P4P800 BIOS Disaster!!!! Suggestions PLS!!!

[Ken Fox]

Hi,

<apologies for the length in advance>

Yesterday I put a new 160GB SATA drive into my P4P800 Deluxe system, using
it in 2 partitions to replace a 120GB EIDE drive. The idea was to speed up
performance by using the 150MHz drive instead of a drive that was being
limited at 100MHz by the Intel controller chip, plus to get more space.
~30GB are used for a Win2K system partition and the rest for video files,
mostly tv programs from my Wintek DVR card.

I ghosted the contents of the old drive onto the new partition and
surprisingly it all worked, and W2K somehow managed to mend itself even
though it was booting from a different hard disk given a different # by the
bios.

I ran Sandra testing and found that the drive was only running at UDMA-5
(133MHz) speeds; the report recommended updating the bios if possible, among
other things. I reran the test on several different boots and got the same
results. So I went over to the Asus site and read the readme on the newest
bios 1014 for this board and saw that one of the things supposidly fixed was
disk access speeds. I had seen some posts here reporting problems with this
bios but others seemed happy with it so I figured it was reversible and
worth a shot.

I applied the bios using Asusupdate but with the bios on a diskette, not
over the internet. All seemed well, however disk score did not improve in
Sandra despite numerous attempts to tinker with the bios settings. I just
figured that this was a problem not worth dealing with and forgot it.
System performance was otherwise great.

Later today I received a new 120GB IDE drive from a rebate promotion found
on a "deals" type internet site (basically 100 CDRs in a cakebox plus the WD
120GB drive for about $35 after rebates -- who could pass THAT up????). I
took this drive and put it into an external USB 2.0 enclosure, and turned it
on and connected it to a USB 2.0 port where it was immediately recognized.
I proceeded to format this drive, which went fine, then about an hour or two
later I came back to it and copied some files from my in-box data and
pictures directories onto the new USB drive. After a couple of directories
(I copied quite a few), it became obvious that it was taking way too long,
like 20 seconds, for the dialog box to appear when I right clicked on a
drive or directory. This got steadily worse. Whenever I clicked on a
desktop icon it took, similarly, 20 or even 30+ seconds to get a response.
This got old really fast!

At first I thought my new ATA drive was about to bite the dust or that there
was a problem with the W2K ghosted install or that the drive had become
corrupted, so, being as I had ghosted the drive earlier today I ran Norton
Ghost and put the image back on the boot partition. This went fine but
there was no change in this problem. Then I figured, it must be the drive,
so I took the previous drive and put it back in the box, disconnected the
new SATA drive, and reinserted the old, unchanged drive in its former
position on the IDE chain, then rebooted. Problems continued, no change.
Then, I took a ghosted copy of the IDE drive from a couple of weeks ago and
put that on the IDE drive -- no change, same problem. So by this point I
figured there was either some sort of hardware problem or bios problem.

I flashed the bios with afudos.exe with bios 1012; no improvement. Then,
taking a hint from an earlier post on this ng, I reflashed the bios with the
earliest bios I could find (the one on the CDROM that came with the mobo,
using the afudos version from that cdrom), then I reflashed with 1012.

All of the bios flashes appeared to go without incident and no problems were
reported by afudos.

However, and this is a huge however, the system remains all screwed
up!!!!!!!!!!!!! Every time I try to get into the contents of a drive, I get
this 30 or second delay, yet W2K control panel shows no problems and the
bios shows no problem recognizing any of the devices.

SO: I am at wits end about what to do; nothing has worked. 1014 seemed to
work ok for a while but then a few hours later after I had it format a new
USB drive, I got the afforementioned disk access problems and they have not
gone away in spite of multiple bios flashes. The bios does however seem to
work, it shows up and has the usual options on hitting "del" on rebooting.

I should mention that I previously had another IDE drive in the same
external enclosure attached to the system, just that it was 80gb not 120gb,
so the system was "used" to having a USB drive attached to it.

