A7N8X Delux problems... IDE-SATA issues, Sound Card, others

[dino]

some slots are dedicated to an IRQ resource and do not share.....look at
page 17 of the manual and see what it says...I dropped my SB live to slot 4
to resolve my IRQ conflict..I have rev 2 of the board..as for SATA..I can
not help you there..have not gotten my drives yet.

 

[Smith]

Ok… I have a list of problems with this board that I can't seam to
resolve and before I do anything drastic, I want some input.

1.) I installed 2 36GB raptor drives in a raid0 configuration. Now I
can't see any of my old IDE drives when I boot from them (SCSI in
bios). Windows (XP pro) shows only the raid drive. When I boot from
my old IDE drive I can see all my IDE drives and the SATA drives. The
BIOS detects the IDE drive as master IDE. Is the problem with the
SATA drivers, the motherboard, Windows, or a drive jumper, and how can
I fix this?

2.) I have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card installed in my
system. I believe that after I updated my bios to the newest version,
to support the 400 FSB, it caused something to go wrong with the
compatibility with my card. Now on start up, when I click my account
at the opening windows screen and the nice music is supposed to play,
I get the blue screen of death pointing me to the sound cards
tbcwdm.sys file. I go into safe mode disable the card, restart
windows, and then enable the card and it will work fine until the next
restart. Any thoughts? The only reason I believe this has anything
to do with the BIOS being updated is that during my experience trying
to resolve this problem I came across a post for the Abit NF7 and
someone having the same problem. Both of these MOBO's use the nForce2
chipset and both of these problems happened after updating the BIOS to
the newest versions. On that thread someone suggested installing the
card into PCI slot 3. Now I'm no computer science major, but what the
hell would that have to do with anything I couldn't do in the BIOS
configuration. Any thoughts?

3. & 4.) The last two are minor but somewhat annoying to me. The
speech post reporter will not work for me, no matter what. I have
reinstalled the software, re-flashed the post reporter chip,
everything I could find on-line to do and still nothing. Any
thoughts? Also the 3Com LAN connection won't work. No matter what I
do I can't seem to configure it right and Windows seems to hate it. I
plug it into the Nvida LAN port and everything works magically.
Anytime I try to mess with the 3Com it screws up all my LAN setting
for both my computer and my router (Lynksys). Again, any thoughts?

Another problem not really related. I'm using Verizon DSL and on shut
down I get a WinPoet error pop up during shut down. Not really a
problem as it is an annoyance. If I uninstall Winpoet will my DSL
still work.

Thanks for looking at this thread I know it's long and you guys have
helped me out of jams before, that's why I come here first.

Smith

 

[Ben Pope]

Ok. I have a list of problems with this board that I can't seam to
resolve and before I do anything drastic, I want some input.

1.) I installed 2 36GB raptor drives in a raid0 configuration. Now I
can't see any of my old IDE drives when I boot from them (SCSI in
bios). Windows (XP pro) shows only the raid drive. When I boot from
my old IDE drive I can see all my IDE drives and the SATA drives. The
BIOS detects the IDE drive as master IDE. Is the problem with the
SATA drivers, the motherboard, Windows, or a drive jumper, and how can
I fix this?

Sounds a bit strange to me. I take it you have two seperate Win XP
installs?

I guess that the BIOS detects all drives in both situations? Which kind of
leaves Windows drivers, but that seems unlikely.

2.) I have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card installed in my
system. I believe that after I updated my bios to the newest version,
to support the 400 FSB, it caused something to go wrong with the
compatibility with my card. Now on start up, when I click my account
at the opening windows screen and the nice music is supposed to play,
I get the blue screen of death pointing me to the sound cards
tbcwdm.sys file. I go into safe mode disable the card, restart
windows, and then enable the card and it will work fine until the next
restart. Any thoughts? The only reason I believe this has anything
to do with the BIOS being updated is that during my experience trying
to resolve this problem I came across a post for the Abit NF7 and
someone having the same problem. Both of these MOBO's use the nForce2
chipset and both of these problems happened after updating the BIOS to
the newest versions. On that thread someone suggested installing the
card into PCI slot 3. Now I'm no computer science major, but what the
hell would that have to do with anything I couldn't do in the BIOS
configuration. Any thoughts?

