disgusted with ASUS -- any suggestions?

[Cappy]

After running my P4P800 for about a week, I got tired of wondering why my BIOS
(version 1006 according to the sticker on the chip) didn't have Turbo memory
mode as listed in the manual. So I upgraded it to 1010, downloaded from
asus.com.tw, via EZ Flash. It booted and ran at the default settings, so I
rebooted and enabled Turbo mode. On exiting the setup screen, the system froze
with a blank screen. The board is supposed to have CPU Parameter Reset, meaning
that if it doesn't boot because of bogus settings it's supposed to reset to the
default settings at the next boot. It didn't -- not with the reset button and
not with the power switch, and not after multiple tries. I switched off the
power supply, removed the battery and closed the Clear CMOS jumper to no avail
-- I even let it sit overnight with no power. It neither beeps nor puts up any
kind of error message when powered up.

I tried all the things I could find suggested anywhere on the net -- powering up
with a floppy or a CD in the drive and holding Alt-F2 in hopes that it would
re-EZFlash, removing the AGP card, and removing the memory and reinserting one
module at a time to force re-detection of hardware. Nothing worked.

I submitted a report on helpdesk.asus.com explaining everything I had done and
including my system configuration in the form above the text entry box. I got
an email asking me to try everything I had explained I had tried and asking for
the information on the other components I had entered in their form! Enough of
this nonsense, I thought, and called them. The tech wasn't interested in my
allegation that CPU Parameter Reset didn't work -- he claimed that it was only
intended to restore a corrupted flashed BIOS, not reset the timing settings!
(Looking at the manual, I see that they call the functionality he described
CrashFree BIOS -- but it doesn't work for me; the board doesn't attempt to load
anything.) I told him that the only indication I got that the board wasn't
completely dead was that if I took the memory out, it would beep three times.
He thought this was a good thing, and told me that I probably had bad memory.
He didn't seem concerned with the fact that I had been running the memory for a
week in various states of overclocking, and suggested I try different memory. I
told him that I didn't have any other DDRAM and didn't know anybody else who
did. He said that they could RMA the board for me, but he would rather I try
different memory first! I told him that I would get back to him.

After reading somewhere that one or two people had restored their boards by
plugging in different memory -- apparently the boards read the timing on the new
memory and readjusted themselves -- I decided that if that worked I would rather
have a working board now than whenever they got a replacement to me, so I went
out and bought the cheapest stick of DDR I could find and plugged it in.
Nothing. So either the board is shot, or the CPU is shot. I'd rather think
it's the board, since other people have had the same problem and there was no
reason to suspect anything was wrong with the CPU.

Now (finally!) my problem is this: if I return the board to them for a new one,
what assurance do I have that the new one will behave? Obviously I wouldn't
ever try setting Turbo mode again, but what if I stumble into another
overclocking setting that causes the same problem? They evidently have a
problem they won't admit to. (I haven't tried discussing with them yet the fact
that others have reported this problem, but the tech I talked to certainly
didn't seem to have had any experience with it since he kept trying to blame it
on something else!)

On the other hand, I don't know what my options are other than eating the cost
of the board and buying something else. The invoice from my retailer says that
all retail-boxed items are directly warranteed by the manufacturer.

I left ASUS almost 2 years ago because they started getting pricey and the
bioses were getting cheesy. When they started selling boards like hotcakes
they also started to forget about the middleman or littleman. Tech support
was horrible RMA times were long and as you stated, even if you fill out
their form completely they still ask you questions that were answered in the
form. I still have an ASUS CUSL2-C running a P3-1G. It was shortly after
these boards that their tech support started to slip and prices shot up.
Their follow on TUSL2-C had numerous problems as well as the bios hiccups.
When I went for a P4 board I first bought their P4S333 and we all know about
the bios horror stories with that one so I went out on a limb with a new
company called Albatron and bought their PX845PE Pro II(S). It has been
very reliable. It may not O/C as well as the ASUS P4PE but I can guarantee
it has less bios problems, is more stable and costs much less. I have also
bought Soltek boards but their tech support is not that good either but the
board has been very stable at half the price(SL-86SPE-L).
Cappy