I can't think of anything else to do. Maybe the best thing to do is to
short the jumpers on the CMOS as I've read about here before, but I've never
done that and I'm not sure that is the right thing to do at this juncture.
If you think it is, please give me failsafe instructions since I have a
tendency to take situtations like this and turn them into dumpster runs for
a system

Thanks for all suggestions and I apologize if this problem has been
addressed before; I just don't have the ability to use the system the way I
would like, and my notebook is having problems as well so I haven't tried
using that as a spare.

rgds,

ken
p.s. I turned off all overclocking features when these problems first
occurred and they remain OFF.

 

[The Black Wibble]

[...]

Thanks for all suggestions and I apologize if this problem has been
addressed before; I just don't have the ability to use the system the way I
would like, and my notebook is having problems as well so I haven't tried
using that as a spare.

rgds,

ken
p.s. I turned off all overclocking features when these problems first
occurred and they remain OFF.

Did you load the Default Settings in BIOS then save them?

Tony.

--
3GHz P4 (HT enabled)
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
PDC20378 IDE/SATA controller
ADI AD1985 audio
MSI FX5900U-VTD256 (BIOS 4.35.20.22.0)
2x 512MB Kingston PC3500
2x 36.7 SATA WD Raptors
52/32/52 LiteOn CD-Writer
16x Pioneer DVD-120S
Enermax 550W PSU
Windows XP Pro & Linux Fedora
PC-70 Lian Li case w/ side window
Hitachi 174SXW B 17" LCD

To email me, replace org.nz with net.nz

 

[Alex]

Hi,

<apologies for the length in advance>

Yesterday I put a new 160GB SATA drive into my P4P800 Deluxe system, using
it in 2 partitions to replace a 120GB EIDE drive. The idea was to speed up
performance by using the 150MHz drive instead of a drive that was being
limited at 100MHz by the Intel controller chip, plus to get more space.
~30GB are used for a Win2K system partition and the rest for video files,
mostly tv programs from my Wintek DVR card.

I ghosted the contents of the old drive onto the new partition and
surprisingly it all worked, and W2K somehow managed to mend itself even
though it was booting from a different hard disk given a different # by the
bios.

I ran Sandra testing and found that the drive was only running at UDMA-5
(133MHz) speeds; the report recommended updating the bios if possible, among
other things. I reran the test on several different boots and got the same
results. So I went over to the Asus site and read the readme on the newest
bios 1014 for this board and saw that one of the things supposidly fixed was
disk access speeds. I had seen some posts here reporting problems with this
bios but others seemed happy with it so I figured it was reversible and
worth a shot.

I applied the bios using Asusupdate but with the bios on a diskette, not
over the internet. All seemed well, however disk score did not improve in
Sandra despite numerous attempts to tinker with the bios settings. I just
figured that this was a problem not worth dealing with and forgot it.
System performance was otherwise great.

Later today I received a new 120GB IDE drive from a rebate promotion found
on a "deals" type internet site (basically 100 CDRs in a cakebox plus the WD
120GB drive for about $35 after rebates -- who could pass THAT up????). I
took this drive and put it into an external USB 2.0 enclosure, and turned it
on and connected it to a USB 2.0 port where it was immediately recognized.
I proceeded to format this drive, which went fine, then about an hour or two
later I came back to it and copied some files from my in-box data and
pictures directories onto the new USB drive. After a couple of directories
(I copied quite a few), it became obvious that it was taking way too long,
like 20 seconds, for the dialog box to appear when I right clicked on a
drive or directory. This got steadily worse. Whenever I clicked on a
desktop icon it took, similarly, 20 or even 30+ seconds to get a response.
This got old really fast!

At first I thought my new ATA drive was about to bite the dust or that there
was a problem with the W2K ghosted install or that the drive had become
corrupted, so, being as I had ghosted the drive earlier today I ran Norton
Ghost and put the image back on the boot partition. This went fine but
there was no change in this problem. Then I figured, it must be the drive,
so I took the previous drive and put it back in the box, disconnected the
new SATA drive, and reinserted the old, unchanged drive in its former
position on the IDE chain, then rebooted. Problems continued, no change.
Then, I took a ghosted copy of the IDE drive from a couple of weeks ago and
put that on the IDE drive -- no change, same problem. So by this point I
figured there was either some sort of hardware problem or bios problem.