Some IRQs are tied to more than one device at a time... for example the IRQ
for AGP slot is usually the same as the PCI slot closest to the AGP slot.
Moving the card can result in the shared IRQs changing and if the problem
was a result of the other device it was sharing with... problem solved.

3. & 4.) The last two are minor but somewhat annoying to me. The
speech post reporter will not work for me, no matter what. I have
reinstalled the software, re-flashed the post reporter chip,
everything I could find on-line to do and still nothing. Any
thoughts?

Dont; bother with it, it's annoying. It's only use is in troubleshooting a
system that won't POST really, and that can be done quite successfully using
conventional methods, it might take you another 10 minutes though.

Also the 3Com LAN connection won't work. No matter what I
do I can't seem to configure it right and Windows seems to hate it. I
plug it

Whats "it"? Your router?

into the Nvida LAN port and everything works magically.
Anytime I try to mess with the 3Com it screws up all my LAN setting
for both my computer and my router (Lynksys). Again, any thoughts?

Screws up your LAN settings how? If more than one device is being
configured as a gateway for the same addresses then that will likely cause
you problems. Give us a:
route PRINT
and
ipconfig
listing from the command prompt when it's not working, and tell us which
device you are using to connect to the net.

Another problem not really related. I'm using Verizon DSL and on shut
down I get a WinPoet error pop up during shut down. Not really a
problem as it is an annoyance. If I uninstall Winpoet will my DSL
still work.

Does it just say "error"? Is it a specific error? Are there any further
details we might need to know about in order to troubleshoot this?

Ben

 

[Smith]

1.) I installed 2 36GB raptor drives in a raid0 configuration. Now I

Sounds a bit strange to me. I take it you have two separate Win XP
installs?

I guess that the BIOS detects all drives in both situations? Which kind of
leaves Windows drivers, but that seems unlikely.

Yes, the BIOS does detects both drives. What I originally had set up
was a 40GB program drive (OS, games, apps, ect.) and a 80GB data
drive. I used Acronis Easy Migrate to copy the IDE drive over to my
raid array. When I select from the BIOS to boot from IDE I see both
the 80GB data disk and the 78GB raid disk. When I boot from the raid
disk (SCSI in BIOS). I don't see my 80GB drive. I have already
removed the 40GB drive from my system so I don't know if my current
configuration would see it or not. I just found something today, I
don't know why I didn't think of it sooner, if I go into the control
panel->system->device manager->disk drives it list both the IDE disk
and the SCSI. Under properties of the IDE drive it brings up the
proper label and capacity. I removed and reinstalled the drivers and
windows recognized the drive by name WDC WB800BB-00CAA0 (before
reinstalling the driver it listed it as "disk drive" for a name). But
still no luck getting Windows Explorer to see the drive. The Device
manager says it is working fine. I don't know if this will help but
under Location it lists ‘Location 0 (0)' This seems odd to me, but
then again I don't really know about it.

Believe it or not I think this may be related to my sound card issue.
After I did this I restarted my computer and my sound card worked
fine, no blue screen. I was surprised so I restarted it again and
still good. Then I shut down altogether and waited a while until
restart, and again it worked perfectly. I'm not quite ready to call
it fixed but could I have an IRQ problem overall affecting both of
these systems? Right after I upgraded all my components I went
through and updated all the drivers and added some other components
(new video card, new printer, ect.) and got a message saying something
to the effect that all of my IRQ resources were used up. I should
have said this in the original post, but I completely forgot about it
until now.

As far as the 3Com Lan goes I'll have to take a good chunk of my day
to mess with it, it always turns into a train wreck when I touch it so
I'll have to wait a little while until I'm not swamped with work to
take care of it. I'll post that later.

I'll also take your advice about the post reporter and forget about
it.

Does it just say "error"? Is it a specific error? Are there any
further
details we might need to know about in order to troubleshoot this?

It pops up as WrOS.exe—Application Error: The instruction at
"0x00146bc0" referenced memory "0xffffffff" Could not be read. What
is your thoughts on this.

Thanks for all your help and time.

