L
Louie
Please help me from tearing out what is left of my hair! 
About 22 months ago, I bought what I thought was a nice Gigabyte
m/board, (GA-7VAXP) a
2100 Athlon, 60 gig Maxtor drive and set it all up under 98se.
I had quite a few problems (very often with Outlook Express), but
also strange things like losing the HDD, then it would be recognised
soon after, and any number of system lockups.
Anyway, after getting fed up with all this, I decided to migrate to
XP Pro. This was been a complete nightmare. I seemed to spend more
time putting problems right than using the machine!
Setting up XP was OK at first, but when I upped the memory from
DDR2100 to DDR3200 it would not install unless I put the DRR2100 back
in.
Using it would give me blue screens with all sorts of messages,
usually the dreaded DRIVERL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL, and numerous
spontaneous reboots, usually with a split-second blue screen so I
could not determine the cause.
I'd be working merrily away (again often on OE6) and the thing would
just reboot itself for no reason I could see, losing my work. I
discovered that there was a bug in one of the OE updates and managed
to get that dealt with for a time.
I suspected a virus or Trojan, but this did not seem to be the case
as virus scans would find nothing, and anyway, I'd fdisk /mbr'ed and
then set up all new partitions before re-installing Win 98 and then
XP later on. I had all the latest bios updates and driver files
from the G/byte website as well as re-setting the bios before
updating by shorting the mobo pins as per manual.
Thinking I may have a hardware problem (I've always suspected the
mobo - see later), I replaced the HDD for a new 80 gig - same
problems after a while.
Then I replaced the 256 Samsung DDR2100 with the same of Crucial
DDR3200.
All was OK for a while, but eventually the problems recurred.
However, in general, things would last for about 2-3 weeks or so
before problems became so impossible that I'd have to re-install.
I could always tell they were on their way because, after boot-up,
(which would by then be taking longer and longer) the signs were -
Despite disabling the FDD on bootup, after bootup the desktop would
appear and then something would try to access the floppy. There
would be a delay where I could do nothing (clicking an icon would
just cause further delay and the hourglass + a freeze-up), and then
there would be another few attempts to access the floppy drive.
Then the desktop would refresh and all would be accessible. Usually -
sometimes
everything would hang and I'd have to be patient while it did what
it did before I could start working on it. I ensured that there was
nothing whatever in the startup files or startup group.
Sometimes the machine would refuse to boot and tell me there was a
problem and please start again.
Very often INDEED the thing would crash and ask me to report the
problem to Microsoft which I did. It always said that it was a
device driver causing the problem. However, I could not see what
device driver it might be.
I began to strongly suspect Norton Systemworks and removed it, and
although the problems seemed to ease, they did not go away entirely.
Then when I was trying to set up the RAID on the G/byte board it
just would not work at all unless the drives were set up as ATA 133
drives, which XP would recognise.
However, eventually I just could not connect to the
net at all using the built in LAN or with a separate NIC. I called
my ISP tech support people and the machine would not even see
127.0.0.1, much less the LAN card, the cable modem or the router.
I took it to a friend's shop and we tried everything. It would not
connect to his ADSL line with the internal LAN, or an external card.
When we tried re-installing XP we just could not do a thing. It
blue-screened all the time.
Unfortunately, in frustration his lad pulled every cable from the
mobo and tried to set it all up again on Win 98 and it would not
even do that. I took it back home and next day Ghosted over the
partition from my backup HDD.
I tried to connect again. This time it did, both with the internal
NIC and with a external in a PCI slot. This of course re-installed
XP. It worked OK and I thought my problems were over. Ha! Never
count your chickens, etc ...
The same old stuff started happening and I threw the mobo in the box,
chucked it on a shelf and installed an Asus board which was a piece of
piss to set up and I've never had a problem with anything in almost 15
months.
Anyway, I then found the Gigabyte crap again and decided to return it to
Giga UK in Milton Keynes. I paid £18.20 for the RMA and to be fair, it
came back in about 5 days. From the incomprehensible paperwork sent
back with it it seems there was a bios data error and it looks like they
replaced the bios chip. However this is odd, as it is a dual bios board
and I'd tried booting from either bios and whatever way, it still stayed
knackered.
When it was returned I sent it to my pal mentioned above and asked him
to try it out. He reckoned it took about 5 minutes to even recognise
the board on bootup and when he tried to install XP, it took 20 minutes
to even get to the stage when it wanted to format the drive before
installing Windows!
I've asked them to take it back again and check it, but they seem
reluctant. Was it a waste of £90-odd at the time and are all Gigabyte
boards so rubbish? Any ideas?
First setup -
Gigabyte GA7-VAXP
AMD Athlon 2100
Samsung 256 - DDR 2100 (later changed to Crucial 256 - DDR3200)
Maxtor ATA133 60 gig HDD (later changed to 80 gig with 60 as backup
drive)
ATI Radeon 7000
Liteon DVD
Asus CD/RW
Eventually 2 x 2.1 gig Fujistu tried to set up as RAID, then ATA133
Macron 300w PSU (this may well not be beefy enough)
About 22 months ago, I bought what I thought was a nice Gigabyte
m/board, (GA-7VAXP) a
2100 Athlon, 60 gig Maxtor drive and set it all up under 98se.
I had quite a few problems (very often with Outlook Express), but
also strange things like losing the HDD, then it would be recognised
soon after, and any number of system lockups.