I flashed the bios with afudos.exe with bios 1012; no improvement. Then,
taking a hint from an earlier post on this ng, I reflashed the bios with the
earliest bios I could find (the one on the CDROM that came with the mobo,
using the afudos version from that cdrom), then I reflashed with 1012.

All of the bios flashes appeared to go without incident and no problems were
reported by afudos.

However, and this is a huge however, the system remains all screwed
up!!!!!!!!!!!!! Every time I try to get into the contents of a drive, I get
this 30 or second delay, yet W2K control panel shows no problems and the
bios shows no problem recognizing any of the devices.

SO: I am at wits end about what to do; nothing has worked. 1014 seemed to
work ok for a while but then a few hours later after I had it format a new
USB drive, I got the afforementioned disk access problems and they have not
gone away in spite of multiple bios flashes. The bios does however seem to
work, it shows up and has the usual options on hitting "del" on rebooting.

I should mention that I previously had another IDE drive in the same
external enclosure attached to the system, just that it was 80gb not 120gb,
so the system was "used" to having a USB drive attached to it.

I can't think of anything else to do. Maybe the best thing to do is to
short the jumpers on the CMOS as I've read about here before, but I've never
done that and I'm not sure that is the right thing to do at this juncture.
If you think it is, please give me failsafe instructions since I have a
tendency to take situtations like this and turn them into dumpster runs for
a system

Thanks for all suggestions and I apologize if this problem has been
addressed before; I just don't have the ability to use the system the way I
would like, and my notebook is having problems as well so I haven't tried
using that as a spare.

rgds,

ken
p.s. I turned off all overclocking features when these problems first
occurred and they remain OFF.

Ken,

Consider the possibility that this may not be a BIOS or HD problem.

The delays may be NIC card related. See if they go away after booting
into safe mode with no network drivers.

Good Luck!

---Alex

 

[Ken Fox]

Hi Alex and Tony,

(and everyone else -- the problem persists!),

I left the machine on last night as I was downloading a large file and that
was working. When I came back this morning the machine seemed to function
normally, e.g. no delays for disk accesses. Although the bios was basically
set for bios defaults anyway, I rebooted and went into the bios setting bios
defaults. Since I'm not booting to one of the primary or secondary ide
devices (I've gone back to booting from the SATA drive since the primary IDE
drive boots had the same problem), I had to correct the boot order after it
rebooted and defaults led the bios to an unbootable drive. After booting
back up the problems recurred, e.g. the machine has great difficulty
locating drives, all drives, be they floppy, CD, hard, whatever. When going
into Windows Explorer, it either takes 20 seconds to get the drop down
dialog window or the program (windows explorer) crashes altogether
sometimes. Occasionally the disk accesses work normally and quickly.

I will reboot into safe mode and see if the problems go away; if they do,
Alex, what is the next step? Reloading NIC drivers, assuming the NIC
portion of the board is dead and needs an RMA, what should I do?

Thanks in advance for all responses. I'll try rebooting now into safe mode
and see if it works. I would have tried that before posting this but I
can't tell if each reboot might end up being the last one for this box, and
if it is I'll have to get my notebook up and running later today ----

rgds,

ken

 

[Ken Fox]

Hi,

Ok,

I tried booting into safe mode. It took a really really really long time --
longer than I recall on other machines, however I don't recall doing that
before on this one, and the boot up on this machine, with the Via RAID
enabled, has never been fast. Safe mode is weird in the best of
circumstances so it is hard to know whether what I observed was normal. As
to the disk access problem, it was definitely much improved over regular
mode. There was some delay each time I changed from one drive to another
drive, but subsequent accesses on the same drive were relatively normal.

Going back into regular mode, now, the problem has recurred. Let me be a
bit more specific about the problem. It seems as though I can "explode" the
directory/file tree in Windows Explorer (Windows 2000) normally most of the
time. The problem is when I right click to open a dialog box on a file or
directory, and sometimes, when I double click on a file to open it or start
a program. The system will wait a ridiculous amount of time, maybe 20
seconds or more, sometimes, before the dialog box comes up; occasionally
windows explorer or the other process crashes while it is waiting. It is as
if Windows Explorer has no trouble giving a list of files and directories in
a drive, but if I want to open them or copy them or whatever, the system
then has difficulty locating the specific file in order to act upon it.

