A7V600 locks up during boot - please help

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stefan vom Bruch
  • Start date Start date
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Stefan vom Bruch

Hi!

My machine has suffered from lock-ups at irregular intervals for a few
days. I put this down to a driver problem. But today it stopped working
altogether. It just freezes during boot-up and that is it.
I removed all the cards and tried to different video cards to isolate
the problem. But the problem is always the same (although I seem to get
further with one video card than with the other).

Sometimes it does not even beep and the screen just stays black.
Sometimes I get the "Memory OK" message, the BIOS message, then it
freezes, no beeps. Sometimes I can even enter the BIOS but then it
freezes up when I move around the BIOS.

I have an A7V600 w/ 2x512MB KingMax RAM and an XP2700+ CPU.

Any ideas?

TIA,
Stefan
 
Stefan said:
Hi!

My machine has suffered from lock-ups at irregular intervals for a few
days. I put this down to a driver problem. But today it stopped working
altogether. It just freezes during boot-up and that is it.
I removed all the cards and tried to different video cards to isolate
the problem. But the problem is always the same (although I seem to get
further with one video card than with the other).

Sometimes it does not even beep and the screen just stays black.
Sometimes I get the "Memory OK" message, the BIOS message, then it
freezes, no beeps. Sometimes I can even enter the BIOS but then it
freezes up when I move around the BIOS.

I have an A7V600 w/ 2x512MB KingMax RAM and an XP2700+ CPU.

Any ideas?

TIA,
Stefan
Click to expand...

If you want to try your system with one stick of RAM, use slot 3,
the one furthest from the processor. For two sticks of RAM, use
slot 1 and slot 3, leaving slot 2 blank.

If you are overclocking, try to return to nominal speed.

One of your video cards was probably an ATI 9600, and has the
worst symptoms. Perhaps a BIOS update will help with that.

Before attempting to reflash the BIOS, you must restore
stable operation to the computer. Even if the machine
has CrashFree 2 feature, if the version of BIOS you download
is set up to flash the boot block, then if the system crashes
while the boot block is being flashed, you'll end up RMAing
the board.

This may mean using a PCI video card, or if possible, reducing
the AGP setting to 1X, in an effort to get some stability. A
9600 video card probably doesn't support the lower AGP rates,
so try to use an older video card that has the lower AGP
rates available.

Try just one stick of ram, and test the ram with memtest86+
from www.memtest.org . The program is free, and when you execute
the program, it contains a floppy formatter, and will turn a
blank floppy, into a standalone boot disk. Test the memory for
a few hours, and don't accept the ram if any errors show up.

Once the computer is stable and doesn't crash, then it may be
safe to flash the BIOS. I am not a fan of flashing from
Windows, and recommend using whatever method the Asus download
site says to use, for the particular release of BIOS you pick.

http://www.asus.it/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A7V600&Type=All

Note that the "More" button for "A7v61006.zip" says:

"Improve stability for some Kingston and Kingmax
DDR400 memory modules"

so 1006 or the beta 1007 might be a good candidate to test.

HTH,
Paul
 
Paul said:
[...]
My machine has suffered from lock-ups at irregular intervals for a few
days. I put this down to a driver problem. But today it stopped working
altogether. It just freezes during boot-up and that is it.
I removed all the cards and tried to different video cards to isolate
the problem. But the problem is always the same (although I seem to get
further with one video card than with the other).
Click to expand...


If you want to try your system with one stick of RAM, use slot 3,
the one furthest from the processor. For two sticks of RAM, use
slot 1 and slot 3, leaving slot 2 blank.

If you are overclocking, try to return to nominal speed.

One of your video cards was probably an ATI 9600, and has the
worst symptoms. Perhaps a BIOS update will help with that.

[...]
Click to expand...

Hi Paul,

thanks for your comments.

The video cards are an ATI AIW 9800 (bad) and an old GeForce1 (good).

I am not overclocking. In fact I have now reduced CPU speed, AGP and
memory speed to their lowest settings.
I followed your advice and put just one stick of RAM into slot 3.

