[eddieboy665]

Hi,

Just brought a working (i hope), used MB from Ebay, the Gigabyte 7V AXP VIAKT700.

Have installed it with excatly the same componets from my old computer which was working before I took it apart...

AMD Barton Core 2600xp 333 FSB
60 Gb Maxtor 7200 rpm HD
ATI Atlantis 9500 pro Saphire graphics card
512mb ram Kingston 166mhz plus 1 stick of 256mb ram which i have no details for.

When I orginally turned on the computer all looked good, except I had a red light for my HD but possibly that was me plugging the LED wire into the wrong socket.

Had windows orginally on there and decided to wipe it so put in the CD and started to reformat HD and start installation. This didnt go so well, I kept getting different error messages saying in a blue screen, windows is closing to prevent damage to comp and it has suggested problems like memory, video card and disabling caching and shadowing.

Checked the CPU and system temp, CPU has run at 50 degrees C at highest so cant beieve its overheating. So maybe memory is corrupted, even though working an hour before but I used mem86.

To test my memory i removed the 256 stick an left only the 512 kingston stick, it ran for around 4hrs before i stopped it and had over 6 million errors. Failing tests 5-9 i think.

So switched memory sticks, using only the 256 and left it going for about 2 min and it had already found errors.

So is my memory corrupted? Or incompatable? Is the MB damaged? Is something wrong in Bios? Is there a problem with anything else like CPU or HD? BOth memory sticks cant be corrupted can they?

Any advice would be great cos im lost, not that great with computers but trying.

Currently the situation is worse as sometimes when you turn it on it nothing appears on the screen and sometimes it will try to continue to setup windows, about to go into the windows xp loading screen (which it did manage to do once or twice before it restarts) until it says sys32 (something like this file) file missing. It tells me to use the CD and press R to repair. I try this, booting from CD and it starts in a black screen saying something like windows is preparing files and then comp restarts!

Thanks in advance for any help, desperatly needed!
Ed

[Me__2001]

first thing i would do is test your memory in your old PC

[eddieboy665]

Ok, so i've taken your advice, thanks;

Memory with old motherboard is fine and computer installs windows perfectly. Have done mem86 test just to make sure and no error after 30min getting up to test 7 i think.

So i decided i'd just test the Gigabyte MB once more, this time with my old proccessor, AMD athlon 1700XP running at 266 mhz and is just compatable with the MB. This time its got even worse and on no occasions when i turned the comp on did anything appear on the screen. Unless i just forgot to plug something in correctly (even though i have now checked 3 times) surley its the motherboard.

However there is only onething in my mind which is postoning me asking for a refund from the guy who sold it to me on ebay; Is there a possiblity my memory or graphics card arent compatible?

Thanks in advance...

[Me__2001]

if im looking at the right specs then everything should be compatible, are you sure that is the right model and chipset ? what are the specs of the kingston RAM ?

[eddieboy665]

Ok so i've had a look at the memory box once more and realized i typed something out wrong and can add to it...
Value ram: Kingston, KVR266X66C25/512
512mb 266MHz (not 166 as i put) PC2100 DIMM CL2.5

I have now tried something different, yesterday i only put the 256 stick in when it didnt turn on at all. Forgot to mention that. But this morning i switched them around, so the kingston 512 stick was in and it turned on beautifully for a while- it even started to load up the windows i installed with the old MB in. Until of course it rebooted at the point of selecting a user.

So i thought well lets just check its not just cos im supposed to reinstall windows. Formatted the HD again and started installing but then problems appeared every where. It formatted fine and then intalling I got messages like 'Bad_system_config_info' in a blue screen and 'Poblem detected check faulty mem/mismatched mem and try changing video adapters'. So pretty much back at the start again.

But just to make sure i used memtest 86 again and wrote down the results;
Test 0-4 no errors
Test 5- 10821 errors
6- 2299
7- 375
8- 25342
And test 9 was good.

On test 8 i think i wrote down some failing addresses if it helps:
0001ffd907c
925c
952c
e00fc
e307c etc...
After the i stopped the test i checked the temp and it looked fine;
CPU: 36 C
System: 40 C

So, MB at fault?

[eddieboy665]

And yes sorry forgot to say, the MB spec is definatly correct.

GA- 7VAXP VIA KT400 says so on board and in memtest

[muckshifter]

I think you bought a bucket load of crap.

However, three things need to tally up ... CPU, RAM & MB ... the MB manual should tell you what CPU it can run, if not right, forget it. RAM must be compatable, check the MB website for compatability ... never buy what you can't return with at least an RMA.

[Me__2001]

im with mucks, i think the boards had it

[Raje]

See its stories like this that make me dis-trust E-Bay..... I'm not even going to say that the guy did it intentionally, but he did sell a bumb board. ~ or it got bummed during shipping.

[eddieboy665]

Thanks for all the advice,

So was going to ask for my money back but just thought i'd check with Gigabyte that there wasnt anything else i could do and they said:

Try updating bios (which ill have a go at doing in a second)

Check power supply (this shouldn't be a problem should it considering it starts up?)

Try another memory stick (well thats just annoying! Dont have any more, and really if compatiblity is the problem thats stupid!)

And at the end to clarify I did check with him that there might be a possiblity the MB is broken and he was fairly confident it wasnt.

Any more advice, is he wrong?

I'll have a go at borrowing a friends memory stick, if he'll let me, just to get rid of that possiblity.

Thanks again