 

[Bruce Tyler]

After running my P4P800 for about a week, I got tired of wondering why my BIOS
(version 1006 according to the sticker on the chip) didn't have Turbo memory
mode as listed in the manual. So I upgraded it to 1010, downloaded from
asus.com.tw, via EZ Flash. It booted and ran at the default settings, so I
rebooted and enabled Turbo mode. On exiting the setup screen, the system froze
with a blank screen. The board is supposed to have CPU Parameter Reset, meaning
that if it doesn't boot because of bogus settings it's supposed to reset to the
default settings at the next boot. It didn't -- not with the reset button and
not with the power switch, and not after multiple tries. I switched off the
power supply, removed the battery and closed the Clear CMOS jumper to no avail
-- I even let it sit overnight with no power. It neither beeps nor puts up any
kind of error message when powered up.

I tried all the things I could find suggested anywhere on the net -- powering up
with a floppy or a CD in the drive and holding Alt-F2 in hopes that it would
re-EZFlash, removing the AGP card, and removing the memory and reinserting one
module at a time to force re-detection of hardware. Nothing worked.

I submitted a report on helpdesk.asus.com explaining everything I had done and
including my system configuration in the form above the text entry box. I got
an email asking me to try everything I had explained I had tried and asking for
the information on the other components I had entered in their form! Enough of
this nonsense, I thought, and called them. The tech wasn't interested in my
allegation that CPU Parameter Reset didn't work -- he claimed that it was only
intended to restore a corrupted flashed BIOS, not reset the timing settings!
(Looking at the manual, I see that they call the functionality he described
CrashFree BIOS -- but it doesn't work for me; the board doesn't attempt to load
anything.) I told him that the only indication I got that the board wasn't
completely dead was that if I took the memory out, it would beep three times.
He thought this was a good thing, and told me that I probably had bad memory.
He didn't seem concerned with the fact that I had been running the memory for a
week in various states of overclocking, and suggested I try different memory. I
told him that I didn't have any other DDRAM and didn't know anybody else who
did. He said that they could RMA the board for me, but he would rather I try
different memory first! I told him that I would get back to him.

After reading somewhere that one or two people had restored their boards by
plugging in different memory -- apparently the boards read the timing on the new
memory and readjusted themselves -- I decided that if that worked I would rather
have a working board now than whenever they got a replacement to me, so I went
out and bought the cheapest stick of DDR I could find and plugged it in.
Nothing. So either the board is shot, or the CPU is shot. I'd rather think
it's the board, since other people have had the same problem and there was no
reason to suspect anything was wrong with the CPU.

Now (finally!) my problem is this: if I return the board to them for a new one,
what assurance do I have that the new one will behave? Obviously I wouldn't
ever try setting Turbo mode again, but what if I stumble into another
overclocking setting that causes the same problem? They evidently have a
problem they won't admit to. (I haven't tried discussing with them yet the fact
that others have reported this problem, but the tech I talked to certainly
didn't seem to have had any experience with it since he kept trying to blame it
on something else!)

On the other hand, I don't know what my options are other than eating the cost
of the board and buying something else. The invoice from my retailer says that
all retail-boxed items are directly warranteed by the manufacturer.

A while back I tried to update a BIOS on an Asus A7V266 board, using
the supposed latest BIOS version for that board, posted on the Asus
site... The update went well but when I reboobted all I got was a big
fat NOTHING.. No bootup, no image of any sort,, not even a sqeak or
fart as the saying goes... It was dead as a turd... To make things
worse,, it was not mine but a friends board and all he could do was
laugh,, until he suddenly realized that HE had to buy a new board. It
was my turn to laugh but I didn't because I was mainly upset at myself
for failing. I have done BIOS updates before and they have all
worked.. There is no comeback on the board manufacturer should
anything go wrong during the process. I checked that I used the
correct BIOS update - Yes - I checked my routine - Yes.. I did
everything correctly but the board was officially knackered (dead) and
the local Asus distributor did not want to know anything about it...
Some BIOS chips can be replaced at a moderate cost but this board had
a soldered in chip... It,, and we,, were f**ked...