Anyway, after getting fed up with all this, I decided to migrate to
XP Pro. This was been a complete nightmare. I seemed to spend more
time putting problems right than using the machine!
Setting up XP was OK at first, but when I upped the memory from
DDR2100 to DDR3200 it would not install unless I put the DRR2100 back
in.
Using it would give me blue screens with all sorts of messages,
usually the dreaded DRIVERL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL, and numerous
spontaneous reboots, usually with a split-second blue screen so I
could not determine the cause.
I'd be working merrily away (again often on OE6) and the thing would
just reboot itself for no reason I could see, losing my work. I
discovered that there was a bug in one of the OE updates and managed
to get that dealt with for a time.
I suspected a virus or Trojan, but this did not seem to be the case
as virus scans would find nothing, and anyway, I'd fdisk /mbr'ed and
then set up all new partitions before re-installing Win 98 and then
XP later on. I had all the latest bios updates and driver files
from the G/byte website as well as re-setting the bios before
updating by shorting the mobo pins as per manual.
Thinking I may have a hardware problem (I've always suspected the
mobo - see later), I replaced the HDD for a new 80 gig - same
problems after a while.
Then I replaced the 256 Samsung DDR2100 with the same of Crucial
DDR3200.
All was OK for a while, but eventually the problems recurred.
However, in general, things would last for about 2-3 weeks or so
before problems became so impossible that I'd have to re-install.
I could always tell they were on their way because, after boot-up,
(which would by then be taking longer and longer) the signs were -
Despite disabling the FDD on bootup, after bootup the desktop would
appear and then something would try to access the floppy. There
would be a delay where I could do nothing (clicking an icon would
just cause further delay and the hourglass + a freeze-up), and then
there would be another few attempts to access the floppy drive.
Then the desktop would refresh and all would be accessible. Usually -
sometimes
everything would hang and I'd have to be patient while it did what
it did before I could start working on it. I ensured that there was
nothing whatever in the startup files or startup group.
Sometimes the machine would refuse to boot and tell me there was a
problem and please start again.
Very often INDEED the thing would crash and ask me to report the
problem to Microsoft which I did. It always said that it was a
device driver causing the problem. However, I could not see what
device driver it might be.
I began to strongly suspect Norton Systemworks and removed it, and
although the problems seemed to ease, they did not go away entirely.
Then when I was trying to set up the RAID on the G/byte board it
just would not work at all unless the drives were set up as ATA 133
drives, which XP would recognise.
However, eventually I just could not connect to the
net at all using the built in LAN or with a separate NIC. I called
my ISP tech support people and the machine would not even see
127.0.0.1, much less the LAN card, the cable modem or the router.
I took it to a friend's shop and we tried everything. It would not
connect to his ADSL line with the internal LAN, or an external card.
When we tried re-installing XP we just could not do a thing. It
blue-screened all the time.
Unfortunately, in frustration his lad pulled every cable from the
mobo and tried to set it all up again on Win 98 and it would not
even do that. I took it back home and next day Ghosted over the
partition from my backup HDD.
I tried to connect again. This time it did, both with the internal
NIC and with a external in a PCI slot. This of course re-installed
XP. It worked OK and I thought my problems were over. Ha! Never
count your chickens, etc ...
The same old stuff started happening and I threw the mobo in the box,
chucked it on a shelf and installed an Asus board which was a piece of
piss to set up and I've never had a problem with anything in almost 15
months.
Anyway, I then found the Gigabyte crap again and decided to return it to
Giga UK in Milton Keynes. I paid £18.20 for the RMA and to be fair, it
came back in about 5 days. From the incomprehensible paperwork sent
back with it it seems there was a bios data error and it looks like they
replaced the bios chip. However this is odd, as it is a dual bios board
and I'd tried booting from either bios and whatever way, it still stayed
knackered.
When it was returned I sent it to my pal mentioned above and asked him
to try it out. He reckoned it took about 5 minutes to even recognise
the board on bootup and when he tried to install XP, it took 20 minutes
to even get to the stage when it wanted to format the drive before
installing Windows!
I've asked them to take it back again and check it, but they seem
reluctant. Was it a waste of £90-odd at the time and are all Gigabyte
boards so rubbish? Any ideas?
First setup -
Gigabyte GA7-VAXP
AMD Athlon 2100
Samsung 256 - DDR 2100 (later changed to Crucial 256 - DDR3200)
Maxtor ATA133 60 gig HDD (later changed to 80 gig with 60 as backup
drive)
ATI Radeon 7000
Liteon DVD
Asus CD/RW
Eventually 2 x 2.1 gig Fujistu tried to set up as RAID, then ATA133
Macron 300w PSU (this may well not be beefy enough)