A7N8X Deluxe Will Not Run

[Dennis]

I bought an A7N8X Deluxe motherboard, an Athlon XP 2500+, 256 MB 333 MHz DDR
RAM, and a V9520 VS Video Card. I decided to reformat my C: drive and do a
fresh installation of XP Pro, but I could only get through a few minutes of
the install before it would either get a STOP error or suddenly reboot on
its own.

I put the hard drive in my old system with A7A266, Athlon 1400, 256 MB 266
MHz DDR RAM, and ATI All-in-Wonder 128 Pro, removed the sound card and
everything else that wasn't necessary, then installed XP with it.

Not only did I have no problems with the install, but I noticed it was much
faster booting as well as loading and copying the files for the install.

When I returned the hard drive to the new system, I got the same STOP error
each of four tries just as Windows was taking over. I never saw the XP logo
and the squares moving by. With the third try, I did Safe Mode and with the
fourth I did Command Prompt Only. The STOP error I got each time was
0x0000007B (0xF9E49640, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000).

I have tried everything I could think of to get it going including disabling
the sound, NICs, COM ports, and LPT port. I used different 80 conductor
cables and another power supply. I removed everything from the case and set
it up loose to eliminate the chances of shorts with the case.

I find it strange that about half the time the voice POST Reporter says that
the RAM failed the memory test even though it is also new and the system
stops or crashes whether or not this happens.

I wonder if the CPU could be overheating. I didn't use any Arctic Silver,
partly because I couldn't find my tube, but also because neither AMD nor
ASUS mentioned anything like it in their instructions. The XP 2500+ came
boxed with a fan and heatsink, I would assume it is adequate.

What else could be wrong with this? I think it took me less time to get the
A7A266 going even though it conflicted with both my video card and the
Windows generic VGA driver!

Would my Athlon 1400 work with the A7N8X Deluxe? Would the XP 2500+ work
with the A7A266?

Thanks!
Dennis

 

[Dennis]

Does anyone know exactly what STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF9E49640, 0xC0000034,
0x00000000, 0x00000000) means??

does sound like it might be heat i suggest going into bios screen and watching the temp sensor
for 10 15 minutes

Good idea, I have seen it and it looked fine, like 43 C, but I haven't
watched it for extended periods.

ps: sence you didnt clean the heatsink off and use thermal paste
you did remove the protective cover over the thermal pad on the heatsink

didnt ya?

The protective cover was a piece of hard plastic that covered the whole
front. It was easy to notice and remove. There was no tape or film on the
thermal pad itself. I checked the thermal pad but I didn't remove it. It
appeared quite soft and pliable, likely why thermal paste wasn't suggested.

 

[Tim]

0x0000007B is inaccessible boot device.

See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;316401

I suggest you restart the XP install from scratch as in the article, then if
you get a stop during the install, post back here.

- Tim

 

[Never anonymous Bud]

I find it strange that about half the time the voice POST Reporter says that
the RAM failed the memory test even though it is also new and the system
stops or crashes whether or not this happens.

Try setting your FSB at 133, then copy the install files to a directory on the HD,
do the install, THEN set the FSB back to 166 and see what happens.

Lots of times, a Windows install process will fail at default settings,
but once installed it'll work fine.






To reply by email, remove the XYZ.

Lumber Cartel (tinlc) #2063. Spam this account at your own risk.

It's your SIG, say what you want to say....

 

[Dennis]

0x0000007B is inaccessible boot device.

OK, but why can't it access the drive??? The boot drive is a 30 GB 7200 RPM
Maxtor, I am using it now with the A7A266 and it appears to be working fine.

I also noticed it wouldn't boot from a floppy. I tried 6-8 different boot
floppy disks and it wouldn't work with any of them! I could understand 1-2
might be bad but not all 8. I also noticed it wasn't trying very hard, even
with a bad disk it should take a 20 seconds or so to try to read the disk, I
would see the drive light on and hear it rrrr rrrr!

 

[Dennis]

I find it strange that about half the time the voice POST Reporter says
that

Try setting your FSB at 133, then copy the install files to a directory on the HD,
do the install, THEN set the FSB back to 166 and see what happens.

When I first tried, the FSB was only set at 100 and the processor speed was
only 1100. I still couldn't install Windows, I thought bringing it up to
166 would help. It did bring the speed up to 1833 but with the same errors.
I believe the processor is supposed to run at 2133.

Lots of times, a Windows install process will fail at default settings,
but once installed it'll work fine.

I know! I had trouble with ME until I installed it with SmartDrive off. It
took much longer but it did work. Of course, ME was a piece of poop anyway.
Problem is turning SmartDrive off would require booting from a floppy and,
as I mentioned in my other response, that doesn't work either!

But I did get XP installed on the drive, by using my old system. Now it
still won't start, as mentioned in the other response it appears unable to
access the drive.

 

[Dennis]

Are you using a S-ATA drive? If so, you need to press F6 when installing

Windows and put the drivers (for the SiI 3112 controller) disk in the

drive.