Use of the internet and email appears to be normal. A few programs do not
work most of the time in either safe mode or regular mode -- an example is
the free Microsoft Photo editor program which is my default program when I
click on a jpg.

Other programs work completely normally, like Nero and Nero Express; I've
burned a CDR with no problems this morning.

I have confirmed that 1012 is the currently loaded Bios, so the reflashes
apparently worked although perhaps the CMOS is stuck in some way I don't
understand.

Once again, the system was working fine, no problems at all, until a few
hours after I flashed the new bios 1014 onto the box. Sometimes the
problems seem to go away, like this morning after the machine sat all night
downloading a file. Right now, after these various maneuvers (safe mode x2,
loading bios defaults) the problems are back. At first I thought maybe the
new SATA drive was the culprit but last night I switched back to the old ide
drive and disconnected the SATA drive and there was no difference.

I don't really know what else to do except trying to remove the cmos battery
and short the jumpers but I'm not really sure at all whether that is worth
doing or will accomplish anything.

Suggestions, advice, personal counselling are all welcome.

TIA.

Ken

 

[Maximus]

Alternatively, you can use one hard disk and install a fresh W2K on it to
see if
all is fine. Remember to apply all 4 Service packs.


Max
-------------

 

[Alex]

Hi,

Ok,

I tried booting into safe mode. It took a really really really long time --
longer than I recall on other machines, however I don't recall doing that
before on this one, and the boot up on this machine, with the Via RAID
enabled, has never been fast. Safe mode is weird in the best of
circumstances so it is hard to know whether what I observed was normal. As
to the disk access problem, it was definitely much improved over regular
mode. There was some delay each time I changed from one drive to another
drive, but subsequent accesses on the same drive were relatively normal.

Going back into regular mode, now, the problem has recurred. Let me be a
bit more specific about the problem. It seems as though I can "explode" the
directory/file tree in Windows Explorer (Windows 2000) normally most of the
time. The problem is when I right click to open a dialog box on a file or
directory, and sometimes, when I double click on a file to open it or start
a program. The system will wait a ridiculous amount of time, maybe 20
seconds or more, sometimes, before the dialog box comes up; occasionally
windows explorer or the other process crashes while it is waiting. It is as
if Windows Explorer has no trouble giving a list of files and directories in
a drive, but if I want to open them or copy them or whatever, the system
then has difficulty locating the specific file in order to act upon it.

Use of the internet and email appears to be normal. A few programs do not
work most of the time in either safe mode or regular mode -- an example is
the free Microsoft Photo editor program which is my default program when I
click on a jpg.

Other programs work completely normally, like Nero and Nero Express; I've
burned a CDR with no problems this morning.

I have confirmed that 1012 is the currently loaded Bios, so the reflashes
apparently worked although perhaps the CMOS is stuck in some way I don't
understand.

Once again, the system was working fine, no problems at all, until a few
hours after I flashed the new bios 1014 onto the box. Sometimes the
problems seem to go away, like this morning after the machine sat all night
downloading a file. Right now, after these various maneuvers (safe mode x2,
loading bios defaults) the problems are back. At first I thought maybe the
new SATA drive was the culprit but last night I switched back to the old ide
drive and disconnected the SATA drive and there was no difference.

I don't really know what else to do except trying to remove the cmos battery
and short the jumpers but I'm not really sure at all whether that is worth
doing or will accomplish anything.

Suggestions, advice, personal counselling are all welcome.

TIA.

Ken

Do you use another program as an alternative to Windows Explorer such
as Power Desk?

Do you use a firewall program like Zone Alarm?

Try having it "stop all internet activity".

My PC also recently experienced a severe delay browsing my HD
partitions, etc.

I found that Power Desk, my Windows Explorer alternative, was trying
to communicate over the internet.

Once I reconfigured Zone Alarm to stop Power Desk from accessing the
internet my slowdowns disappeared.

