A7N8X Deluxe BIOS corruption: I think so too...<Blue screen crashes galore>-more tried troubleshooti

[John Q Public]

A7N8X Deluxe BIOS corruption: I think so too...

A little over a week ago, I received a version 2.0 A7N8X Deluxe. It
replaced the A7M266 that was running rock solid for the 3+ years that
I had it. All other componets in my system remained unchanged, except
for the changing of the motherboard.

I have yet to get this !@#$% board running without constant, random
blue screen crashes with various stop codes.

I have run memtest 86 3.0, which when run on each single 256 module,
is not showing anything. When both modules were plugged in, one time
some errors showed up. To be safe I went and picked up a PC2700 256MB
Kingston stick at circuit city. No change.

I have done several harddrive reformats and fresh WinXP Pro
re-installs, no change. The power supply is only about 6 months old,
Antec, 400 watt. Tried moving the ram sticks to different slots, no
change. Ran scandisk (thorough) nothing found.

I tried replacing the videocard with a brand new out-of-box Geforce FX
128MB, since SOMETIMES (not always) the blue screen crashes mentioned
try changing video adapters. No change.

The voltages and temps are always fine, according to Asus's PC Probe.

I also tried disconnecting EVERYTHING except the bare hardware needed
to boot the system and install WinXP (in otherwords ONE harddrive, and
ONE CDR drive, and the floppy) No change, still crashes.

After all this, a BIOS reflash (it was already at the current 1005
version when I received it) SEEMED to REDUCE for a while the blue
screen crashes. They don't happen in all places they used to, all the
time (shutting down, executing some programs, attempting to play a
DVD, installing some programs, etc)

I think I can only conclude that this board does have some serious
BIOS corruption issues, or It is bad in some other way.

This is completely ridiculous.

Any ideas? I'm about out

 

[Jason Knutson]

I think I can only conclude that this board does have some serious

BIOS corruption issues, or It is bad in some other way.

This is completely ridiculous.

Any ideas? I'm about out

I'd say it was memory. If you get errors when running 2 sticks then you
will definitely have problems. I bought 2 sticks of Kingston PC3500 at Best
Buy a while back and my system wouldn't run stable with them. One stick it
would run okay, both sticks nothing but constant crashes. Talked to
Kingston tech support and they tested me 2 sticks on a A7N8X and sent them
to me. Everything was fine again. My issues were pretty much the same as
yours and running memtest on each stick alone would show no errors, but with
both sticks together errors would come up.

If your system is running then I seriously doubt it's a BIOS problem.

Jason

 

[John Q Public]

I'd say it was memory. If you get errors when running 2 sticks then you
will definitely have problems. I bought 2 sticks of Kingston PC3500 at Best
Buy a while back and my system wouldn't run stable with them. One stick it
would run okay, both sticks nothing but constant crashes. Talked to
Kingston tech support and they tested me 2 sticks on a A7N8X and sent them
to me. Everything was fine again. My issues were pretty much the same as
yours and running memtest on each stick alone would show no errors, but with
both sticks together errors would come up.

If your system is running then I seriously doubt it's a BIOS problem.

Jason

So you are telling me that a) my two original sticks are bad, and b)
the brand new Kingston I just bought is bad? Somehow I highly doubt
all three sticks would die within a couple days...unless the board
killed them.

Maybe I should have been a bit more clearer...the system crashes
whether or not one at a time or both original PC2100 sticks are used,
and also crashes when just the new (PC2700 Kingston) is used. Again,
both the original PC2100 sticks were working great for three years up
until a week ago when they were plugged into my old A7M266 board. So
did the new A7N8X Deluxe kill them?

 

[Bob F.]

What slot are you running the memory in. I when I put the 1 stick of DDR
3200 ram in either of the blue slots. I was having random reboots and the
lot and then I move the ram to the first slot, the black one and all my
problems went away. You may want to give this a shot.

Good luck,

Bob

 

[Ed]

A7N8X Deluxe BIOS corruption: I think so too...

A little over a week ago, I received a version 2.0 A7N8X Deluxe. It
replaced the A7M266 that was running rock solid for the 3+ years that
I had it. All other componets in my system remained unchanged, except
for the changing of the motherboard.

I have yet to get this !@#$% board running without constant, random
blue screen crashes with various stop codes.

I have run memtest 86 3.0, which when run on each single 256 module,
is not showing anything. When both modules were plugged in, one time
some errors showed up. To be safe I went and picked up a PC2700 256MB
Kingston stick at circuit city. No change.

I have done several harddrive reformats and fresh WinXP Pro
re-installs, no change. The power supply is only about 6 months old,
Antec, 400 watt. Tried moving the ram sticks to different slots, no
change. Ran scandisk (thorough) nothing found.

I tried replacing the videocard with a brand new out-of-box Geforce FX
128MB, since SOMETIMES (not always) the blue screen crashes mentioned
try changing video adapters. No change.

The voltages and temps are always fine, according to Asus's PC Probe.

I also tried disconnecting EVERYTHING except the bare hardware needed
to boot the system and install WinXP (in otherwords ONE harddrive, and
ONE CDR drive, and the floppy) No change, still crashes.

