system hangs on my new box

SomeGuy1337 · 2007-08-28 00:52:43

Hey
i bought a brand new computer last week but haven't got to use it much as i have been unable to get anything other than windows xp working on it.
specs are
asus p5k (standard p5k)
intel e6750
xfx 8800gts 320mb
2 x 1gb corsair pc6400 ddr2
2 x seagate sata hdd
sony pata dvd rw

im using onboard audio, and flashed the mobo with the latest bios

i ran 3 instances of prime95 on xp for 20hours without error
and memtest86 for 6 hours with out error

xp runs fine, but i can't seem to get linux working at all
on both ubuntu and arch using arch 2.6.22 and ubuntu 2.6.20 (i think) the system hangs within seconds of using firefox and i mean completely hang no mouse movement cant kill X and i also logged in to ssh to make sure X hasn't just locked up.
arch also hung in the command line while i was still installing stuff with pacman
im not sure whats causing the hang but firefox always causes it and as it hung in cli its not some firefox speciifc thing

ive tried messing with the acpi and pnp settings in the bios but i really have no idea when it comes to hardware and unless i want to use xp my brand new computer is useless

any suggestions would be appricated

tom5760 · 2007-08-28 01:36:50

You say it always happens with firefox? Try running firefox from a terminal, and see if you see any sort of output before your machine freezes. Also, check the files in /var/log/, especially the dmsg or X logs.

SomeGuy1337 · 2007-08-28 08:06:15

it doesn't dump any output when it hangs, it just hangs
if the cpu and mem are fine then while i am not a hardware expert i am guessing that it has to be the motherboard, i will try rolling the bios back to an earlier version or booting with acpi=off
but i couldn't find any asus bios specific issues for linux when googling, and i think someone in this forum was running a p5k se when i was looking through the forum

SomeGuy1337 · 2007-08-28 13:34:11

hmm
well i tired booting acpi=off and disabling it in bios, which didnt boot at all then pnp and acpi on in bios, booted and this time firefox even worked fine but it still hung
asus also informs you when your trying to flash your bios with an older version which is great.... however they dont have the "yes i am ware of that, please continue" option which means its HORRIBLE as they could never ever possibly conceive someone would want to do that which means i have to reset bios on mobo i think but idk if bios or even mobo is the issue.

something interesting though after going into xp it hung on the pnp + acpi 2 = on in bios
however after disabling xp runs fine again

something very screwy is going on and as all my hardware seems to check out 16hours memtest 20 hours prime95 and xp rock solid i dont think they'l take it back

while im still a linux n00b and happly duel boot windows for the purpose of gaming i now consider xp a horrible desktop os and unless i have a full screen game running i find the rest of the system unusable

SomeGuy1337 · 2007-08-30 02:50:30

well i didn't use windows much as its only there for gaming, but after using windows as a last resort i ran into some BSODs dispite 3dmark prime95 and memtest all checking out windows gets some BSODs doing mundane things like when linux hangs, and the nvidia stability utility seems to bring it down to!
so it would seem its def a hardware issue and possibly my video card

samoturk · 2007-08-30 05:08:27

I had similar problem twice. Machine just hanged. But I have an AMD.

First time it was because fan on graphics card stoped working and when it overheated, the machine hanged. So I suggest you check all the fans if they are working.

Second time it was because of RAM and cool'n'quiet (frequency scaling). When I bought another 512MB of RAM machine after some time (usualy while booting) just hanged. I thought I bought a faulty RAM, but I than accidentaly discovered that it was because two RAMs were not completely identical they somehow fell out of sync when cool'n'quiet kicked in. I disabled cool'n'quiet and it works flawlessly. You should try disabling frequency scaling. I think it is called speedstep in intel machines.

SomeGuy1337 · 2007-09-04 11:03:52

FIXED XD!
it was the memories, basically the corsair memory didnt play nice with my motherboard, so i switched for some Kingston

rgr · 2007-09-09 08:57:23

SomeGuy1337

Same MB, same problems.

Your Windows problems are fixed, but what about installing Linux? Did you manage?

I have almost exactly the same issue. A bog standard XP works fine, Linux (all distros I have changed) refuses to see the DVD. Did you get it working? How?

Anyone?

Very frustrating - using XP again for something other than games will kill me!

Lone_Wolf · 2007-09-09 13:22:40

Check on which sata controller the dvd is connected and what mode the controller uses.

IDE, RAID and AHCI are typical available choices.
Linux doesn't support Ahci on all chipsets, although it works fine with the p35/ich9 controller.
If you have a second sata controller on the mb, try connecting the dvd to that one.

Also that motherboard/chipset is still rather new (less than half a year) and distros with kernels before 2.6.21 may not support it.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-08-28 00:52:43

system hangs on my new box

#2 2007-08-28 01:36:50

Re: system hangs on my new box

#3 2007-08-28 08:06:15

Re: system hangs on my new box

#4 2007-08-28 13:34:11

Re: system hangs on my new box

#5 2007-08-30 02:50:30

Re: system hangs on my new box

#6 2007-08-30 05:08:27

Re: system hangs on my new box

#7 2007-09-04 11:03:52

Re: system hangs on my new box

#8 2007-09-09 08:57:23

Re: system hangs on my new box

#9 2007-09-09 13:22:40

Re: system hangs on my new box

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