Smith

 

[Ben Pope]

Yes, the BIOS does detects both drives. What I originally had set up
was a 40GB program drive (OS, games, apps, ect.) and a 80GB data
drive. I used Acronis Easy Migrate to copy the IDE drive over to my
raid array. When I select from the BIOS to boot from IDE I see both
the 80GB data disk and the 78GB raid disk. When I boot from the raid
disk (SCSI in BIOS). I don't see my 80GB drive. I have already
removed the 40GB drive from my system so I don't know if my current
configuration would see it or not. I just found something today, I
don't know why I didn't think of it sooner, if I go into the control
panel->system->device manager->disk drives it list both the IDE disk
and the SCSI. Under properties of the IDE drive it brings up the
proper label and capacity. I removed and reinstalled the drivers and
windows recognized the drive by name WDC WB800BB-00CAA0 (before
reinstalling the driver it listed it as "disk drive" for a name). But
still no luck getting Windows Explorer to see the drive. The Device
manager says it is working fine. I don't know if this will help but
under Location it lists 'Location 0 (0)' This seems odd to me, but
then again I don't really know about it.

Hmm, so the hardware is detected, but the partition is not. I would suspect
a dodgy partition table, maybe.

Believe it or not I think this may be related to my sound card issue.
After I did this I restarted my computer and my sound card worked
fine, no blue screen. I was surprised so I restarted it again and
still good. Then I shut down altogether and waited a while until
restart, and again it worked perfectly. I'm not quite ready to call
it fixed but could I have an IRQ problem overall affecting both of
these systems?

IDE nearly always uses IRQs 14 and 15, and I've never seen a sound card go
for either of those IRQs... but having said that I do recall seeing a PCI
slot share an IRQ with the IDE controller (according to the manual), maybe
it was an add-in IDE controller (built into the mobo)

Right after I upgraded all my components I went
through and updated all the drivers and added some other components
(new video card, new printer, ect.) and got a message saying something
to the effect that all of my IRQ resources were used up. I should
have said this in the original post, but I completely forgot about it
until now.

Don't recall ever getting a message like that, is APIC enabled in the BIOS?
That gives you 8 extra IRQs, but has been known to cause problems. In Linux
for example it's a nightmare, but it's not caused me any issues in Windows.
(I pass Linux a kernel parameter to disable APIC)

As far as the 3Com Lan goes I'll have to take a good chunk of my day
to mess with it, it always turns into a train wreck when I touch it so
I'll have to wait a little while until I'm not swamped with work to
take care of it. I'll post that later.

OK. Might as well new-thread it if it's gonna be more than a couple of
days.

I'll also take your advice about the post reporter and forget about
it.

With it on it gets on your tits, seriously.

It pops up as WrOS.exe-Application Error: The instruction at
"0x00146bc0" referenced memory "0xffffffff" Could not be read. What
is your thoughts on this.

I think it looks like the wrong address. I have no idea why, but looks like
corrupt data somewhere, if you get that error all the time, then check the
files (reinstall the application)

Ben

 

[Mark Ramos]

You need to be using the onboard sound to hear the post report, it cannot be
'pumped' throught to an external ie pci sound device.

 

[Smith]

Hmm, so the hardware is detected, but the partition is not. I would suspect
a dodgy partition table, maybe.

Ok... This is why I come to these boards, to get me thinking about
this stuff... It turn out that after the migration to the SATA drives
the IDE drive letter assignment didn't go over also; don't know why,
but it didn't. All I needed to do was assign a new drive letter and
voila. Thanks for your help with this one.

IDE nearly always uses IRQs 14 and 15, and I've never seen a sound card go
for either of those IRQs... but having said that I do recall seeing a PCI
slot share an IRQ with the IDE controller (according to the manual), maybe
it was an add-in IDE controller (built into the mobo)

Still no luck with this sound card problem, even though I havn't tried
another PCI slot... Trying everthing not to break into the computer
again.

 

[Ben Pope]

Still no luck with this sound card problem, even though I havn't tried
another PCI slot... Trying everthing not to break into the computer
again.

Well some people have had luck when disabling APIC... which you can do by
changing your computer type from ACPI Uniprocessor to Advanced Configuration
and Power Interface (ACPI) - that will disable use of the APIC (as I
understand), reshuffle all the IRQs and has been known to solve sound
problems.

The APIC gives you 8 more IRQs and is usually built into multiprocessor
machines, but the nForce has one too.

Ben