly happens? can you post the error message?

acpi is a power management interface, and doesn't really have too many useful advantages (though there are some issues with older hardware not being able to use DMA when its not enabled). if you can get into the bios, or boot to windows at all, turn acpi off, then do a 'windows xp repair' by popping in your cd when you boot to windows. the repair is essential if you wish to try disabling/enabling acpi.

edit: also, this link may be of great use http://www.stud.fernuni-hagen.de/q39...ms.cgi?forum=5

PS: have you tried getting your money back/servicing it?

[relicwre]

Well being I sometimes can't catch an error message, it had to do with NTOSKRNL then ACPI.SYS and just random dumps. The system RAM is still good so I counted that out. I also just RMA'd it so it's going back tomorrow or Saturday. The PCChips Lottery has nothing anyways, I've already read the entire M8XX section.

[anonymez]

good. let us know how it goes

btw, you might also want to buy a better quality, or more well-known brand motherboard (makes for more users, thus more known issues, and more support, not to mention much better quality than 'pc chips' )next time, such as nforce, asus, abit, msi etc.

[Taelon]

Bad Caps!

Last week I lost my 4-year-old board...

DVDShrink didn't kill your board. It died, likely from leaking capacitors. Unfortunately even the big name mobo companies had problems because of Taiwanese vendors who used a bogus stolen electrolyte recipe in their Low-ESR capacitors. You can read the whole story here. This problem affected so many people that there was even talk of class action suits against MSI, ABIT and others. Most of the big mobo manufacturers provided some type of extended warranties after the problems were publicized.

Unfortunately problems related to these crappy capacitors still existed in boards manufactured as recently as 2 or even 1 year ago. There currently are several businesses whose sole existence is to provide quality replacement capacitors for the techies who want to do it themselves and/or will replace bad caps for you.

Here are a few examples:

http://www.BadCaps.com

http://www.computekinc.us

http://www.motherboardrepair.com

Bottom line is don't expect any mobo manufactured over a year ago to last longer than a year since it likely has crappy caps.

[nwg]

DVD Shrink cannot kill hrdware. I am sure I would have heard something before as, I have been using Shrink since the day it came out in June 2003.

Some people have had problems with excessive heat but that is down to not enough ventilation/faulty hardware.

I have seen that badcaps site before. My motherboard recently went as well (Gigabyte 7VAXP). It was from bad caps but blown a chip on the board which made the box fill up with smoke.

[relicwre]

I could just send one of you this board and you'll see what I mean. It's certainly not caps.

[blutach]

@relicwre

I'd be very interested to know how the software did it.

Regards

[Taelon]

I could just send one of you this board and you'll see what I mean. It's certainly not caps.

I take it that you are saying there are signs that something else on the board is fried. This doesn't mean the caps weren't the reason that component failed, if voltage spikes got past the voltage regulation stage it could possibly fry any component in your system including the CPU, Memory, Video Card, Drives, etc. But it doesn't matter where the initial failure occured, I only mentioned bad caps because it's a known issue with older hardware.

I don't mean to be harsh, and believe me I'm the cheapest person I know, but for me, being cheap means only buying after researching what will best suit my needs and only buying when I can get a 'good deal'. The simple fact is that your mobo is not only cheap, but low quality, it only costs $30 new! I'm guessing your system also has a generic Power Supply that would burst into flames if pushed near the ratings on it's nameplate, and you likely have inadequate cpu and case cooling.

Ok, I've probably just pissed you off, but let me tell you a bit about my background. I'm a bit of an electronics hardware fanatic, years ago, I repaired and calibrated high-end electronics test equipment for the gov't for a living. After that I spent years repairing NC & CNC machine tools by a variety of manufacturers and after that, industrial robots both domestic and foreign. I've also re-engineered crappy designs to make the equipment less troublesome and more reliable. I know the difference between quality hardware and everything else. To put it frankly, your mobo is not a quality product. It was designed for light use, word processing, surfing the web, etc.

Here's the thing you need to understand, encoding is extremely processor intensive, whether it's audio or video. While encoding, your system will be pushed to it's maximum with the CPU running at 100% load for the duration of the process, if there is a weak link in your system, it will fail.

You want to blame DVDShrink, but it's only software. Software can't kill hardware, generally speaking. (There are hacks that can make a hard drive thrash itself to death, and I can program a robot to repeatedly smash itself into a column or wall, but that's not what I'm talking about). I would put money on what appears to be a simple fact, your hardware just can't handle the task, and would fail in a similar manner if you ran SuperPI or Memtest86 or any other stress test for 24 hours straight. If you think about it, the costs and lost use of sending the mobo back every time it fails will quickly add up to, or surpass what it would have cost you to purchase a better quality mobo in the first place.

end of sermon

[nwg]

It is not worth spending cheap on the motherboard. Is it the heart of the computer and needs to be decent quality.

My Gigabyte board was £120 when new and that still went after only 18 months (not bad caps).

[blutach]

I'm the cheapest person I know

Believe him on this point - he's still on dial-up!!!

As well Taelon, there are special quotes to use for "sermons" (see forum rule 84A(1)(c)(iii))

Regards

[Taelon]

hey blu, I'll start using those special 'smilies' for my sermons when LT learns how to use [ QUOTE ] & [ /QUOTE ]

[blutach]

That's a hangover from the old days. LT is showing he's an Old Timer, that's all.

Regards

[relicwre]

Six of the caps on the old board by the CPU harness are swollen. Two on the new board that died just now have leaked and theres a little bit of fluid around the edges of the top.

Taelon, I've pulled caps, resistors, diodes and things from boards long ago for other use. If I can easily replace these, then I could get it working again or will it involve more work?