You will ALWAYS notice that wherever you can download a BIOS update,
you will see words to the effect - "You do this at your own risk",,
which I thinks rather stinks... Why should they even post such an item
if it has a reasonable percentage of failures..??? PC shops and most
other related businesses wont do it for you either as they all realize
the percentage of apparent failures is significantly high and they
don't want a fight on thier hands as to who is liable for
replacment...

Sure, it's nice to be able to update to the latest spec for that board
because sometimes you need to - like when I dropped in a new CPU on
mine.. It hurts when their own products craps out infront of your very
own eyes and they don't want to know...

You just have to grin and take the pain....

Oh yes... When this friend bought his new borad, he needed to flash
the BIOS straight away because now his older CPU would not work well
on it... He asked me... I told him to *^%*%$*$ off... No way Jos'e...

 

[AxeClinton]

What amazes me is just how bad the whole computer scene is. I have played with
electronics since I was eight years old, my father used to do some TV repairs
on the side. I graduated to Amateur Radio from CB, got involved in computers
back in the early TRS-80-Apple II days, took CS and ET courses and became a
commercial radio tech. I have NEVER seen a more sorry conglomeration of sloppy
hardware and shody software then in the PC world. Some of the things that could
be done to make the PC experience considerably better would not be difficult to
incorporate. One of the things that could easily be done to prevent problems
like you are experiencing would be to incorporate a BIOS ROM chip connected in
parallel with the CMOS EEPROM. The address lines could all be tied together and
all you would have to do is break or make Vcc. The lines are very high
impedance and in the power down state they would not interfer with normal
opperation. This would permit you to fire up the mobo when a flash opp fails,
get the machine up and load the default BIOS into the EEPROM, get things up and
ready to do another flash. This is NOT an expensive way to address the problem
and it is NOT rocket science. A BIOS ROM would be uncorruptable and you could
not damage it so you would always have that backup. Everything is built like
crap in the PC world, all they care about is price, price, price, so we are all
stuck with crap hardware and crap software with constant breakdowns and poor
standards and poor compatibility issues. There is no excuse for this crap.
Everyone thinks we are getting great deals price wise but we pay for it with
constant problems, repairs and maintenance. Microsoft's OS's are part of the
same problem. I hope one day someone abandons all the crap legacy support and
introduces a PC that is designed new from the ground up. If you purchased a car
or a tv or a toaster with the unreliability of a PC you would take it back or
sue the manufacturer. Perhaps one day they will make reliable PC's but don't
hold your breath. I am considering leaving the hell hole of PC's and buying an
Apple, it can't be worse!

Forget about any support from ASUS, you should just assume that there is a
warning on any mobo you buy that says, "YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN." Asus can't even
get something as simple as ZIP drive support right on their MOBOS. They
advertised "Advanced ZIP Drive Support" on the P4T-E but neglected to mention
that the P4T-E does not play nicely with ZIP drives. It recognizes them but
doesn't work right so you need to use an external USB device. There are all
types of hardrive support issues with the P4T-E especially when you do huge
file transfers like dumping one partition's worth to another. They come up with
a new MOBO every month, have 30 different MOBOS on the market simultaneously,
so in the fast paced PC world with 30 different MOBOS how can they ever hope to
debug anything when every six months things are obsolete. They introduce new
crap before they ever get the old crap to work and ASUS is one of the best in
the MOBO market. It is the typical PC mentality, just sell the crap, who cares
if it works or not. It's no better when you buy a prebuilt PC form a name label
like Dell or Compaq, the flaws are basic to the nature of the business and will
only change until the manufacturesr realize that for the consumer market the
promary concern is a relaibe, trouble free computer that works, not the fastest
CPU. More than any other product, the PC is despised by consumers and that is
the reasopn noody wants to buy a new one to deal with all the hassles after you
finally get you old one working half right.

