Robin said:
I just built a system with a P5E3 Deluxe m/b and an EN8800GT graphics
card. I've downloaded updated drivers and such things as ASUSUpdate
and Smartdoc, and none of them will either install or run. ASUSUpdate
is supposed to update itself in place, but after a slow creep of the
progress bar nothing happens. The downloaded version won't install.
The downloaded Smartdoc installs but won't run: it's looking for
components that aren't there. The graphics driver for the 8800 says
it can't find any graphics adapter. The graphics BIOS update won't
install, and so-on. Any ideas?
The software supplied with the board and adaptor are running OK: it's
just that, for example, the board BIOS does not detect or measure
whether or not the PSU fan is running: Smartdoc doesn't see the
adaptor fan, and I was wondering if later versions added these bits
and bobs.
There is really more than one question here, and the issues span
multiple subsystems. You should have asked questions as they
arose, to make working on them a little more manageable.
I had trouble with AsusUpdate, and I used Wireshark to debug what
was happening. AsusUpdate uses certain URLs and attempts to fetch
information from the web site. When you see a slow creeping progress
bar, that means it cannot find what it is looking for. Packets
captured with Wireshark will show you where it is looking. Asus
made changes recently to the web site (the last time I checked,
they were using Akamai to host downloadable files). I expect the
change will break some of their "automatic update" type tools.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireshark
A workaround, is to download a BIOS from the support.asus.com download
page and put that on your hard drive. You may be able to convince Asus
Update to work with the local file. The file should be unzipped, and
may require a name change (if, for example, a particular extension is
expected). BIOS files should be a power_of_two bytes in size, and
if you look in your user manual (or download the PDF version for
easier reading, they may mention the size of the BIOS chip in the
manual. You want any file you offer to AsusUpdate, to be the same
size as the BIOS chip. And, you also want to save the current BIOS
file, in case there is trouble, and you need to reinstall the current
one. (I'd probably do this sequence with a DOS boot disk, at least
as long as the BIOS file still fits on a floppy. There are a few
motherboards now, where that is no longer practical.)
Some of your other questions, involve enumeration and stuff like
drivers for the chipset. I would look in Device Manager, at the
system devices, and see if they are being identified by the proper
kind of descriptive strings. What I'd be looking for, is some
evidence that the chipset drivers had been installed.
For drivers themselves, the driver package may have one or more .INF
files. In those, the list of devices supported, is coded in
VEN and DEV information. That same information can be seen in
programs like Everest free edition. Not all software packages
leave the installer files exposed, so you can do some basic
debugging.
For example, an 8800GT would be VEN=10de and DEV=0611. The
INF file would include info like that, as well as a
subsystem value unique to the Asus product.
http://pciids.sourceforge.net/pci.ids
"0611 GeForce 8800 GT"
I'm not familiar with SmartDoc, but found a reference here.
Some of the functionality seems to share some things in
common with Asus Probe.
http://www.asus.com/999/html/share/2/icon/11/index.htm
Fan speed is measured in hardware, by interval measurement.
A fan delivers two pulses per rotation, on the tachometer (RPM)
signal. The hardware measures the time between pulses, using
a high speed clock as a time base. The counter which counts the
clock signal, has a limited resolution (might be 8 bits). If
the counter "fills up" and hits 0xFF hex, it has overflowed, and
no more counts can accumulate. If the software detects that
condition, the software doesn't know whether the fan is at
zero RPM or not. So the software puts the zero value on the
screen, just to be safe. And then it looks like the fan is
not being detected. So if the fan runs too slow, the readout
will say zero.
A program like Speedfan, from almico.com, is another tool for
fan and voltage monitoring. Speedfan has autoranging, to improve
the range of fan RPMs that can be handled. Each channel can use
a different prescaler setting, so that a really slow fan can
be measured properly. That drops the slowest fan that can be
handled, down to a couple hundred RPMs. (At least on my system
it does. If I use an Asus tool, the lowest fan speed I can
measure is about 1800 RPM.)
http://www.almico.com/speedfan434.exe
A typical PSU fan, consists of a two wire pair (blue and black
perhaps), with a three pin connector on the end. The two wires
are the RPM signal and the black wire is ground. When plugged into
one of the motherboard fan headers, the hardware monitor should
be able to measure the speed. Speedfan may make that possible
for you. (Since Speedfan reprograms the prescaler registers,
you would hope that any other measurement utility is not doing
that at the same time).
Hope that gives you some directions to look in,
Paul
