A7V8X-X freeze : help needed !

[Steph]

My system freeze randomly with no particular software between 2/3 times a
day to once a week and all I can do to reboot it is the Reset button...
Asus told me to check my RAM, flash my BIOS, etc but it still freezes
My system :
A7V8X-X (BIOS 1008 - VIA driver 4.51)
AMD Barton 2500+ (not overclocked)
256 Mo
Asus Geforce 4
Cordless Logitech mouse (latest driver)
etc...
I heard A7V8X-X may have problem with cordless mouse, any clue for me ?
Any idea is welcome anyway...

Stef

 

[Access]

My system freeze randomly with no particular software between 2/3 times a
day to once a week and all I can do to reboot it is the Reset button...
Asus told me to check my RAM, flash my BIOS, etc but it still freezes
My system :
A7V8X-X (BIOS 1008 - VIA driver 4.51)
AMD Barton 2500+ (not overclocked)
256 Mo
Asus Geforce 4
Cordless Logitech mouse (latest driver)
etc...
I heard A7V8X-X may have problem with cordless mouse, any clue for me ?
Any idea is welcome anyway...

Stef

Have you checked the CPU temperature ? System freezes are often caused by
overheating.

 

[Creeping Stone]

My system freeze randomly with no particular software between 2/3 times a
day to once a week and all I can do to reboot it is the Reset button...
Asus told me to check my RAM, flash my BIOS, etc but it still freezes
My system :
A7V8X-X (BIOS 1008 - VIA driver 4.51)
AMD Barton 2500+ (not overclocked)
256 Mo
Asus Geforce 4
Cordless Logitech mouse (latest driver)
etc...
I heard A7V8X-X may have problem with cordless mouse, any clue for me ?
Any idea is welcome anyway...

Stef

Have you checked the CPU temperature ? System freezes are often caused by
overheating.

Not really, if overheating is causing instability youll get different types
of random errors (sometimes feezing, sometimes bluescreens...) or if the
bios is noticing - total shutdowns.
The reported mouse problem, is supposed to be fixed by bios 1008...
My laptop froze just yesturday - turned out id infected it with a
keylogger!

If this is just freezing, Id suggest a thorough virus, spyware, trojan,
malware check, check event logs, test the bios settings for the Video card.

You might be getting little keyboard errors too, and have 'halt on all'
(errors) selected in the first bios screen, setting it to halt on disk only
might fix.

gl,

 

[Steph]

Yes, I checked the CPU temp but it does not come from that !
My system freeze whatever the temp, sometimes 5 minutes after start-up and
sometimes it doesn't freeze for days...

 

[Steph]

The reported mouse problem, is supposed to be fixed by bios 1008...
I thought flashing my bios with version 1008 would help, but either this new
bios is not perfect or it's not a mouse problem...
I will try another mouse to check this out !

My laptop froze just yesturday - turned out id infected it with a
keylogger!
If this is just freezing, Id suggest a thorough virus, spyware, trojan,
malware check, check event logs, test the bios settings for the Video

card.
I don't think it's a virus coz the problem appeared before I connected my
new system to internet...
The video card is an Asus Geforce 4, so I hope it's working fine with this
bios !
I enabled and disabled everything I could in the bios but I never found a
stable state

You might be getting little keyboard errors too, and have 'halt on all'
(errors) selected in the first bios screen, setting it to halt on disk only
might fix.

Are you sure? In the bios it says that this feature works only during
POST...

gl,

THANX !!

 

[Creeping Stone]

=|[ Steph's ]|= wrote:
....

I enabled and disabled everything I could in the bios but I never found a
stable state
I know *that* feeling ;]

You might be getting little keyboard errors too, and have 'halt on all'
(errors) selected in the first bios screen, setting it to halt on disk
only might fix.

Are you sure? In the bios it says that this feature works only during
POST...

oh, I never new that. .. Still no joy :/
But this freezing, if thats all that ever happens, does at least make a lot
of instability problems unlikely as theyre not usualy so consistent.

Maybe you can borrow or dig out a different graphics card to try - my
machine is happy with an ancient PCI Rage3D card.

An old machine of mine was freezing like this because the drives were set
up wrong -both were set as master.

You might knock your hard drives udma rate down a notch in drive properties
in the main bios page, to secure another possibility. Turning off udma
(relying on Pio) will slow things down, but confirm the problem isnt with
the IDE driving.

