*NEW* A7N8X Deluxe: What does it take to get it working?

[Joe Boy]

Just bought the A7N8X board to replace an A7V333 that I moved to
another system.

The rev 2 board with rev 5 BIOS installed flawlessly and ran for 3
days.

After day 3, I began experiencing problems in booting; got real slow
as if software conflicts were occuring. Reached the point that it
will not boot at all (can't find a file or the file is corrupt message
from XP).

Trying to repair and/or reload XP. Recieve the BSOD Stop error
during the install attempts!! Reconfigured the system to a real
basic config; (1) 80 MB Maxtor drive, floppy, CD and 256MB 2100 DDR.

System passes the POST, reads the CD and immediately crashes each time
an attempt is made to read the drive on attempt of the repair.
Receive a " Registry_ERROR" Stop Screen.

Something is wrong here folks; based on my experience and what I read
here, people drives are being corrupted.

Have gone thru growing pains with an A7V, A7V133 and the A7V333; have
never seen anything like this before.

Anybody talk to the ASUS people?? One or two more days and this
sucker is going back for a refund.

 

[The Cybrow]

Just bought the A7N8X board to replace an A7V333 that I moved to
another system.

The rev 2 board with rev 5 BIOS installed flawlessly and ran for 3
days.

After day 3, I began experiencing problems in booting; got real slow
as if software conflicts were occuring. Reached the point that it
will not boot at all (can't find a file or the file is corrupt message
from XP).

Trying to repair and/or reload XP. Recieve the BSOD Stop error
during the install attempts!! Reconfigured the system to a real
basic config; (1) 80 MB Maxtor drive, floppy, CD and 256MB 2100 DDR.

System passes the POST, reads the CD and immediately crashes each time
an attempt is made to read the drive on attempt of the repair.
Receive a " Registry_ERROR" Stop Screen.

Something is wrong here folks; based on my experience and what I read
here, people drives are being corrupted.

Have gone thru growing pains with an A7V, A7V133 and the A7V333; have
never seen anything like this before.

Anybody talk to the ASUS people?? One or two more days and this
sucker is going back for a refund.

Hey Joe,

Are you using the setting "Memory Frequency" "By SPD" ? Here at the
shop we have seen this setting make installing or repairing WinXP
impossible. You don't mention what processor you are using but if your
FSB is 266 then setting the mem freq to "100%" works best for the
PC2100 you have. If you are running something faster just set the mem
freq so that it runs at 133 MHz. A Barton running at 166/333 would
require a mem freq of 80% to achieve 133. It would be convenient if
you had another stick of mem to test, these boards are picky about
memory. Worth a shot.

Check the voltage on CMOS battery. I've some posts here reporting
their board had shipped with a bad battery. This would allow you to
properly clear the BIOS and make your changes. You might check the PSU
too.

Of course the board may be bad but hope not. Good luck.

 

[Joachim Trensz]

I had that same thing occurring to me when I bought a new pair of DIMMs
recently. Turned out, one of the two DIMMs was defective. It had been
working in the beginning, but the probs got worse within 48 hours. However,
I also think Nvidia's IDE driver for XP can cause probs, and notably, it
isn't in their latest driver release AFAIK.

Achim

...
After day 3, I began experiencing problems in booting; got real slow
as if software conflicts were occuring. Reached the point that it
will not boot at all (can't find a file or the file is corrupt message
from XP).

....

 

[Joachim Trensz]

You know, John, I just read a posting which reminded me of the '100 MHz
Jumper'. Someone successfully cured his probs by setting that jumper to 100
MHz. Now, this jumper doesn't exist on either of my two boards, but if it's
on your's, maybe set it to 100 MHz and see if that helps.

And as I said in another message in this thread to someone else, Nvidia's
IDE driver for XP could also be a problem. Maybe you should deinstall it, or
install the latest 2.45 driver from Nvidia if you haven't done so yet, as
they don't contain that IDE driver anymore.