---Alex

 

[The Black Wibble]

Hi Alex and Tony,

(and everyone else -- the problem persists!),

I left the machine on last night as I was downloading a large file and that
was working. When I came back this morning the machine seemed to function
normally, e.g. no delays for disk accesses. Although the bios was basically
set for bios defaults anyway, I rebooted and went into the bios setting bios
defaults. Since I'm not booting to one of the primary or secondary ide
devices (I've gone back to booting from the SATA drive since the primary IDE
drive boots had the same problem), I had to correct the boot order after it
rebooted and defaults led the bios to an unbootable drive. After booting
back up the problems recurred, e.g. the machine has great difficulty
locating drives, all drives, be they floppy, CD, hard, whatever. When going
into Windows Explorer, it either takes 20 seconds to get the drop down
dialog window or the program (windows explorer) crashes altogether
sometimes. Occasionally the disk accesses work normally and quickly.

I will reboot into safe mode and see if the problems go away; if they do,
Alex, what is the next step? Reloading NIC drivers, assuming the NIC
portion of the board is dead and needs an RMA, what should I do?

Thanks in advance for all responses. I'll try rebooting now into safe mode
and see if it works. I would have tried that before posting this but I
can't tell if each reboot might end up being the last one for this box, and
if it is I'll have to get my notebook up and running later today ----

rgds,

What I find strange is that you had the same delays in opening files even after going back to the original
120GB EIDE drive and BIOS. Assuming at that time you detached the USB drive and the 160GB SATA, was the
jumper setting on the 120GB EIDE drive and its position on along the IDE cable the same as before? I can't
think what else the cause might be.

Tony.

--
3GHz P4 (HT enabled)
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
PDC20378 IDE/SATA controller
ADI AD1985 audio
MSI FX5900U-VTD256 (BIOS 4.35.20.22.0)
2x 512MB Kingston PC3500
2x 36.7 SATA WD Raptors
52/32/52 LiteOn CD-Writer
16x Pioneer DVD-120S
Enermax 550W PSU
Windows XP Pro & Linux Fedora
PC-70 Lian Li case w/ side window
Hitachi 174SXW B 17" LCD

To email me, replace org.nz with net.nz

 

[Ken Fox]

Do you use another program as an alternative to Windows Explorer such
as Power Desk?

Do you use a firewall program like Zone Alarm?

Try having it "stop all internet activity".

My PC also recently experienced a severe delay browsing my HD
partitions, etc.

I found that Power Desk, my Windows Explorer alternative, was trying
to communicate over the internet.

Once I reconfigured Zone Alarm to stop Power Desk from accessing the
internet my slowdowns disappeared.

---Alex

Hi Alex,

My firewall is strictly hardware based, in my NAT router. I had problems
previously with a zone alarm install (on an earlier system) and I've avoided
SW firewall programs ever since. I don't have any other browsers loaded nor
any other mail/news programs loaded other than the MS OE and IE programs.

When I have task manager open but in a small window on the desktop while
trying to use windows explorer, the major process is "windows idle process,"
and CPU useage is like 2%, maybe 7% max while the program is trying to find
the files.

Thanks,

ken

 

[Ken Fox]

Hi Max,

Alternatively, you can use one hard disk and install a fresh W2K on it to
see if
all is fine. Remember to apply all 4 Service packs.


Max
-------------

While I could do that, I don't see the point, since the original drive that
was removed before I put in the SATA drive and before there were any
problems had the same difficulties.

Also, I've taken fairly recent ghost images that worked fine from a few
weeks ago and put them on both drives and the same problems occur. These
ghost images have been used before and worked fine in the past, and were
also run through the Norton Ghost, ghost file verification process.

The problem is definitely hardware based as far as I can tell, but it sure
is elusive. I'm about to try the CMOS jumper trick and if it doesn't work
maybe buy a Dell and say the hell with it!! Life is too short.

Thanks,

ken

 

[Ken Fox]

What I find strange is that you had the same delays in opening files even

after going back to the original

120GB EIDE drive and BIOS. Assuming at that time you detached the USB

drive and the 160GB SATA, was the

jumper setting on the 120GB EIDE drive and its position on along the IDE

cable the same as before? I can't

think what else the cause might be.

