This is My Last PC Ever...... Need Help..

[Urb']

Ive had enough of PC's, considering I can get anyone elses to work perfect, and i work (well i get paid for) PC/Network support, I havent ever had a full working system thats without bad "features" or something blowing up..

My problem...................

Bought AN7 motherboard last august... worked perfectly (kinda) till october, bios kept crashing and it wouldnt post... Is Bios issues still under RMA? dunno, so i booted it, and kept it on for ages(bout a month), but coz of LoonyLan, i didnt want to go that way and realise it wouldnt boot up..

So.. I bought a DFI Lanparty Ultra B....
It doesnt recognise my 512xPC2700 RAM, but works on my 512xPC2100ram
It sometimes hands while bootin up windows on the windows logo screen(the one that shows or should for about 5 seconds), reboot, and it will boot up fine..

I cant play CS, it would crash to desktop anywhere between 2 and 5 mins into game(no matter what resolution) Installed/Reinstalled Directx9.0c and that made it crash pc in cs...

So swapped Crucial Radeon 9800 Pro for my GF4ti4200.. installed latest drivers, and CS works fine...

Cant remember if it was still hanging on boot..

but ive had enough and havent the money for a new gfx card or new ram, and this has somewhat put a downer on lan, because the money i would use for lan, may have to be spent on pc instead..

or i may just sell all my pc bits off, cancel internet, and give up web completely a few months earlier than planned.

any suggestions?

[Zeph]

Have you reformatted since you changed the motherboards?

[Urb']

Completely reformatted...

did a test install on spare IDE 40gb HD.. that, did same thing on windows boot...
clean install on my 160gb Satadrive..
During install when it recognises devices, it wants to install driver(said its not got xp certification) doesnt give name, so i allow, then comes up with Sata controller etc..

I dont know if its coz of USB 2.0 or something, think bios is set to 1+2..
in bios, i got an option of Sata controller i think.. options are Sata/Sata Raid/Disabled (dunno what this means)
I dont know if its memory timings,, i think cpu is running at 200mhz, but my ram is only pc2100/133, dunno if thats an issue.. grrr I just want to give up.

[$tephen]

I had a similar problem when i added multiple sata drives, the boot would just hand on detecting IDE drives. It took me ages to get it working, and I had to physically change all the jumpers even when I had explicietly set the boot order.

I also know of people that had problems with unsigned drivers in windows xp sp2, but I was fine.

I was sick of building machines that didnt run quiet as well as they should, so this time I bought recommended compatible and branded parts. And thankfully, its run fine for the last 3 months or so.

One thing I have noticed that could be the problem (if booting from sata) is that the sata cables can become loose over time, and if you are running them from a thermaltake power supply or similar where they have sata power direct connections as well as standard mux, they are very prone to becoming loose.

I changed a system to standard mux and changed the sata lead on one that would struggle to post and I havent had a problem with it since.

The ingame crashing issue is likely to be down to your Radeon 9800 Pro over heating I think - is it braned? does it have an addition cooling fan? add a coolmaster fan to it. I had the exact same problem on my 9600. You could run a program to find the temp of your graphics chip GPU on the card to test this.

good luck :/

[the Adster]

Out of the box XP doesn't see more than 128Gb (may be 130Gb). I know this cause I have a 160Gb Seagate Barrcuda that gave XP some problems on install, so I just told it to partition the drive to 30Gb for Windows and left the rest until I'd put SP1 on (this fixes the limit issue).

A friend of mine has just put a 250Gb SATA drive in a new XP system so I'll ask him what he did to get it installed.

[$tephen]

I put 2x 160gb stata's in and xp sp2 found them no problem.

[the Adster]

I put 2x 160gb stata's in and xp sp2 found them no problem.
I probably didn't make it clear enough $79, but on a new install you will have problems, but an established install after SP1 (not going anywhere near SP2 thanks) will just cope with them. The file server here had a 60Gb while doing the install and updating through Windows Update, and when that was finished I added two 60Gb drives in a RAID array (thus busting the 128Gb limit, as Windows sees them as one big drive) with no problem.

[$tephen]

odd, because I installed one of the 160 SATA's as the primary partitioned as a 60 (C) and a 100 (D). I think its probably more to do with the motherboard chip set.

