A7N8X - X Boot issues

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tom
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T

Tom

This is my first build with a Asus board. I was using Epox boards which are
stable but seem to not last that long.

Anyway I have a new A7N8X - X, Athlon XP 2700, 512 Crucial, ATI Rage II PCI
video card, Seagate HDD, Antec case w/300W PS. This is a real vanilla ice
cream box; nothing fancy. If I disable fast boot, the machine will not boot.
The drive light stays on and nothing happens. I change CMOS back to fast
boot and it works fine. I have also had an issue with reboots running XP Pro
SP2. The machine would reboot for no reason at all. I finally got sick of it
and went back to 2K w/SP4 and it seems to run much better. I have also has
some strange issues with USb in general. Device disappear and need to be
re-plugged.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Tom
 
Id go back to XPsp1 and forget sp2 altogether, but 2k still rocks, I used it
for ages. Ive had some problems with USB also on the A7N8X-X but it revolved
around me not paying attention to the correct USB 'fix' file you're meant to
use upon first installation. If you got a driver disk with the board, it
should tell you as much.
I have no idea of your Fast Boot problem, but you could testing with a spare
400-500watt PSU? Also check your ram timings, lax them out and see if any
diff.
 
"Tom" said:
This is my first build with a Asus board. I was using Epox boards which are
stable but seem to not last that long.

Anyway I have a new A7N8X - X, Athlon XP 2700, 512 Crucial, ATI Rage II PCI
video card, Seagate HDD, Antec case w/300W PS. This is a real vanilla ice
cream box; nothing fancy. If I disable fast boot, the machine will not boot.
The drive light stays on and nothing happens. I change CMOS back to fast
boot and it works fine. I have also had an issue with reboots running XP Pro
SP2. The machine would reboot for no reason at all. I finally got sick of it
and went back to 2K w/SP4 and it seems to run much better. I have also has
some strange issues with USb in general. Device disappear and need to be
re-plugged.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Tom
Click to expand...

Test with Memtest86 from memtest.org . It could be that the
RAM isn't solid, and that is what is causing the reboots.
The Memtest86 program will format a floppy for you, and the
boot floppy doesn't need any OS to work. A bootable ISO CD
can also be made with Memtest86.

The Nforce2 is picky about RAM, and that doesn't change when
you change motherboard makers. It is a function of the
chipset. You can try bumping up the RAM voltage in the BIOS
a bit, but you may find that is not enough to reduce the error
rate to zero.

Prime95 Torture Test (with mixed size option) is also a good
test. You can get that from mersenne.org . Because Prime95
does consistency checks, it detect computational errors, and
also detects errors caused by bad ram. I have some RAM on
my A7N8X-E that passes memtest86 but fails Prime95 after
30 minutes. Prime95 runs from Windows.

One way around the chipset issue, is to simply drop the
memory clock or drop the processor and memory clock
(if you want to run with memory and processor in sync).
I found stability on the bad DDR400 memory at 180MHz (DDR360).
If performance is not essential, that would be a compromise.

In Windows, you can change the recovery policy, to BSOD
instead of immediately reboot, on an error. That way, if
the error is one being caught by Windows, you'll get error
info on the screen when the error happens. If the error is
killing Windows, then you might be stuck with the reboot.
By using Memtest86 and Prime95, that may indicate how
solid the computer is.

You can search the forums of Nforcershq.com , for suggestions
on RAM. So far, I don't see a pattern to what works and what
doesn't work. For example, some people have tried PC4000 RAM,
only to find it had problems. So, just upping the RAM speed
is not enough. I am currently using Ballistix PC3200 and it
works fine at DDR400. It is possible to get one of these
boards stable, but it can be a PITA.

HTH,
Paul
 
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