Tony.

Hi Tony,

I left everything the same as I hadn't even taken the original drive out of
the box permanently, just disconnected the primary port on the ide cable
plus power cable from it. As for the USB drive, I've tried it both
connected and disconnected (originally when the problem first came up and I
reflashed the bioses in) and it makes no difference.

Thanks,

ken

 

[no_one]

Did you try to perform a repair install of XP? It might be that your system
is confused and just needs to re evaluate itself.

Have you run a disk or partition checker (Norton or Partition Magic)? If
you covered this earlier in the thread I apologize for the repeat.

 

[Ken Fox]

Did you try to perform a repair install of XP? It might be that your system
is confused and just needs to re evaluate itself.

Have you run a disk or partition checker (Norton or Partition Magic)? If
you covered this earlier in the thread I apologize for the repeat.

The plot is thickening;

I did call Asus tech support today and got hung up on by a tech I waited
half an hour to talk to. After hearing several minutes of my question he
just hung up. The reason I'm pretty sure he hung up rather than got
disconnected was that he did not call back even though he had my phone
number, and when I called back a bit later and got someone else, the guy
looked up my "case number" and found that the person taking the call didn't
document anything which is irregular, he said. Just another thing to
brighten my day and bad experiences with this mobo!

I did look through the logs under "Administrative tools" and there have been
a whole slew of errors listed; Some mention a controller error on "Hard
Disk8\DR17" Others reference problems with various networking services
(telephony, TCP\ICP, etc. etc. etc.).

If I look back in the logs I see that there were some of the same problems
just less of them going back more than a month.

I might try a repair install of W2K, but I think there is some sort of bad
hardware problem that might not be the bios after all; that could be just a
coincidence.

Any suggestions are very welcome!

Thanks,

ken

 

[harry]

if your OC try disabling it and Pat too

The plot is thickening;

I did call Asus tech support today and got hung up on by a tech I waited
half an hour to talk to. After hearing several minutes of my question he
just hung up. The reason I'm pretty sure he hung up rather than got
disconnected was that he did not call back even though he had my phone
number, and when I called back a bit later and got someone else, the guy
looked up my "case number" and found that the person taking the call didn't
document anything which is irregular, he said. Just another thing to
brighten my day and bad experiences with this mobo!

I did look through the logs under "Administrative tools" and there have been
a whole slew of errors listed; Some mention a controller error on "Hard
Disk8\DR17" Others reference problems with various networking services
(telephony, TCP\ICP, etc. etc. etc.).

If I look back in the logs I see that there were some of the same problems
just less of them going back more than a month.

I might try a repair install of W2K, but I think there is some sort of bad
hardware problem that might not be the bios after all; that could be just a
coincidence.

Any suggestions are very welcome!

Thanks,

ken

 

[The Black Wibble]

If I look back in the logs I see that there were some of the same problems
just less of them going back more than a month.

I might try a repair install of W2K, but I think there is some sort of bad
hardware problem that might not be the bios after all; that could be just a
coincidence.

Any suggestions are very welcome!

Run CHKDSK from a command console, and see what unholy things it uncovers if any.

What are the IRQ allocations like? Any conflicts? Any other devices sharing the same IRQ used by the HDD?

Tony.

--
3GHz P4 (HT enabled)
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
PDC20378 IDE/SATA controller
ADI AD1985 audio
MSI FX5900U-VTD256 (BIOS 4.35.20.22.0)
2x 512MB Kingston PC3500
2x 36.7 SATA WD Raptors
52/32/52 LiteOn CD-Writer
16x Pioneer DVD-120S
Enermax 550W PSU
Windows XP Pro & Linux Fedora
PC-70 Lian Li case w/ side window
Hitachi 174SXW B 17" LCD

To email me, replace org.nz with net.nz

 

[Ken Fox]

Hi Tony (and Harry),

I was overclocking but I disabled that at the first signs of trouble
yesterday; a check of CPU-Z shows that performance mode is disabled also, so
no PAT.

