Drive corruption during stage 1 install. Look inside.

Mankane · n00b Joined: 22 Mar 2003 Posts: 27

I've been putting a new system together with following:
Gigabyte GA-7VRXP motherboard (kt333/vt8233a)
Athlon XP 1800+
256 MB Crucial PC2700
Maxtor 45 gig hd
No overclocking, more than adequate cooling (120mm case fan, 80mm fan on an SK-7 heatsink); cpu temp is 27 celsius, case 35 (as reported by the bios)

Using windows I get filesystem corruption. While trying to do the stage 1 install I get constant messages about message digest not matching or that the .bz2 file is corrupt, even though it unpacked and compiled fine before the glibc build (but not after). I have tried a different hard drive, different cables and switching between the onboard via and promise controllers. Same problems. When I stuck the drive into my dad's hp, it worked flawlessy. So it is not the drive or cable.

When I had first put the machine together I had run the extended test memtest86 overnight. No errors. I think this rules out the cpu and ram.

Does everyone agree that the motherboard is the culprit? I might be buying a new one today. Thanks for checking!

Charlie

AlterEgo · Veteran Joined: 25 Apr 2002 Posts: 1619

I'd say the power supply b0rks under varying load.

If you can, try and monitor the voltages, especially Vcore and 5 and 12 V for drastic changes when the load on your PC is changing.
Gkrellm/lm_sensors would be great for this in linux, cpucool would do the trick under W*nd*ws.

Mankane · n00b Joined: 22 Mar 2003 Posts: 27

I don't have any OS running well at this point so I can't really get a monitoring program going. What I am going to do though is steal back my old power supply that did a stage 1 build fine. Thanks for the suggestion.

BTW, my power supply is an Antec TruePower 350.

Mankane · n00b Joined: 22 Mar 2003 Posts: 27

Ok, with my old 300w enlight ps in, stage 1 completes without problem. I'm going to run it again just to be sure I just didn't get lucky (it happened a few times only to come back later and haunt me). But I'm confident that we've solved this problem. BTW, it's an Antec 350w SmartPower, not TruePower like I mentioned above. Brand new too..........

Thanks for the help.

Charlie