I spend more time fixing corrupt files, corrupted OS's, glitches, adjustng
settings and fixing hardware failures than I do using my PC.

PCs....suck!

Imaging starting your car and realizing that 1/3 of the time it's broken or
turns left when you trun right.

Good luck.

--Nat

 

[Ed]

I spend more time fixing corrupt files, corrupted OS's, glitches, adjustng
settings and fixing hardware failures than I do using my PC.

PCs....suck!

Imaging starting your car and realizing that 1/3 of the time it's broken or
turns left when you trun right.

Good luck.

--Nat

I'm on my 5th Asus/AMD build and it's flawless just like the last four I
had. Can't say that about some other mobo brands I've tried.
Good Luck,
Ed

 

[AxeClinton]

I'm on my 5th Asus/AMD build and it's flawless just like the last four I
had. Can't say that about some other mobo brands I've tried.
Good Luck,
Ed

Well... that proves there is at least one person in the world that has a PC
with no problems. Would you consider selling it to me? -LOL

By the way, even iOmega admits there are issues with ASUS motherboards and ZIP
drives LOL.

--Nat

 

[jaeger]

By the way, even iOmega admits there are issues with ASUS motherboards and ZIP
drives LOL.

Hm, so Iomega "admits" that issues with their products are someone
else's fault? How brave.

 

[Paul]

For what it's worth, the board is labeled Rev. 1.02 and what I suspect is the
BIOS chip is labeled P4P85 1006 2272 GM F4. The BIOS I flashed it with, that
worked until I turned Turbo on, was version 1010 and was downloaded from
asus.com.tw.

On the download page for 1010, it lists the things that are fixed -

Description
1. Do not use Aflash.exe to update BIOSPlease use EZflash or Afusos.exe.
2. Fix PS/2 keyboard and PS/2 mouse cannot wake up the system from
Suspend-to-RAM(S3) and Hibernate(S4) states.
3. Add DMI OEM Strings.
4. Revise Description String of DMI Onboard Device Information for
onboard LAN.
5. Fix the system cannot boot into Windows 2000 with 3DLabs Wildcat
VP760 XGA card after its driver v3.01-0181 is installed.
6. Fix LPT port is disabled after flashing the BIOS using EZ Flash.
7. Fix the system locks up at POST (Code1) the first time the system
is restarted after flashing the BIOS using EZ Flash if a FSB800 CPU
is used.

I think item (7) is interesting. Do you have an older processor you
can throw onto the board ? Do you have a "POST card", a device which
plugs into a PCI slot, and the BIOS writes two digit hex codes as
the BIOS loads ? The POST card can be used to find out what was the
last BIOS routine to successfully load. Cheap ones are sometimes
sold in small lots by regulars on Ebay.

Here is an example, there are others, and these can be bought at
retail as well:

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3439967026&category=1244

The other possibility is that you had a coincident catastrophic
failure. I had a coincidence once that went like this. Installed
new video card - ended up with popcorn (snow) on my monitor screen.
I would have immediately returned my new video card, except I tried
the old one and the same thing happened. I opened up the video
monitor and a cable had come loose (crooked). None of the cables
in my Sony Trinitron have cable locks, so they can "walk" out of
their sockets. Now, maybe something failed on the P4P800, just as
you were doing your update. I know it is unlikely, but...

Since you will likely be removing the motherboard from the case,
try another test. Place the motherboard on cardboard and connect
it to your power supply. If something was shorting inside the case,
maybe you can get the CPR going again after removing the board
from the case. All you'll need is processor, memory, and floppy.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Silence Seeker]

Uh Oh... I was about to purchase a P4P800 Deluxe, but after reading
this thread I am not sure anymore.

