Annoying verification failure, I suspect MB or CPU, what do you think?

[DavidOBE]

Hello,

 

I am burning a few dual layer DVD from time to time and for some unknown reason, I keep getting error and this problem has a long history:

 

** Please note that I always use Verbatim DVD+R DL. I always burn at 2.4X **

 

The problem first started around 1 year ago. At first, I didn't do any verification on my burned game. One day, one of the game didn't work in System Link. It crashed when I was choosing the option in the game. My friend's copy, who had burned the game too, worked without problem.

 

I burned the game again and it worked.

 

I then started doing a verify for each burning. By doing so, I noticed that I was getting data mismatch error during verification. I thought it was because my burner was old so I bought a new one.

 

It worked for a few burn but after a short wile, I started getting error again. I then thought it was my HDD because I was getting weird errors when extracting from multiple .rar files. When I was extracting the data, at random % I was getting a CRC error. If I did the same extract again, I kept getting the CRC error but at a different %. If I extract it in my laptop, it works fine, no errors at all.

 

So, I replaced my HDD (was still under warranty) and received a brand new one (with 70GB more than before, hehehe). I restored my ghost on it and tried to burn again.

 

Same error, so now, it was not the burner and it was not the HDD.

 

I decided to do a memory testing and let MEMTEST86 (don't remember which version) run for a night. No errors found.

 

Ok, now, what else could be broken. I brought my tower to my friend and we tried his PSU and after various testing, the error happened again (we didn't test burning but tested extracting rar, which I believe confirm that the burning error is still present).

 

I thought that maybe, my ghost had some issue and it was not reliable so I formatted my PC again and re-installed XP. I tried to burn after that and for a short while, it worked, no errors, so I thought it was the issue until now.

 

I burned again some DVD and got various errors. I didn't keep the log of the first ones except for the one I did today.

 

I don't have any .rar to extract, so I cannot test, but the verification errors are weird because they are not always at the same places:

 

Verification after burn:

W 22:09:55 Miscompare at LBA: 2276289, Offset: 710

W 22:09:55 Device: 0xB8

W 22:09:55 Image File: 0x98

W 22:09:55 Total Errors in Sector: 1

 

W 22:13:51 Miscompare at LBA: 3361689, Offset: 1926

W 22:13:51 Device: 0x1A

W 22:13:51 Image File: 0x3A

W 22:13:51 Total Errors in Sector: 1

 

Second verification:

W 22:21:37 Miscompare at LBA: 1452407, Offset: 1542

W 22:21:37 Device: 0xC6

W 22:21:37 Image File: 0xE6

W 22:21:37 Total Errors in Sector: 1

 

W 22:24:37 Miscompare at LBA: 2650045, Offset: 1414

W 22:24:37 Device: 0x4F

W 22:24:37 Image File: 0x6F

W 22:24:37 Total Errors in Sector: 1

 

Third verification:

W 22:50:48 Miscompare at LBA: 1840630, Offset: 1926

W 22:50:48 Device: 0x7F

W 22:50:48 Image File: 0x5F

W 22:50:48 Total Errors in Sector: 1

 

W 23:02:07 Miscompare at LBA: 2149804, Offset: 1734

W 23:02:07 Device: 0xF1

W 23:02:07 Image File: 0xD1

W 23:02:07 Total Errors in Sector: 1

 

W 23:08:03 Miscompare at LBA: 3304860, Offset: 1286

W 23:08:03 Device: 0xF0

W 23:08:03 Image File: 0xD0

W 23:08:03 Total Errors in Sector: 1

 

From my understanding, the data, during verification, gets corrupted for some reasons and I get errors.

 

Could this be my CPU or Motherboard/chipset giving me errors?

 

So foar, that's the only lead I have. I tested everything else!

 

One thing I didn't do is test the stability of the CPU using Prime 95, which I will do right now.

 

Here's some more information about my setup and current temperature:

 

Motherboard: ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2/VSTA / 775Dual-880/VSTA / P4Dual-880 Series

CPU: E6600

 

Temp

[DavidOBE]

I think I have found my problem. I did lots of test today and this seems to be the cable, even though I changed it before.

 

- Tested again this morning the verification for the same CD as yesterday, I didn't go through all the verification, but in the even viewer, I was getting tons of DISK errors for the HDD0 (where the image is located).

 

- I read a little bit about the errors and it seems that there was many different scenarios for this error, so I did multiple tests:

 

A) The USB on my MB is defective, so I use a PCI USB card. I had two USB HDD plugged in, so I turned them off. I was still getting errors in the event viewer.

Deactivated the on board USB controller in the Device Manager just in case and rebooted. I was still getting errors.

C) Oppened the case, unplugged my old Maxtor IDE HDD (which is not HDD0) and also changed the sata cable to the second port. No more errors.

D) Tried turning on one or two USB HDD with this setup. No more errors.

E) Plugged the IDE HDD again and did again tests with various settings of USB HDD. No more errors.

F) Switched the SATA HDD back to the previous errors and did more tests. No more errors.

 

So, it could be either the cable or the SATA connectors on the MB that are really cheap and a small bad position make it really unstable.

 

I will try to get my hand on high quality sata cables if that exist at my local PC shop.

 

Last test is putting back the side panel of the case, but I doubt this have anything to do (like making the air move the cable in such a way that data gets corrupt??).

 

Oh yeah, I also did prime and no errors were generated, even during the verification (yeah, I wanted to be overkill a little bit).

 

My guess is that this all happened because I moved to a new appartment recently and been moving my PC a little bit around, so the connector may have gotten loose.

 

Luckily, my game that I burned is not bad, but I have some other games that didn't pass the check, even though they works, so I could get a bad surprise later in the game...

 

I hope this thread will help someone else!