I can boot memtest fine at the moment but that is about it. It displays
a few lines with CPU speed and chipset and a few characters in the
middle of the screen "76K e820-Std off" and that is it. The rest of the
screen stays blank and it just freezes.
This happens with either of the memory sticks.

Not sure what to try next.

Help, anyone? Thanks.
Stefan
 
Update to my last post:
I can actually boot windows again now with everything in place.
Memtest still won't work though. Weird...


Paul said:
[...]
My machine has suffered from lock-ups at irregular intervals for a few
days. I put this down to a driver problem. But today it stopped working
altogether. It just freezes during boot-up and that is it.
I removed all the cards and tried to different video cards to isolate
the problem. But the problem is always the same (although I seem to get
further with one video card than with the other).
Click to expand...


If you want to try your system with one stick of RAM, use slot 3,
the one furthest from the processor. For two sticks of RAM, use
slot 1 and slot 3, leaving slot 2 blank.

If you are overclocking, try to return to nominal speed.

One of your video cards was probably an ATI 9600, and has the
worst symptoms. Perhaps a BIOS update will help with that.

[...]
Click to expand...

Hi Paul,

thanks for your comments.

The video cards are an ATI AIW 9800 (bad) and an old GeForce1 (good).

I am not overclocking. In fact I have now reduced CPU speed, AGP and
memory speed to their lowest settings.
I followed your advice and put just one stick of RAM into slot 3.

I can boot memtest fine at the moment but that is about it. It displays
a few lines with CPU speed and chipset and a few characters in the
middle of the screen "76K e820-Std off" and that is it. The rest of the
screen stays blank and it just freezes.
This happens with either of the memory sticks.

Not sure what to try next.

Help, anyone? Thanks.
Stefan
Click to expand...
 
Stefan said:
Paul said:
[...]
My machine has suffered from lock-ups at irregular intervals for a few
days. I put this down to a driver problem. But today it stopped working
altogether. It just freezes during boot-up and that is it.
I removed all the cards and tried to different video cards to isolate
the problem. But the problem is always the same (although I seem to get
further with one video card than with the other).
Click to expand...


If you want to try your system with one stick of RAM, use slot 3,
the one furthest from the processor. For two sticks of RAM, use
slot 1 and slot 3, leaving slot 2 blank.

If you are overclocking, try to return to nominal speed.

One of your video cards was probably an ATI 9600, and has the
worst symptoms. Perhaps a BIOS update will help with that.

[...]
Click to expand...

Hi Paul,

thanks for your comments.

The video cards are an ATI AIW 9800 (bad) and an old GeForce1 (good).

I am not overclocking. In fact I have now reduced CPU speed, AGP and
memory speed to their lowest settings.
I followed your advice and put just one stick of RAM into slot 3.

I can boot memtest fine at the moment but that is about it. It displays
a few lines with CPU speed and chipset and a few characters in the
middle of the screen "76K e820-Std off" and that is it. The rest of the
screen stays blank and it just freezes.
This happens with either of the memory sticks.

Not sure what to try next.

Help, anyone? Thanks.
Stefan
Click to expand...

The screenshots on http://www.memtest.org/ suggest the "76K e820-Std off"
is normal.

I can think of a couple of things.

1) Memtest has a bug, that according to the memtest website, is
due to a BIOS bug and cannot be fixed in memtest. They claim
disabling "USB Legacy" setting in the BIOS, will fix the freeze
on an 875/865 Intel board. Maybe this bug exists on the A7V600
as well ? I checked Google and don't see any evidence that
this is the case.

2) Have you been modifying the Advanced:Chip Configuration menu ?
You could look up the specs for your memory, and set the
timings manually, or use [By SPD] for now.

In the Advanced menu itself, there is a Vdimm adjustment,
and 2.65V or 2.75V might help the memory. The "System Performance"
should be set to Optimal and not Turbo. (On the K8V, Turbo has
been known to increase Vcore on the processor and causes it to
heat up.)

As for booting into Windows, I would only do that if the system
can pass lower level testing like memtest86+. With really bad
memory, you can corrupt your Windows install, if, for example,
the registry is modified with bad data.

HTH,
Paul
 
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