Why? Because my brother, who works as a PC technician, told me:

"Don't by ASUS, we have MANY problems with them (and field returns).
Listen to me - buy a GIGABYTE board. Here is what I bought for myself:
http://tw.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-K8NNXP.htm."

So, I checked the prices at the Newegg.com and laughed at him: there
was $70 difference for seemingly features I don't need. Or that's what
I thought. I couldn't believe his claims about the terrible
experience(s) with ASUS mobos.

But now, that I see this thread I am not sure anymore. After all, he
certainly handles many more mobos a day than I do. I currently have an
ASUS based PC working flawlessly - but it was purchased 5 years ago.
ASUS had good reputation back then, perhaps things have changed?

Oh well... I guess I will have to pay the extra $70 for the GIGABYTE
GA-K8NNXP.

Sam

 

[Ed]

Oh well... I guess I will have to pay the extra $70 for the GIGABYTE
GA-K8NNXP.

Sam

I'll wait till tomorrow and order the GA-K8NNXP-940 for an extra $44 if
they have them in stock by then (ETA 11/11/2003).

Just kidding, I can't afford an Opteron let alone a board for one right
now!

Ed

 

[AxeClinton]

Hm, so Iomega "admits" that issues with their products are someone
else's fault? How brave.

Hahahahaha, this is going to be fun I see. I have had NO issues using an iOmega
100 or 250 on any of my other machines, Micron, HP and Compaq, only in two ASUS
boards have there been issues with ZIP drives and ASUS knows about the problem
and their sugestion was, "Not to use an internal ZIP drive with the ASUS
P4T-E." I found that an odd way to deal with a problem since their MOBO is
supposed to have "Advanced ZIP drive support" which it does in fact have but it
has serious problems with ZIP drives. I have never had a problem with other
MOBOS so I don't think it is an iOmega issue. Generally though I like ASUS and
that is why I have stuck with them when I build machines but ASUS like other
MOBO manufacturers never really gets the bugs out in any of their borads. They
make much to many MOBOS and they have only a one year life span or less before
they move on to the next version. If the bugs don't get worked out in the first
few months you are stuck with them and the BIOS upgrades can't solve
everything.

People put way to much emotional capital into the things they buy. When someone
criticizes something they own they get all bent out of shape. Everyone in the
computer hobby needs to face the fact that everything is garbage in this market
and nothing really works because the complex nature of these devices is made
more unreliable by the low costs, short product life and lack of debugging and
design corrections. In the old radio days a radio would be designed and year
after year there would be improvements and field feedback would lead to mods
and redesign. This does not happen with computers. A year after this junk is
put on the market it is obsolete and you are expected to buy a new piece of
junk. This is just the nature of the PC market. Asus is no better.

--Nat

 

[al]

After running my P4P800 for about a week, I got tired of wondering why my BIOS
(version 1006 according to the sticker on the chip) didn't have Turbo memory
mode as listed in the manual. So I upgraded it to 1010, downloaded from
asus.com.tw, via EZ Flash. It booted and ran at the default settings, so I
rebooted and enabled Turbo mode. On exiting the setup screen, the system froze
with a blank screen. The board is supposed to have CPU Parameter Reset, meaning
that if it doesn't boot because of bogus settings it's supposed to reset to the
default settings at the next boot. It didn't -- not with the reset button and
not with the power switch, and not after multiple tries. I switched off the
power supply, removed the battery and closed the Clear CMOS jumper to no avail
-- I even let it sit overnight with no power. It neither beeps nor puts up any
kind of error message when powered up.

I tried all the things I could find suggested anywhere on the net -- powering up
with a floppy or a CD in the drive and holding Alt-F2 in hopes that it would
re-EZFlash, removing the AGP card, and removing the memory and reinserting one
module at a time to force re-detection of hardware. Nothing worked.