[Urb']

Im installing from a XP+SP1 install CD,, im going to reinstall with a XP+SP2 cd tonight and see if that makes any difference..

gonna play with bios on the USB side of things..

any idea on the sata thing? if i set it to Sata, and not sata Raid...

[Urb']

odd, because I installed one of the 160 SATA's as the primary partitioned as a 60 (C) and a 100 (D). I think its probably more to do with the motherboard chip set.
Thats how i have mine setup, except C: is 100gb and d: is 60gb.

[$tephen]

Im installing from a XP+SP1 install CD,, im going to reinstall with a XP+SP2 cd tonight and see if that makes any difference..

gonna play with bios on the USB side of things..

any idea on the sata thing? if i set it to Sata, and not sata Raid...


Its only 3 months ago, but I cant remember the exact setup. Obviously 1st boot devide CD-ROM 2nd, IDE HD

The satas are detected as IDE drives from the bios as you know. In my bios, I had a feature called "Advanced S-ATA" In there, I could setup the drive order. If you have a standard IDE drive, then just disconnect it whilst you install xp - may be easier. Set the IDE detect to auto. Cant really think what else.

[Zeph]

I updated my BIOS recently and it now has options to detect the SATA drive(s) as IDE but it disables the RAID functionality so its a trade off.

[Urb']

im not using raid.

and i got sata as C:, and my other ide's work fine,

just trying to think what the problem is.. im going to give myself 1hr to fix this tonight else its a night infront of tv.. alone :'(

[$tephen]

but its probably worth disconnecting the other IDE's until you have xp sp2 installed and working on c:\ (the SATA-A)

[Kermit The Fr@g]

Yeah that would be my take too, see if u can flash the bios. Also u really have to check out what settings and/or jumpers u have to set to get SATA off (and I repeat off!!!) RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks m8:). What Raid will do is give you the choice of mirroring disks or spanning multiple disks across 1 volume and you dont want that for your boot drive....
Also make sure that you set the FAT to NTFS at XP install...
And at reformat, drop any boot-partition and make a fresh one before formatting so any shit is off...



A quick reality check however: Does this problem also occur in other online applications, such as Ieplorer or MSN, ICQ??? And is it intermittent or at regular intervals???
If its regular and in more online applications, then chances are your being seriously exploited and you got to call in the backup troopers...
(I've seen this type of behaviour on me bros PC and I sat with him for three hours on the phone, taking evasive maneuvers till the hacker finally gave up, lol... (funny game that was BTW, especially since I had no screen in front of me so it was all by word of mouth...)

Heres how i would tackle this:
On the whole it seems more a conflict with your Radeon than anything else...

First of all i would check in system which irq and adress lines the GFX is taking up.
If its IRQ 5 or 7 or 12, this might indicate a problem with either LPT1, a soundcard and/or PS/2 port. Especially the latter can cause problems, a mouse click on a shared interrupt could hang your pc (mouse and network card on the same IRQ are notorious. If your mouse is on USB (prolly...) then u can disable ps2 support in BIOS to start with. The same goes for your comports and LPT, if not in use, switch off in BIOSs, then they wont get polled as they will not be assigned an IRQ, nor will they give rise to conflicting adresslines. XP might have a conflict which it doesnt report as such, especially since it allows for sharing resources and it cannot always ascertain if a share is legit in terms of non-conflicted functionality of the assigned devices.

Take everything out of the machine besides the GFX card (and mem cdrom and HDU, mouse and keyboard of course), so no sound or networkcards... If onboard, disable the lot... also switch off any resources in bios that your not going to use (in your case onboard VGA, and id suggest to switch of onboard sound for installation as well)

Boot in standard vga mode after install and check for any occuring conflicts in system.
Now install Cataclysm drivers and see how it behaves. Then get your steam up and running (offline still) Mb any chance of testing Cs-offline??? Or just play a few levels of Halflife, u could well do with some practice...

If this holds out, install/enable the networkbit ( after reboot Check in system for conflicts).
Now test CS in full glorious wonder and see how it holds....
If not work, problem with current devices, sort it till that works...
If works, then install/enable soundcard and test CS again...
If not works conflict either network/sound (unlikely) or sound/gfx (other options are open, of course)
If works, then whos yer daddy...???

Through the years I have found this to be a good working method if all else fails . Its just a matter of mutual exclusion and a slow build-up....