I'm using a 30 GB 7200 RPM Maxtor drive which works fine with the A7A266,
I'm running off it right now in fact. I now have the S-ATA disabled as I'm
not using it and figured it might be the problem. But I didn't disable it
until after I had tried a few times so it doesn't appear to have any effect.

I had never heard of S-ATA drives until I got the A7N8X-DX two days ago and
still have not seen any advertised.

 

[God]

Just checking...

I had to put in a floppy drive (so I could install the drivers during
installation) just so I could install Windows on those drives here...

 

[Dennis]

I had to put in a floppy drive (so I could install the drivers during

installation) just so I could install Windows on those drives here...

I tried booting from 6-8 floppy disks but none of them worked. I just made
a boot disk and copied the latest BIOS to it, I will try it. If it still
doesn't work I will try it in the floppy drive which I used just in case the
floppy with the A7N8X-DX happens to be defective, but I kind of doubt that
is the case. The board shouldn't need a BIOS update to access a drive which
is about two years old.

 

[Ed]

Try setting your FSB at 133, then copy the install files to a directory on the HD,
do the install, THEN set the FSB back to 166 and see what happens.

Lots of times, a Windows install process will fail at default settings,
but once installed it'll work fine.

That's the craziest thing I ever heard! If you can't install windows how
the hell is it going to run? LOL!

 

[Dennis]

He is correct, it is sometimes necessary to tweak the installation of
Windows only to have it run fine once it is installed. I couldn't do this
because I wasn't able to boot from a floppy either. I was able to install
Windows by putting the drive back into my old system with the A7A266, but
now the A7N8X-DX can't seem to access the drive.

 

[rstlne]

Did you watch the temp as he suggested, it really sounds like "something" is
overheating for it to just do a random reboot from time to time, Faulty ram
can do the same thing but watching the temps would be a good start..

 

[Ed]

OK, I can believe anything when it comes to Windows, if it was a common
thing I think Ben or the other guru's here would be mentioning that all
too often which I never seen advised.

If the floppy controller doesn't even work then my first guess would be
you got a bad board or it is shorting out on the case, bad cables,
etc..?

Ed

 

[Dennis]

I just finished playing around with it for about two hours and figured the
problem is that it can't boot from hard disks. I was able to get it to boot
from another floppy drive so the first one must be bad even though I wasn't
getting any errors during POST.

 

[Ed]

I'm not familiar with the Dlx board, but if it has RAID and/or SATA make
sure the BIOS is setup to boot-up from where ever you have your HDD
plugged into and not one of the other HDD controllers.

Ed

 

[rstlne]

I just finished playing around with it for about two hours and figured the
problem is that it can't boot from hard disks. I was able to get it to boot
from another floppy drive so the first one must be bad even though I wasn't
getting any errors during POST.

if your booting from a floppy then POST will not tell you the floppy/os is
bad, POST is PowerOnSelfTest, it happens "pre" os launch..
Loading the OS with another machine is lame to say the least, You should
boot from CD or Floppy, then install the OS..
Or if you have another machine setup for allowing a network boot then boot
from the network devices (I think the nv connection allows it)

 

[Tim]

Have you checked the orientation of the floppy cable?
Pin 1 is usually on the other side away from PSU.

Is the m/b mounted correctly? IE no posts underneath touching the
conductors?
Are all PSU plugs in?
Are all PCI cards seated cleanly?
Are all memory cards ""

Is the disc drive on Master?
Have you tried the disc drive on Cable Select?
Have you tried alternate cables, floppy, etc?

Will memtest86 run for a minimum of two full passes?
If not, you have a memory / bios config problem.

If you install XP or any flavour of windows on one PC, don't expect it to
work at all in another unless 100% identical. Everything is different -
chipset, addresses of things, drivers. You *have* to either reinstall from
scratch or run a repair. A repair is run by booting of the XP CD, setup will
detect you have windows installed, it will prompt you to either start a
recovery console (2nd option) or 1st option will enable you to proceed with
setup then onto a Repair. Repair re-runs the h/w detection, installs device
drivers, refresh criticial system files... If special drivers are already on
disc EG gigabit Lan, SATA Raid, they should be picked up and re-used without
issue - so long as they are already there.

- Tim

 

[rstlne]

I tried booting from 6-8 floppy disks but none of them worked. I just
made

a boot disk and copied the latest BIOS to it, I will try it. If it still
doesn't work I will try it in the floppy drive which I used just in case the
floppy with the A7N8X-DX happens to be defective, but I kind of doubt that
is the case. The board shouldn't need a BIOS update to access a drive which
is about two years old.

So you think your floppy drive is screw'd up
and to test it your going to try to update your bios via the floppy

 

[Scott]

Yikes !!!!

So you think your floppy drive is screw'd up
and to test it your going to try to update your bios via the floppy

 

[Greg]

Try this, go to the bios and set your RAM speed to 50% of the fsb. I
had simular symptoms and it only booted when I run the RAM at 100mhz
for some reason. Sounds like you got the same problem my friend.