PC DL Deluxe - After three years, system won't boot and gives "System failed due to CPU overclocking

So I'm about to toss my very expensive computer off the roof and hoping
someone can help. In 2003 I built my dream system as per the
following:

Asus PC DL Deluxe
Dual Xeon 2.66Ghz
2GB Mushkin RAM

I do not and have never overclocked this system. Everything is at
stock timings and has been the whole time. For three years, the system
has been rock solid. I never get bluescreens and run MemTest86
regularly. Zero errors.

All of a sudden, I am having serious problems getting this system to
boot up. Once it's up and running, everything is great. No errors, no
bugs. But if I have to reboot, I'm in for hours of headache. 9 out of
10 times on power-on I get POST beep and then nothing. If I watch
close, I can see the monitor blink the splash screen for a fraction of
a second and then go dark. If I sit there and continue alternating
between the reset switch, the front power button and the back (PSU)
power switch, it will catch and then boot up.

Earlier today I flashed the BIOS from 1007 to 1009 to see if that
helped. While it did not resolve the problem, it did change the
behavior. Now whenever it fails to boot up, the voice system comes on
and says "System failed due to CPU overclocking". Twice since then,
I've gotten it to power up and go past POST. It gets all the way up to
the Windows XP splash screen and then blacks out and gives the same
"System failed due to CPU overclocking" voice message.

So... Can anyone help??? I have passed the point of frustration with
this thing. Since it's worked for so long and then stopped, my first
instinct is that a piece of hardware died. I find it hard to believe
that it's the proc or RAM because everything works fine once it gets
booted up. I have it running MemTest86 right now with zero errors.
Part of me hopes that it's the PSU because that will be the easiest and
cheapest to replace, but I don't have any reason to believe that is the
case. When I am able to get into the BIOS settings and check Hardware
Monitor, the voltages all appear fine. So, that leaves what is
probably the problem... Dead/faulty mobo. Unfortunately, the PC DL
Deluxe is not readily available anymore or I would just switch it out
and see what happens.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Something else I can try or look at?
Do you think it really is a dead motherboard? If so, can you recommend
a source for a replacement? I can't find anything but eBay and I'm
leery of dropping $225 with no chance of return.

Thanks in advance!

 

The 'message', is one of Asus's great annoyances. It is given if the
machine fails to boot with the settings, even if these are slower than the
standard for the chip. It has nothing at all to do with 'overclocking', so
the message can really get on the nerves, with a problem like yours's....
Realistically, a piece of hardware has died at least partially. The
problem is working out what. I'd suggest seeing if you can borrow another
video card. The very first thing that has to work before you get to the
boot screen, is the video, and the failure early on, without a BIOS beep
code/error message, could easily come from this source. Also test booting,
with the IDE cables disconnected. If the machine then starts reliably, you
have a problem with one of the IDE drives. If a drive is imposing more
load on the IDE bus than it should, it can kill the machine completely,
since this links directly into the PCI bus, and can prevent BIOS's etc.,
from reading correctly...

Best Wishes

 

The first troubleshooting step should be checking electrical
connections. Have you tried removing and reseating every PCI card,
the video card, and all cables? Even though MemTest seems to run OK,
I'd even pull the DIMMs, clean their contacts, and reseat them before
going to the trouble of swapping out components.

Ron

 

Alright... Two more oddities to add.

#1. Starting a few days ago, the hard disk activity light has come on
and stayed solid. It's no longer indicating anything other than the
system is powered on.

#2. I just ran the Sandra Burn-In on the machine and noticed something
that seems odd to me. CPU1 Voltage is listed at 2.50V while CPU2
Voltage shows 3.14V. CPU2 temp is substantially higher than 1 as well
(50degC vs 42.5degC).

For what it's worth, the rest of the voltages reported show the +3.3 at
3.23V, +5 at 4.95V and +12 at 11.37V.

 

Maybe waiting a few minutes before powering up may help.

Sometimes on my P4C800E, I also get the blank screen, solid disk light
and no other activity and this seems to be caused when I power up the
system soon after it was powered down, or because the system did not
switch off cleanly after a Norton Ghost/DOS session (sometimes I have
to hold the on/off switch in for a few seconds before the system powers
down and releasing it powers the thing up again! Eventually, I manage
to switch the thing off, but that will precipitate the overclocking
message on the next power up).

My solution is to never attempt a power up within about 5 minutes of a
power down.

If I get the overclocking message (with the option to F1 into the BIOS
or F2 to load default settings), I F1 into the BIOS and Escape out
again, it then boots normally and problem solved.

It has been like this for the almost 2 years I have had the system and
otherwise works flawlessly.

Hope this helps.

 

Dear RuckOver,

suspect an aging, overheating, or failing power supply....

http://groups.google.com/group/&rnum=1&hl=en#f611cac99a580e99

http://groups.google.com/group/&rnum=3&hl=en#973b0e4490e7a663

That, or the usual bad capacitor issue....you mentioned one CPU was
getting hot--old/inadequate thermal compound?

HTH,

BC

 

Interesting problem. But we have always solved this in our P4C800's
by upgrading the PSU. Our systems are quite loaded and sometimes a
system with an older 450-Watt PSU will behave in this manner. Clears
up every time with the PSU swap.

 

Thanks much for the responses so far.

Another piece of information... I stuck my Kill-A-Watt meter on the
PCs power cord and have been watching it over the last few days. It
never draws more than 3 amps, even during a period of burn-in tests.
So from that, the power supply is not drawing more than 360 watts and
could not possibly be supplying more than 300-350 watts to the system.
The PSU is a Vantec VAN-520A 520watt, 3 years old.

So, I'm wondering if that is normal or not. This is a dual Xeon system
with 4 hard drives, 2 optical drives, and 4 case fans. Does anyone
else have an idea of what kind of amperage they're drawing? Is 300
*real* watts enough to drive this behemoth?

Either way, I ordered a new PSU and it should be here beginning of next
week. Raidmax RX-630A 630watt. I'm really hoping that solves
everything, but I'm afraid I'm going to go the hassle and expense of
swapping it out just to have the exact same problem.

Thanks again.