[TheTrout]

I have the same board Urb (DFI Lan Party II Ultra B). The memory shouldn't be an issue for a start as I've got 2 sticks of 512 2700 in mine without any problems. As I said last night, I'm also running a Radeon 9800XT without any trouble. The only thing I've had a problem with on this board was the fact that it's a power gulper. I had to uprgrade from a 400 watt PSU to a 600 watt as it was crashing a fair bit originally. I also had to install both the Sata & raid drivers (even though I use neither) as XP wasn't best pleased without them. TBH I don't know what to suggest as I've only ever had minor problems and it's been the best board I've had to date.

[Urb']

Using Antec Trueblue 480w..

Im going to change sata options, to sata and not sata raid, im running at defaults in bios, so may try optimal and see if that blows anything up.

theres no error logs for why it crashes on startup sometimes, and CS is crap as it doesnt log shit!

[Bear]

I had similar problems once, it turned out to be a dodgy network card.

[sili]

Gosh all geeks talk...pure urdy gurdy....good luck with your pc Urb

[Kermit The Fr@g]

So all Martians are geeks just because u dont understand em Sili??? To us real men this is mature speak and nothing to be mocked at!!!! Vriggin Venusians.....

"The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys..."

[JanthraX]

So all Martians are geeks just because u dont understand em Sili??? To us real men this is mature speak and nothing to be mocked at!!!! Vriggin Venusians.....

"The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys..."


ooo a £300 fujitsu Siemens from 2002 and it runs half life 2 fine , w00t
does that make me a man =]

[GreenGrass]

So all Martians are geeks just because u dont understand em Sili??? To us real men this is mature speak and nothing to be mocked at!!!! Vriggin Venusians.....

"The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys..."

look at my sig and learn the truth

[JanthraX]

omg no URB dont cancel the internet, its great fun with us loonys to help u

[Urb']

its NOT my RaM or GFX card....

I installed 2x256mb pc3200 and its running in dual, and it still does the windows thing b4 windows itself loads at that login, (no crash, coz screen is animated still)...

I installed windows XP(with sp2) from cd and that installed fine on my sata..

Nothing in the event logs... about crash..

boots up after reboot and i select normal..

I set bios Sata controller to SATA and not SATA Raid.. i set USB to 1.1 and not 1.1+2.0

Current GFX card is still GF4Ti4200... so im gambling its not my Radeon 9800 Pro..

[$tephen]

K, so you have winxp inc SP2 on a 100gb Sata Partition with a GF4Ti4200 with 512 pc3200

... And what exactly happens now?

[Kermit The Fr@g]

In your case...

NO!

[TheTrout]

Which version of BIOS have you got Urb. I notice on the DFI site there is a BIOS update that fixes some boot problems-

Remarks:
1. Please give instruction "AWDFLASH N24LD619.BIN /QI/CC/Sn/Py" upon flashing BIOS.
2. "Load Optimized Defaults" will be required after completing the BIOS flashing and before entering Windows OS since this version is overall renewed.
Major Reaons for Change:
To solve the occasionally auto reboot issue.
To solve the cold-boot bug.
To solve the Bug of S3 Resuming.
To Support "Boot Menu" feature.
To include the micro codes of mobile CPUs.
To add new RAID BIOS of Sil 3114 in version 5.0.35.

And there's a couple more after that. See HERE (http://www.dfi.com.tw/Support/Download/bios_download_us.jsp?PRODUCT_ID=2320&STATUS_FLAG=A&SITE=UK) for more details

Also looking throught the FAQ for this board, it would seem there is a known issue with Radeon 9600 cards. The FAQ System on there is actually quite good, and it might be worth 10 mins of your time having a root around in there :)

[Urb']

I have latest bios on a floppy, i ran the .exe onto a floppy, was going to do it late on at lan, coz then i know i could still fix ask advice from people.. going to take a few spares, just incase.. but atm it works on web on cs, so thats good enough for lan..

My bios is the 2004/06/19 one, which inc all fixes that you mentioned, i have november on disk..

[M@rv!n]

just bring it.. Im sure we can help you fix it.. if not we can help you destry it.. i'll bring the big hammer!

[Urb']

If theres a microwave, i wanna see it sizzle!!!!.. then sell it to boro :p