Newbie: A7N8X-Deluxe Failure Rate

[Steve H.]

Hi,
My friend was installing my A7N8X-Deluxe mobo in a really super
nice Antec case last night. Processor is the AMD Athlon 3200. He had
hooked up all the usual components (HDD, Nvidia 5200 video card, FDD,
DVD-R). The mobo would not post at all and would not even beep. He
disconnected everything except the CPU and the video card and even
tried a known-working video card. Still 100% dead. I left the room to
put away something and the mobo did post up normally while I was gone
( I saw it for myself ). Then while he was installing Windows XP Pro,
he encountered another problem of getting the mobo to recognize the
Seagate HDD. Question: he is certain that the mobo is bad. Does this
mobo fail very often ? If it is defective, would it be ASUS's fault or
the mobo warehouse's fault ? I appreciate your time in response.
Steve

 

[S.Heenan]

Hi,
My friend was installing my A7N8X-Deluxe mobo in a really super
nice Antec case last night. Processor is the AMD Athlon 3200. He had
hooked up all the usual components (HDD, Nvidia 5200 video card, FDD,
DVD-R). The mobo would not post at all and would not even beep. He
disconnected everything except the CPU and the video card and even
tried a known-working video card. Still 100% dead. I left the room to
put away something and the mobo did post up normally while I was gone
( I saw it for myself ). Then while he was installing Windows XP Pro,
he encountered another problem of getting the mobo to recognize the
Seagate HDD. Question: he is certain that the mobo is bad. Does this
mobo fail very often ? If it is defective, would it be ASUS's fault or
the mobo warehouse's fault ? I appreciate your time in response.
Steve

Have him take the board out of the case if it acts up again. Using only the
PSU, video card, RAM, and CPU, see if it will boot. It may be as simple as a
short to the case.

The Seagate SATA hard drive requires the Silicon Image SATA drivers, on a
floppy. Press F6 during the first few seconds of installation. If you don't
load these drivers, the OS can't see the hard drive.

 

[screwtape iii]

Hi,
My friend was installing my A7N8X-Deluxe mobo in a really super
nice Antec case last night. Processor is the AMD Athlon 3200. He had
hooked up all the usual components (HDD, Nvidia 5200 video card, FDD,
DVD-R). The mobo would not post at all and would not even beep. He
disconnected everything except the CPU and the video card and even
tried a known-working video card. Still 100% dead. I left the room to
put away something and the mobo did post up normally while I was gone
( I saw it for myself ). Then while he was installing Windows XP Pro,
he encountered another problem of getting the mobo to recognize the
Seagate HDD. Question: he is certain that the mobo is bad. Does this
mobo fail very often ? If it is defective, would it be ASUS's fault or
the mobo warehouse's fault ? I appreciate your time in response.
Steve

I bought ONE A7N8X-Deluxe. Arrived DOA. RMA'd the board. Replacement was
also DOA. Tossed in trash and never bought another one.

FWIW the other variants of the A7N8X appear to be fine motherboards.

 

[Ed]

I bought ONE A7N8X-Deluxe. Arrived DOA. RMA'd the board. Replacement was
also DOA. Tossed in trash and never bought another one.

FWIW the other variants of the A7N8X appear to be fine motherboards.

A7N8X non-Dlx v2.00 here going on 15 months, still running great.
It's just too bad there is nothing faster then a 3200+ for these boards.
I'll be upgrading to an AMD64 very soon. ;p

Ed

 

[steve h.]

Hi,
My friend was installing my A7N8X-Deluxe mobo in a really super
nice Antec case last night. Processor is the AMD Athlon 3200. He had
hooked up all the usual components (HDD, Nvidia 5200 video card, FDD,
DVD-R). The mobo would not post at all and would not even beep. He
disconnected everything except the CPU and the video card and even
tried a known-working video card. Still 100% dead. I left the room to
put away something and the mobo did post up normally while I was gone
( I saw it for myself ). Then while he was installing Windows XP Pro,
he encountered another problem of getting the mobo to recognize the
Seagate HDD. Question: he is certain that the mobo is bad. Does this
mobo fail very often ? If it is defective, would it be ASUS's fault or
the mobo warehouse's fault ? I appreciate your time in response.
Steve

friend just called me, cpu almost ready, states "serial ata drives are
very hard to install"

 

[S.Heenan]

friend just called me, cpu almost ready, states "serial ata drives are
very hard to install"

Have him dowload the following
http://www.asus.com.tw/support/down...d=23&m_id=1&f_name=silicon_v10022.zip~zaqwedc

Copy all files in the root of the folder to a new floppy, with the exception
of the PDF file and the GUI folder, since both are too large for a floppy.
Boot from the Windows XP CD.
Press F6
Choose the drivers from A:
Complete the Windows XP installation.

 

[Steve H.]

Hi,
My friend was installing my A7N8X-Deluxe mobo in a really super
nice Antec case last night. Processor is the AMD Athlon 3200. He had
hooked up all the usual components (HDD, Nvidia 5200 video card, FDD,
DVD-R). The mobo would not post at all and would not even beep. He
disconnected everything except the CPU and the video card and even
tried a known-working video card. Still 100% dead. I left the room to
put away something and the mobo did post up normally while I was gone
( I saw it for myself ). Then while he was installing Windows XP Pro,
he encountered another problem of getting the mobo to recognize the
Seagate HDD. Question: he is certain that the mobo is bad. Does this
mobo fail very often ? If it is defective, would it be ASUS's fault or
the mobo warehouse's fault ? I appreciate your time in response.
Steve

update: the latest news is that the BIOS on those mobos is sometimes
flawed and my computer will be ready tonight. Yay!

 

[john]

Have him take the board out of the case if it acts up again. Using only
the
PSU, video card, RAM, and CPU, see if it will boot. It may be as simple
as a
short to the case.

The Seagate SATA hard drive requires the Silicon Image SATA drivers, on a
floppy. Press F6 during the first few seconds of installation. If you
don't
load these drivers, the OS can't see the hard drive.

Problem solved, hard drive works 100% now. I don't think he really knew
what he was doing, imagine that lol I'm sure the "warehouse people"
set him straight and did exactly that.

Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/

 

[S.Heenan]

Problem solved, hard drive works 100% now. I don't think he really
knew what he was doing, imagine that lol I'm sure the "warehouse
people" set him straight and did exactly that.

A little knowledge is always a dangerous thing.

 

[Sam]

Sometime on, or about Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:24:57 GMT, screwtape iii
wrote:

I bought ONE A7N8X-Deluxe. Arrived DOA. RMA'd the board. Replacement was
also DOA. Tossed in trash and never bought another one.

FWIW the other variants of the A7N8X appear to be fine motherboards.

I've owned 2 A7N8X-Deluxe boards and 1 A7N8X-E Deluxe. They've all
worked just fine right out of the box. Either you just had a string of
bad luck or something else was causing a problem.

Sam