Going to have to ghetto mod an air cooler... i think the backplate grew legs

:ohcrap:

Your hdd manufacturer should have a diagnostic utility that can pull smart info from your drive to see if it is the problem (Western Digitals is called life tools or something like that.. pretty sure seagate and Hitachi both have downloads as well. An app like everest should be able to test the HDD out too.

Not sure how the ECP connects to the motherboard (via NB I would assume?) So it could also be the northbridge taking a dump. High HDD usage, no ECP and BSOD when you stress the vid cards... commonality would point to the NB.

If you are running Vista or Mojave you can open up performance monitor and look at the HDD info and see what exactly is accessing the HDD so much.

Reinstall can be tested by just putting a new HDD and installing windows to that. If the problem persists... its hardware.

interesting perspective as the NB is running hotter than normal hmmm. Good idea on the hdd utility too

ECP connects through the pins you'd normally connect your front panel control to as well as several other pins (some control the pcie slots)

Might want to load up some anti-spyware utility such as spybot and give that a run, along with your av.

And this is hijack this http://download.cnet.com/Trend-Micro...-10227353.html
it gives a list of everything thats running on your system to see if you have spyware/virus/ whatever.

mine do that every time my wife cleans my office :blink:

Argh thats another beef I have with ASUS their AMD backplate broke on me!!! WTF.. Right after I threw out a AMD backplate that I used electricians dope on for insulation was too lazy to clean it so I chucked it!

ARGH

AMD backplates are normally the shizzle I use them for everything. Air bracket mods, water blocks DIce pots....

Never owned one :Dizzy:

I just know that when my wife "cleans" my office while I'm out of town, I can't find shit when I get home. All my computer parts are in nice little plastic bins... no effing methodology, just dump em in a basket and put nice and neat on the shelf.... jeeez

Good luck dude

System Restore seems to have brought it back to life :) Not gonna refresh Vista, garbage out garbage in :D Win 7 now on hand for this bad boy :P