After all this, a BIOS reflash (it was already at the current 1005
version when I received it) SEEMED to REDUCE for a while the blue
screen crashes. They don't happen in all places they used to, all the
time (shutting down, executing some programs, attempting to play a
DVD, installing some programs, etc)

I think I can only conclude that this board does have some serious
BIOS corruption issues, or It is bad in some other way.

This is completely ridiculous.

Any ideas? I'm about out

Well you probably already know this but it's best to run ram in-sync
(100%) with the FSB and to not use the SPD settings, you may even want
to set ram timings manually if you know what they are and even drop the
timings for testing.

I have 4 sticks of Corsair 6-2-2-2 ram and only 2 of them will run with
those timings in my A7N8X (non-dlx) without some sort of error. Funny
thing for me was memtest86 wasn't much help at all, it wasn't until I
tested each stick separately running Prime95 that I figured out what was
going on. I now have 3 of the 4 sticks in @ 6-3-2-2 and it runs great.

Best of luck,
Ed

 

[John Q Public]

Well you probably already know this but it's best to run ram in-sync
(100%) with the FSB and to not use the SPD settings,

Ok, you mean set the speed to auto? I think it is currently set at "by
speed"

you may even want
to set ram timings manually if you know what they are and even drop the
timings for testing.

It looks like (last time I checked) it is defaulting to the correct
setting of 2.5 for CAS or whatever, the other two numbers were 3 I
think, but I dont know if they are supposed to be 3 or not...

I have 4 sticks of Corsair 6-2-2-2 ram and only 2 of them will run with
those timings in my A7N8X (non-dlx) without some sort of error. Funny
thing for me was memtest86 wasn't much help at all, it wasn't until I
tested each stick separately running Prime95 that I figured out what was
going on. I now have 3 of the 4 sticks in @ 6-3-2-2 and it runs great.

So you are basically giving the ram a little more time then, right? 3
instead of 2.5?

 

[Ed]

the other two numbers were 3 I
think, but I dont know if they are supposed to be 3 or not...

Actually it's the RAS to CAS Delay I had to drop from 2 to 3 to get 100%
stability
(6-3-2-2)
SDRAM Active PreCharge Delay = 6
SDRAM RAS to CAS Delay = 3
SDRAM RAS PreCharge Delay = 2
SDRAM CAS Latency = 2

, but I'm not saying this is a common thing, it's probably just *my* ram
and was just a suggestion to try and lower some of the ram timings just
to see if your ram is possibly not up to snuff on *this* board.

Ed

 

[John Q Public]

Actually it's the RAS to CAS Delay I had to drop from 2 to 3 to get 100%
stability
(6-3-2-2)
SDRAM Active PreCharge Delay = 6
SDRAM RAS to CAS Delay = 3
SDRAM RAS PreCharge Delay = 2
SDRAM CAS Latency = 2

, but I'm not saying this is a common thing, it's probably just *my* ram
and was just a suggestion to try and lower some of the ram timings just
to see if your ram is possibly not up to snuff on *this* board.

Ed

Great. I set it to 7,3,3,3 and now I can't post. Nothing. Tried
clearing CMOS and still nothing...looks like the board is officially
dead. What a piece of shit.

 

[Ed]

Great. I set it to 7,3,3,3 and now I can't post. Nothing. Tried
clearing CMOS and still nothing...looks like the board is officially
dead. What a piece of shit.

Bummer, I've been pretty lucky with boards, never gotten a DOA.
Look on the bright side, things could be worse, I suppose. ;p
Good luck,
Ed

 

[Steve]

Keep the same settings for your memory but change to 7,3,3,2.5 this board
does not like 3.0 timings. I went through 3 of these boards I switched to
an ASUS P4C800-E 2.6c Intel.... All is good with the world again!!!

 

[Ed]

Pretty hard to change setting on a dead board!

Keep the same settings for your memory but change to 7,3,3,2.5 this board
does not like 3.0 timings. I went through 3 of these boards I switched to
an ASUS P4C800-E 2.6c Intel.... All is good with the world again!!!

 

[John Q Public]

Keep the same settings for your memory but change to 7,3,3,2.5 this board
does not like 3.0 timings. I went through 3 of these boards I switched to
an ASUS P4C800-E 2.6c Intel.... All is good with the world again!!!

I actually finally got the CMOS to clear so I could finally reenter
the bios. Changed it to 6,3,3,2.5 and it boots again but still random
blue screens...

 

[rstlne]

From all of your post I think you should take it to a pc shop and let them
put it togehter for you..
I mean, you said it "would not post"..
These boards have a few quirks, one quirk is that "Sometimes" it doesnt
complete post, it hangs during post and your forced to reset, Other quirks
have to do with the NV drivers and your CDrom with THOSE drivers will make
the system unstable..
Now yet another quirk with this system is the ram, It's picky as to what it
will take, the Kingston ram IS NOT LISTED by asus (or it wasnt when I
purchased the board).. I bought listed ram and have not had 1 bit of
trouble.. so change your ram timing to 50% instead of sync and see if that
helps, My guess is that it doesnt like the kingston memory or it doesnt like
one of the drives in the system..
also try to keep the the primary slave empty (as this seems to be my trouble
spot in the system) maybee it's yours too