P4S800D-E Deluxe mainboard BSD

[Doug]

Well, I went with the SiS chipset to take a chance, and this is what I get
I suppose. New build used only for office software and playing a few MP3's
and that's pretty much it besides checking daily weather. I keep getting
random crashes, BSD's that says there's possible driver issues, and the
dump of physical memory is eminent then starts a countdown to 100, then
reboot. the file it's having problems loading or whatever it's doing is
"smwdm.sys". I thought I remembered that being something to have to do with
the sound, so I went to ASUS and got the latest driver. This did no good.
I"ve updated the BIOS 3 different times with no luck and am now running BIOS
1008.003.

System is this:
Lian Li Mid Case
P4 2.8C 800 MHz FSB HT
1 gig Kingston matched RAM Dual Channel PC3200
NEC DVD-RW
WD SATA 74 Gig Raptor 10K RPM
Thermaltake TruePower 480 Watt PS
Using onboard sound, and onboard LAN Controllers

MB Temp stays pretty steady at 27 Celsius
and CPU temp stays pretty steady at 25 Celsius
Recorded voltage monitor, they all stay VERY steady

OS is Windows XP Pro with SP2

=============
When its running, it runs beautifully, but then crashes outa the blue!

Any and all help is very much appreciated! and TIA!

Doug

 

[Paul]

Well, I went with the SiS chipset to take a chance, and this is what I get
I suppose. New build used only for office software and playing a few MP3's
and that's pretty much it besides checking daily weather. I keep getting
random crashes, BSD's that says there's possible driver issues, and the
dump of physical memory is eminent then starts a countdown to 100, then
reboot. the file it's having problems loading or whatever it's doing is
"smwdm.sys". I thought I remembered that being something to have to do with
the sound, so I went to ASUS and got the latest driver. This did no good.
I"ve updated the BIOS 3 different times with no luck and am now running BIOS
1008.003.

System is this:
Lian Li Mid Case
P4 2.8C 800 MHz FSB HT
1 gig Kingston matched RAM Dual Channel PC3200
NEC DVD-RW
WD SATA 74 Gig Raptor 10K RPM
Thermaltake TruePower 480 Watt PS
Using onboard sound, and onboard LAN Controllers

MB Temp stays pretty steady at 27 Celsius
and CPU temp stays pretty steady at 25 Celsius
Recorded voltage monitor, they all stay VERY steady

OS is Windows XP Pro with SP2

=============
When its running, it runs beautifully, but then crashes outa the blue!

Any and all help is very much appreciated! and TIA!

Doug

And when you disable onboard sound, what happens then ? Disabling
the sound in the BIOS, should prevent the smwdm.sys loading, if
it is indeed a sound chip driver.

It pays to do some standard testing first, to give you some
confidence in the other components you bought. I like memtest86
from memtest.org, as it is the only memory test program I know of
that tests every byte on the DIMMs. The Prime95 Torture Test
from mersenne.org, does a combined processor, memory, Northbridge
memory controller test, by doing a calculation that takes an
extended period of time, and the results are checked against
known values. The Small FFT option concentrates most of the
effort on the processor, while Large FFT slows the program
somewhat by doing a lot more main memory access. The mixed FFT
test does some of both, and can be left running overnight. A
program like 3DMark2001SE (from madonion.com, a.k.a futuremark.com)
will engage the AGP slot and video card, and give you some idea
if pumping a lot of data through the video card works OK. Leaving
the demo mode looping overnight, and seeing if it isn't frozen
in the morning, is a simple test of stability that is better than
days of sitting idle in the desktop.

Once you've done all that testing, you may end up having more
confidence in the non-motherboard components. If sound is the
only thing broken on the board, you have the option of returning
the board to your vendor (if under their return period), or
doing an RMA with Asus. Or, you could just put a cheap sound card
into the computer, to work around the problem, if the problem
is something to do with the sound chip.

The posts I've read so far about the P4S800D-E have rated the
board as "trouble free build", but I think there have been the
odd problem with the board (i.e. peripheral chip problems, as
opposed to problems with the core functions of the board).

HTH,
Paul