Achim

 

[John Q Public]

You know, John, I just read a posting which reminded me of the '100 MHz
Jumper'. Someone successfully cured his probs by setting that jumper to 100
MHz. Now, this jumper doesn't exist on either of my two boards, but if it's
on your's, maybe set it to 100 MHz and see if that helps.

All mine has is the jumper to select 400/333/266 or 200 only...might
that be the one...maybe set it to 200? But then I wont be able to set
133 in bios setup I would assume right?

And as I said in another message in this thread to someone else, Nvidia's
IDE driver for XP could also be a problem.

Yeah after the last reformat I did, I DID NOT reinstall anything from
Nvidia yet.

Maybe you should deinstall it, or
install the latest 2.45 driver from Nvidia if you haven't done so yet, as
they don't contain that IDE driver anymore.

Just tried installing the 2.45 you speak of, and instant blue screen
crash...see what I mean? Wonderfull. I'm pretty sure i have corrupted
files, so I'll be doing another reformat and reinstall of WinXP, (this
time with all on board stuff disabled either by jumpers or in the bios
setup), just as soon as I get the new stick of Asus certified ram in
the mail, should be today...

I figure maybe if WinXP doesn't install ANY drivers for the onboard
stuff when I reinstall it this time (since it wont detect disabled
stuff) for hardware it may be having trouble with, then maybe I'll
have some success

 

[Caroline]

Hi John,

I'd, at least for the purpose of testing, disable the 1394, USB2.0 (there's
an option to set it to 1.1 only), onboard sound, onboard gameport, and the
NIC you don't use.

And yes, a reinstall (or repair install?) might be a good thing to do.
Perhaps with as little as possible devices connected. Also disable the 'USB
Legacy' compatibility if that's enabled on your system.

The problems you're seeing are not unknown, I've read about similar issues
with WinXP and this board in the early days of the 1.04 revision of the
board a few times. People got blue screens and error messages like you, and
some even got data on their C: drive corrupted.

Unfortunately, I haven't followed the issue up as I didn't have the problem,
so I don't know whether there are 'standard' solutions for it or not, and I
also don't know what's actually the cause. It _could_ still be the RAM
though, although the symptoms point everywhere else. Although, with you
having tried several different DIMMs, the probability for this has certainly
decreased.

One guy reported that the problems went away after he switch the CPU mode
from 'Optimal' to 'Aggressive' in the BIOS' chipset options. But none of
that seemed to be a safe solution. I am under the impression, though, that
everybody got their probs solved eventually.

Achim

Sheesh! When *I* did that my computer wouldn't even POST!

I was getting the Win32k.sys BSOD on my machine - when I uninstalled
Motherboard Monitor, all my BSODs stopped.....?

HTH

Caroline

Caroline Picking, (e-mail address removed)
Milton Keynes, England.

 

[Joachim Trensz]

John, I wouldn't consider it impossible.

I've had similarly weird things happen in the past. A new, at the time 'hot'
graphics card (GF4-4600) wouldn't install, lots of no-POSTs and even data
corruption on the HD occurred. But after replacing the CPU (purely
coincidentally, it had until then had appeared stable and fine but I'd
purchased a new, faster one two days after I'd ordered the graphics card),
everything worked, the graphics card installed, and no data did get
corrupted anymore.

I have no explanation for what happened, but it did happen.

Achim


....

would this indicate a failing CPU?

....

 

[John Q. Public]

I've set CPU to 120 (instead of 133), and the multiplier from 13.0 to
9.0/17.0.

Seems a little stable so far, and CPU is showing up in system
properties as 1.60 Ghz Athlon XP 2100, which is a lot better than
showing up as Athlon XP 1500 like it was. What does this setting mean?
That sometimes it multiples by 9.0 and sometimes 17.0?

 

[Ed]

I've set CPU to 120 (instead of 133), and the multiplier from 13.0 to
9.0/17.0.