Since my last post I took out the cmos battery and shorted the jumper per
instructions that came in the manual. Curiously, the 2nd person I talked to
at Asus support told me to put the battery back in after 10-15 seconds with
the jumper still shorting, then change the jumper setting. This conflicts
with the manual and I decided I'd rather do what the manual says, e.g.,
after shorting out the jumper for 10-15 seconds then put it back in the
usual position then put the cmos battery back in. Then, I put my ghost
image from 12/23 back on the SATA drive system partition, then rebooted.
Before I put the old image back on the system disk, I ran a Norton ghost
image integrity check which (for the 4th time) showed the file was intact.
Now everything seems back to normal, after resetting bios options.

Of course, only time will tell if the system holds up and runs normally.
For now, it seems ok.

Review of the Win2K system log does not show the panoply of errors I got
before over the last day, on the 3 reboots now since the cmos trick.

In retrospect I know I attempted to flash the bios one other time, about a
month ago, and I was not sure that the flash took due to a "checksum error"
message I got. This might explain why I had a spate of Windows 2000 errors
in the system log a month ago, but they did not become repetitive like they
did this time; the system seemed to self-correct after a reboot, which did
not happen this time.

I am HOPING that the cmos shorting trick has put things back in order.

Certainly, the huge variety of errors present in the log over the last day
suggests multisystem failure, from (at the very least) multiple networking
components and also disk controller(s). Whilst this is certainly possible I
think, without knowing, that a Bios problem could produce lotsa problems
that could produce error logs and performance like what I got. And it could
well be that the Bios is permanently damaged and needs to have the chip
replaced. The Asus guy I talked to offered me the possibility to buy a new
Bios chip for $25 delivered from Asus, which I might do if the problems
recur. Or maybe I'll just throw in the towel and forget about building my
own systems in the future. The problem is that these integrated mobos are
10X as complicated as their predecessors from 5 years ago and maybe it is
just time to let Dell or someone else take the risk instead of me! I yearn
for the days when you bought a basic board and then put cards in for the
functionality you wanted; less functionality, less risk, and if you don't
use the function why have it on the board?

Thanks for all suggestions and assistance and any more you can give will
certainly be appreciated.

rgds,

ken

[...]
If I look back in the logs I see that there were some of the same problems
just less of them going back more than a month.

I might try a repair install of W2K, but I think there is some sort of bad
hardware problem that might not be the bios after all; that could be just a
coincidence.

Any suggestions are very welcome!

Run CHKDSK from a command console, and see what unholy things it uncovers if any.

What are the IRQ allocations like? Any conflicts? Any other devices

sharing the same IRQ used by the HDD?

 

[The Black Wibble]

[...]

Certainly, the huge variety of errors present in the log over the last day
suggests multisystem failure, from (at the very least) multiple networking
components and also disk controller(s). Whilst this is certainly possible I
think, without knowing, that a Bios problem could produce lotsa problems
that could produce error logs and performance like what I got. And it could
well be that the Bios is permanently damaged and needs to have the chip
replaced. The Asus guy I talked to offered me the possibility to buy a new
Bios chip for $25 delivered from Asus, which I might do if the problems
recur. Or maybe I'll just throw in the towel and forget about building my
own systems in the future. The problem is that these integrated mobos are
10X as complicated as their predecessors from 5 years ago and maybe it is
just time to let Dell or someone else take the risk instead of me! I yearn
for the days when you bought a basic board and then put cards in for the
functionality you wanted; less functionality, less risk, and if you don't
use the function why have it on the board?

Five years ago? Wasn't that when Doom was ~the~ Windows alternative? I had no experience building a PC in
those days, old timer ;-) So I don't know what it was like. The first PC I've built is the one I'm using now.
Though, I do recall that last century people had to mess around with jumpers, I/O port and IRQ setting to get
their cards to play nicely together.

Thanks for all suggestions and assistance and any more you can give will
certainly be appreciated.

rgds,

ken

I'm happy everything is working as it should. That was a toughy, but try not to let it put you off building
PCs. If you're a real(tm) geek, it's in your blood anyway.

Tony.

