Silly Hardware Issues Fixed!

My latest mini-hardware problems have been solved! I think anyway. I suddenly started getting random lockups when going into 3d Games. I would start up UT2k4, or Quake3, and a few seconds in I’d hear a click from the hard drive (like a park and unpark) and then it’d go on full and my system would lock up.

My first thought was that there was something wrong with the hard drive. Even though there wasn’t any similar issues when in non-3d mode, but the video card is only a few months old, and it’s been replaced before. I ran the Maxtor utility and did quick and full system scans, no go. Under a linux boot CD a badblocks scan froze up once, but then went through the first time.

Finally today I solved it! The power supply cable that is plugged into the hard drive was also plugged into the video card. Going into 3D mode pulled that extra little bit of juice which pulled it away from the hard drive, causing it to reset and fubar everything up. Due no doubt to the less than high quality power supply. Connecting the video card to the same power cable as the CDROM seemed to solve all the problems.

I rock!

Posted by

Category: Hardware

3 Comments on “Silly Hardware Issues Fixed!”

  1. “noticed one of the splitters I used”
    I’ve come to the conclusion now that splitters are so bad the should be outlawed. If you need more connectors, then you need a bigger PS to power things. No wonder a supplier of mine says “No warrenty, use at own risk” (or similar) on any invoivice that has a power splitter.
    PS good detective work!

  2. Wow. I don’t think I would have come up with that solution! I’ve always thought that all the cables pulled from exactly the same source… obviously a bad assumption 🙂
    Good hack dude!
    Oh, and why do I now have to have an email address to leave a comment? Spam control?

  3. Yea, trying to cut it back now. Course, they’ve gone to trackback spam now, yay.
    Anyway, the only reason I figured it out was my ATI card bitched that it wasn’t plugged into power. I knew it was but figured I’d look. When I poked around I noticed one of the splitters I used (I have 3 in there now due to the a) lack of PS leads and b) amount of stuff (extra fans, etc)) was hot. I started pulling them out to see if I could get it down to less splitters and then noticed the line from PS to HD to splitter, to video card. 2+2 = power problems for HD.