I submitted a report on helpdesk.asus.com explaining everything I had done and
including my system configuration in the form above the text entry box. I got
an email asking me to try everything I had explained I had tried and asking for
the information on the other components I had entered in their form! Enough of
this nonsense, I thought, and called them. The tech wasn't interested in my
allegation that CPU Parameter Reset didn't work -- he claimed that it was only
intended to restore a corrupted flashed BIOS, not reset the timing settings!
(Looking at the manual, I see that they call the functionality he described
CrashFree BIOS -- but it doesn't work for me; the board doesn't attempt to load
anything.) I told him that the only indication I got that the board wasn't
completely dead was that if I took the memory out, it would beep three times.
He thought this was a good thing, and told me that I probably had bad memory.
He didn't seem concerned with the fact that I had been running the memory for a
week in various states of overclocking, and suggested I try different memory. I
told him that I didn't have any other DDRAM and didn't know anybody else who
did. He said that they could RMA the board for me, but he would rather I try
different memory first! I told him that I would get back to him.

After reading somewhere that one or two people had restored their boards by
plugging in different memory -- apparently the boards read the timing on the new
memory and readjusted themselves -- I decided that if that worked I would rather
have a working board now than whenever they got a replacement to me, so I went
out and bought the cheapest stick of DDR I could find and plugged it in.
Nothing. So either the board is shot, or the CPU is shot. I'd rather think
it's the board, since other people have had the same problem and there was no
reason to suspect anything was wrong with the CPU.

Now (finally!) my problem is this: if I return the board to them for a new one,
what assurance do I have that the new one will behave? Obviously I wouldn't
ever try setting Turbo mode again, but what if I stumble into another
overclocking setting that causes the same problem? They evidently have a
problem they won't admit to. (I haven't tried discussing with them yet the fact
that others have reported this problem, but the tech I talked to certainly
didn't seem to have had any experience with it since he kept trying to blame it
on something else!)

On the other hand, I don't know what my options are other than eating the cost
of the board and buying something else. The invoice from my retailer says that
all retail-boxed items are directly warranteed by the manufacturer.

Hi
I have a Asus A7N8X deluxe and it's my third.The first one I got froze
in the bootup whole the time and I had that one replaced.The secund one
behaved just like yours.I changed som memory timings and it went
completely death.And I did what the instructions told me to do.Took the
battery out and so on,just like you did.But it did not work for me
either.The reseller changed that one as well and the one I got at
present seems to work fine including going back to default if you change
something you should have left alone.I'm sure they know they have a
problem as I seen many posts about the same thing.Why don't you accept a
new board and let the reseller try to change them memory settings for
you.And if it works everything is fine.If it's not working replace it
again till you get a errorfree board.
good luck al

 

[jaeger]

Uh Oh... I was about to purchase a P4P800 Deluxe, but after reading
this thread I am not sure anymore.

Why? Because my brother, who works as a PC technician, told me:

"Don't by ASUS, we have MANY problems with them (and field returns).
Listen to me - buy a GIGABYTE board. Here is what I bought for myself:
http://tw.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-K8NNXP.htm."

Ha ha. Want to see something funny? Here's the BIOS update history for
GB's $200 Springdale:

http://tw.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Support/BIOS/BIOS_GA-8PENXP.htm

 

[jaeger]

Hahahahaha, this is going to be fun I see. I have had NO issues using an iOmega
100 or 250 on any of my other machines, Micron, HP and Compaq, only in two ASUS
boards have there been issues with ZIP drives and ASUS knows about the problem
and their sugestion was, "Not to use an internal ZIP drive with the ASUS
P4T-E."

Nice backpedal, that wasn't even close to what you said originally.

A year after this junk is
put on the market it is obsolete and you are expected to buy a new piece of
junk. This is just the nature of the PC market. Asus is no better.

Sounds like you need a new hobby. How about model railroads?