I gave up trying to get the a7v8x-x's parallel port to work nice on win2k.

Checked irq conflicts? Tried changing between APIC/PIC mode?
-To do this you need both 'Standard PC' and 'ACPI Uniprocessor' installed
for 'computer' in device manager -if using win2k or xp.

Vias old enhanced Ultra Ata Miniport driver used to freeze my machine in
APIC mode (it was a nice driver though) -the latest via udma default driver
is fine i think.

-My last tactic for physical errors, is to underclock everything and see if
that helps.

I hope a solution turns up and you can tell us what was up :]

 

[Steph]

Well, in fact I checked the temp with Asus Probe and yes, indeed, my system
is overheating, especially with demanding games or software!
The CPU is going up to 87°C !!
So I "underclocked" it and tested it with softwares which usually make it
freeze and it's OK for now...
Does anybody know the normal max working temp for a Barton 2500 ?
Is it possible that AMD provided the wrong fan with the CPU ?

 

[Creeping Stone]

Well, in fact I checked the temp with Asus Probe and yes, indeed, my system
is overheating, especially with demanding games or software!
The CPU is going up to 87°C !!
So I "underclocked" it and tested it with softwares which usually make it
freeze and it's OK for now...
Does anybody know the normal max working temp for a Barton 2500 ?
Is it possible that AMD provided the wrong fan with the CPU ?

Well slap me in the face with a wet fish! :[

Looks like you have some alterations to do
- anything over 60C is rather hot.

gl;]

 

[Steph]

Well, I think my problem is a temp problem afterall...
I read some posts here and there, checked the temp with Asus Probe and found
out that my cpu is running far too high !!
In the 70s° C normal to more than 85° C under load !!!
So I underclocked it and while I'm writing right now it's still 67° C
The fan runs around 3900 rpm
When I bought the MB + CPU I asked the store to mount it, but now I'm not
sure they did it right...
Gonna check that fan later this week...

Thanx for all these advice anyway!
Stef

=|[ Steph's ]|= wrote:
...

I enabled and disabled everything I could in the bios but I never found a
stable state
I know *that* feeling ;]

You might be getting little keyboard errors too, and have 'halt on all'
(errors) selected in the first bios screen, setting it to halt on disk
only might fix.

Are you sure? In the bios it says that this feature works only during
POST...

oh, I never new that. .. Still no joy :/
But this freezing, if thats all that ever happens, does at least make a lot
of instability problems unlikely as theyre not usualy so consistent.

Maybe you can borrow or dig out a different graphics card to try - my
machine is happy with an ancient PCI Rage3D card.

An old machine of mine was freezing like this because the drives were set
up wrong -both were set as master.

You might knock your hard drives udma rate down a notch in drive properties
in the main bios page, to secure another possibility. Turning off udma
(relying on Pio) will slow things down, but confirm the problem isnt with
the IDE driving.

I gave up trying to get the a7v8x-x's parallel port to work nice on win2k.

Checked irq conflicts? Tried changing between APIC/PIC mode?
-To do this you need both 'Standard PC' and 'ACPI Uniprocessor' installed
for 'computer' in device manager -if using win2k or xp.

Vias old enhanced Ultra Ata Miniport driver used to freeze my machine in
APIC mode (it was a nice driver though) -the latest via udma default driver
is fine i think.

-My last tactic for physical errors, is to underclock everything and see if
that helps.

I hope a solution turns up and you can tell us what was up :]

 

[Creeping Stone]

Well, I think my problem is a temp problem afterall...
I read some posts here and there, checked the temp with Asus Probe and found
out that my cpu is running far too high !!
In the 70s° C normal to more than 85° C under load !!!
So I underclocked it and while I'm writing right now it's still 67° C
The fan runs around 3900 rpm
When I bought the MB + CPU I asked the store to mount it, but now I'm not
sure they did it right...
Gonna check that fan later this week...

Thanx for all these advice anyway!
Stef

My appologies for the red herrings & thanks for filling me in - thats one
less falacy Ill be spouting..until I forget

 

[spy102]

If your memory is PC400, the Barton 2500+ runs at 333MHz; put your
memory speed to 333 instead of Auto in the Bios; it did work for me.

Lou