--
3GHz P4 (HT enabled)
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
PDC20378 IDE/SATA controller
ADI AD1985 audio
MSI FX5900U-VTD256 (BIOS 4.35.20.22.0)
2x 512MB Kingston PC3500
2x 36.7 SATA WD Raptors
52/32/52 LiteOn CD-Writer
16x Pioneer DVD-120S
Enermax 550W PSU
Windows XP Pro & Linux Fedora
PC-70 Lian Li case w/ side window
Hitachi 174SXW B 17" LCD

To email me, replace org.nz with net.nz

 

[Ken Fox]

By way of an update, removing the battery and shorting out the CMOS jumpers
early last evening appears to have completely fixed the problem.

I've even got the system overclocked again, 220FSB on my 2.6MHz P4 and DDR
400 RAM (both OC'd).

The W2K event viewer is whistle clean.

I'm pretty sure now that the bios flash and whatever went on in the CMOS as
the result was the cause, and I'm pretty sure I've fixed it. Only time and
numerous reboots will prove this,however.

Thanks everyone who gave suggestions, I do appreciate it!

rgds,

ken

[...]

Certainly, the huge variety of errors present in the log over the last day
suggests multisystem failure, from (at the very least) multiple networking
components and also disk controller(s). Whilst this is certainly possible I
think, without knowing, that a Bios problem could produce lotsa problems
that could produce error logs and performance like what I got. And it could
well be that the Bios is permanently damaged and needs to have the chip
replaced. The Asus guy I talked to offered me the possibility to buy a new
Bios chip for $25 delivered from Asus, which I might do if the problems
recur. Or maybe I'll just throw in the towel and forget about building my
own systems in the future. The problem is that these integrated mobos are
10X as complicated as their predecessors from 5 years ago and maybe it is
just time to let Dell or someone else take the risk instead of me! I yearn
for the days when you bought a basic board and then put cards in for the
functionality you wanted; less functionality, less risk, and if you don't
use the function why have it on the board?

Five years ago? Wasn't that when Doom was ~the~ Windows alternative? I

had no experience building a PC in

those days, old timer ;-) So I don't know what it was like. The first PC

I've built is the one I'm using now.

Though, I do recall that last century people had to mess around with

jumpers, I/O port and IRQ setting to get

their cards to play nicely together.


I'm happy everything is working as it should. That was a toughy, but try

not to let it put you off building

 

[Paul]

Or maybe I'll just throw in the towel and forget about building my
own systems in the future.

<< snip >>

Don't be so hard on yourself In the past, whenever people would
post about their plan to flash a BIOS, a responder in this group would
point out the benefits of doing "Load Setup Defaults" both before
and after the upgrade. Doing the one before the flash, is to make sure
you aren't overclocking. Now, with the variants on the "CrashFree"
BIOS, escaping from a problem caused by an overclock is probably a
little easier than it used to be. The "Load Setup Defaults"
after the flash, is to make sure the contents of the CMOS memory
well in the Southbridge, line up with the BIOS idea of the structure
of that data. The "Clear the CMOS" procedure is there for
those occasions where things are so out of whack, that you cannot
get to the BIOS screen to do the "Load Setup Defaults".

Looking at the various Asus motherboard manuals in my collection,
I would say the level of complexity with regard to flashing is
just about constant. In the old days, for example, you had to
remember to disable "byte merge" before flashing. On the A7V family,
you have to watch for certain combinations of "from" "to" BIOS
upgrades. There were still details - they were just different
details.

It is too bad that the flashing utility couldn't set up the contents
of the motherboard to suit the flashing operation. Like, clearing
all volatile info stores, setting a flag in the CMOS to reinit
the CMOS contents etc.

If anything sucks here, it is the lack of advancement in the
utilities provided to do flashing.

That, and the fact that in the "CrashFree" BIOS issued by Asus,
they like to update the "boot block" so often. If they cannot
issue the first BIOS with a good boot block, they should just
ship the damn motherboards with dual BIOS chips on them, like
some of the competition.

Paul

 

[Roy Coorne]

Alternatively, you can use one hard disk and install a fresh W2K on it to
see if
all is fine. Remember to apply all 4 Service packs.

One service pack - SP4 - is sufficient! It includes the earlier
hotfixes and add-ons.

Roy