 

[gandolf_one]

After running my P4P800 for about a week, I got tired of wondering why my BIOS
(version 1006 according to the sticker on the chip) didn't have Turbo memory
mode as listed in the manual. So I upgraded it to 1010, downloaded from
asus.com.tw, via EZ Flash. It booted and ran at the default settings, so I
rebooted and enabled Turbo mode. On exiting the setup screen, the system froze
with a blank screen. The board is supposed to have CPU Parameter Reset, meaning
that if it doesn't boot because of bogus settings it's supposed to reset to the
default settings at the next boot. It didn't -- not with the reset button and
not with the power switch, and not after multiple tries. I switched off the
power supply, removed the battery and closed the Clear CMOS jumper to no avail
-- I even let it sit overnight with no power. It neither beeps nor puts up any
kind of error message when powered up.

I tried all the things I could find suggested anywhere on the net -- powering up
with a floppy or a CD in the drive and holding Alt-F2 in hopes that it would
re-EZFlash, removing the AGP card, and removing the memory and reinserting one
module at a time to force re-detection of hardware. Nothing worked.

I submitted a report on helpdesk.asus.com explaining everything I had done and
including my system configuration in the form above the text entry box. I got
an email asking me to try everything I had explained I had tried and asking for
the information on the other components I had entered in their form! Enough of
this nonsense, I thought, and called them. The tech wasn't interested in my
allegation that CPU Parameter Reset didn't work -- he claimed that it was only
intended to restore a corrupted flashed BIOS, not reset the timing settings!
(Looking at the manual, I see that they call the functionality he described
CrashFree BIOS -- but it doesn't work for me; the board doesn't attempt to load
anything.) I told him that the only indication I got that the board wasn't
completely dead was that if I took the memory out, it would beep three times.
He thought this was a good thing, and told me that I probably had bad memory.
He didn't seem concerned with the fact that I had been running the memory for a
week in various states of overclocking, and suggested I try different memory. I
told him that I didn't have any other DDRAM and didn't know anybody else who
did. He said that they could RMA the board for me, but he would rather I try
different memory first! I told him that I would get back to him.

After reading somewhere that one or two people had restored their boards by
plugging in different memory -- apparently the boards read the timing on the new
memory and readjusted themselves -- I decided that if that worked I would rather
have a working board now than whenever they got a replacement to me, so I went
out and bought the cheapest stick of DDR I could find and plugged it in.
Nothing. So either the board is shot, or the CPU is shot. I'd rather think
it's the board, since other people have had the same problem and there was no
reason to suspect anything was wrong with the CPU.

Now (finally!) my problem is this: if I return the board to them for a new one,
what assurance do I have that the new one will behave? Obviously I wouldn't
ever try setting Turbo mode again, but what if I stumble into another
overclocking setting that causes the same problem? They evidently have a
problem they won't admit to. (I haven't tried discussing with them yet the fact
that others have reported this problem, but the tech I talked to certainly
didn't seem to have had any experience with it since he kept trying to blame it
on something else!)

On the other hand, I don't know what my options are other than eating the cost
of the board and buying something else. The invoice from my retailer says that
all retail-boxed items are directly warranteed by the manufacturer.

I updated the bios on mine and the same happened it wont boot but there is a
known problem with boards that were shipped with early bios revisions (pre
1010 bios i think) . Best thing you can do is contact asus and send it back
for a replacement. As for me i went out and got myself an ic7-g mobo and
the dead asus board is sat on a shelf waiting for its return.

 

[gandolf_one]

Snip

Ha ha. Want to see something funny? Here's the BIOS update history for
GB's $200 Springdale:

http://tw.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Support/BIOS/BIOS_GA-8PENXP.htm

maybe this means that gigabyte ships a board with no known faults

 

[Jim Shaffer, Jr.]

7. Fix the system locks up at POST (Code1) the first time the system
is restarted after flashing the BIOS using EZ Flash if a FSB800 CPU
is used.

I think item (7) is interesting. Do you have an older processor you
can throw onto the board ?

Nope, this is my first P4, the last system was a dual P3.

Besides, the system did POST once with the new BIOS. Then I rebooted it and
tried to turn Turbo mode on.