Seems a little stable so far, and CPU is showing up in system
properties as 1.60 Ghz Athlon XP 2100, which is a lot better than
showing up as Athlon XP 1500 like it was. What does this setting mean?
That sometimes it multiples by 9.0 and sometimes 17.0?

afaik, chips sold with a 12.5x (or lower) have access up to 12.5x, chips
sold at 13x or more have access to 13x and higher on the A7N8X.
Ed

 

[Ed]

afaik, chips sold with a 12.5x (or lower) have access up to 12.5x, chips
sold at 13x or more have access to 13x and higher on the A7N8X.
Ed

May want to check this out...
http://fab51.fc2web.com/pc/barton/athlon-e23.html

 

[Joachim Trensz]

John, I don't remember everything that was said in this thread, but if
reducing the CPU speed helps, wouldn't that indicate that the CPU is the
problem? Do you have a chance of testing the board with another CPU?

As for the 9/17 issue, what Ed says. Depending on what the CPU is set to,
one of the two multipliers will result. Nothing to worry about, unless
you've unlocked your CPU.

Achim

 

[John Q. Public]

John, I don't remember everything that was said in this thread, but if
reducing the CPU speed helps, wouldn't that indicate that the CPU is the
problem? Do you have a chance of testing the board with another CPU?

As for the 9/17 issue, what Ed says. Depending on what the CPU is set to,
one of the two multipliers will result. Nothing to worry about, unless
you've unlocked your CPU.

Achim

I was just curious as to why it seem to be stable at that setting, and
not the 13.0 setting. I'm not complaining, but I'm wondering if that's
ok, and if I'm getting the full use/speed out of my 2100XP
Athlon...perhaps it's a bug in the bios 1005?

 

[Joachim Trensz]

I can't really comment on the 1005 BIOS as I'm not using it. I heard some
people say it's a tad less stable than for example 1003, but in this NG
someone said the opposite, so my personal conclusion is, uh-huh, it can go
either way.

I wouldn't consider it impossible that the multiplier issue you're seeing is
a bug in 1005, although I haven't seen anyone else talk about it. I really
don't know.

As for getting full use/speed, I _think_ your CPU should run at a little
over 1700 MHz. If I'm right at 1600 MHz it would be running a tad slow.

Achim



....

I was just curious as to why it seem to be stable at that setting, and
not the 13.0 setting. I'm not complaining, but I'm wondering if that's
ok, and if I'm getting the full use/speed out of my 2100XP
Athlon...perhaps it's a bug in the bios 1005?

....

 

[John Q Public]

I can't really comment on the 1005 BIOS as I'm not using it. I heard some
people say it's a tad less stable than for example 1003, but in this NG
someone said the opposite, so my personal conclusion is, uh-huh, it can go
either way.

I wouldn't consider it impossible that the multiplier issue you're seeing is
a bug in 1005, although I haven't seen anyone else talk about it. I really
don't know.

As for getting full use/speed, I _think_ your CPU should run at a little
over 1700 MHz. If I'm right at 1600 MHz it would be running a tad slow.

Achim

You are correct. Around 1733 is where the
CPU should be, but the system blue screen crashes and is otherwise
very unstable with the FSB set anything higher than 125. So I've been
changing the multiplier and experimenting with different settings,
while leaving the FSB set at 125. The best I seem to be able to get is
1.63 Ghz (left click on my computer,general properties) Not a real big
deal, but this CPU is not even a year old (retail, not oem) and it
seems strange if it was having a problem.

Could it be that I'm using DDR400 (PC3200) with a CPU that has a
133Mhz operating freqency? Could that be an issue? Then again even
with the old PC2100 I had some problems....

 

[Joachim Trensz]

Using PC3200 RAM at 133 MHz shouldn't be a problem, unless the SPD would
give incorrect settings for that FSB, as you'd be using the RAM at slower
speed than what it's spec'ed for. That should be no prob.

Have you tried setting the RAM speed to 200 MHz (or anything substantially
higher than the FSB) by using a setting like 125% or higher, instead of
'Synch'? That's probably not faster than Synch'ing it, but it would at least
be a test as to whether the RAM can do the 200 MHz.

Achim


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