I'm going to send it back to ASUS if I can get an RMA from them. I left a
message yesterday on their support site and got no reply. I called them this
afternoon and instead of they keeping me on hold a long time like last time,
someone came on and took my number so they could call me back. That would be a
good thing if they had actually called back yet...

 

[jaeger]

maybe this means that gigabyte ships a board with no known faults

Uh huh. The most raw Intel chipset in years was mastered on the first
crack by GB, and only GB? What about CPU microcode updates? Intel has
released at least two since then, so what's the holdup? Updates for the
onboard controllers' BIOSes? The LAN and SI have had at least one. It
took them 6 weeks to update their ICH5R boards for RAID 1 while Abit,
Epox, and Asus had the update in days.

 

[AxeClinton]

"Nice backpedal, that wasn't even close to what you said originally."

What backpedal, that's what I said all along, ASUS mobos do not play well with
ZIP drives.

"Sounds like you need a new hobby. How about model railroads?"

Why do you take such offense when people simply state their opinions and
expereinces with something? You are behaving like a spoiled little brat when
someone says something nasty about your mommy.

You are typical of the type of person that gets all bent out of shape becasue
someone reports problems or states something bad about a product that they
bought that you own yourself, bahhh-bahhh-bahhhhhh!

If you are so insecure that you percieve my comments about ASUS as a personal
attack upon yourself that requires launching nasty comments towards me as if I
have personally attacked you, well what can I say... GET A LIFE!

You want to play personal attack games fine, forget ASUS, this is directed
towards you personally you low grade moron.

I have no interest in having ANY dialouge with you. I don't know what you level
of experience is in computers, and frankly I don't care. I am deeply sorry if
my staing that ZIP drives don't play well with most ASUS MOBOs offends you.

I am sorry I quoted Iomega and ASUS on this matter, I wasn't aware that doing
so was a capital offense.

I am terribly sorry for stating my opinin that the PC as it presently stands
is terribly unreliable, maintenance intensive and that the computer/consumer
relationship is not a happy one.

Reliability is a chief factor that stands in the way of increased sales and if
you are so out of touch with how most people feel about their computers that
somone stating that the empereor has no clothes upsets you so much I recommend
you simply skip my posts in the future.

It is sad that you have so little self esteem that you must attack someone for
stating their opinion. If you have some facts or stats to prove me wrong, by
all means. In every single poll I have seen to look at how customers feel about
their computers the most significant recurring complaint was about poor
reliability.

Personal invective becasue you adore your PC's and I don't achieves nothing at
all accept to show what an "Insecure Jackass You Are" that you feel compelled
to attack me becauxe I said something bad about ASUS and the industry as a
whole.

By the way, I used to be in the model railroad hobby but I grew out of it when
I was a child, would you like to buy some trains?

 

[jaeger]

What backpedal, that's what I said all along, ASUS mobos do not play well with
ZIP drives.

No, you said:

"By the way, even iOmega admits there are issues with ASUS motherboards
and ZIP drives LOL."

Which doesn't even make sense, although I think you were trying to point
out the 4-year old non-specific blurb about BIOS updates.

Personal invective becasue you adore your PC's and I don't achieves nothing at
all accept to show what an "Insecure Jackass You Are" that you feel compelled
to attack me becauxe I said something bad about ASUS and the industry as a
whole.

Sheesh, sounds like you're the one getting all bent out of shape. I
don't really care about Asus or any other company. I simply find it
amusing when people blame their own incompetence on a supposed "hardware
defect". If the state of technology upsets you so much then use a
pencil and paper. The first poster killed his system because he has no
business attempting to build his own machine. It sounds like you're in
the same boat, so in the future you both should buy a Dell and spare the
rest of us your pointless diatribes. This might help in the meantime:

http://tinyurl.com/urkm

 

[V@W]

Can't you go back to the shop that you bought it from?

Unless you bought it online through some far away place..... now you see the
downfall.