**A7n266-VM and XP problems** Please help.

[ender1031]

Building a new PC for my 7 yr old nephew.
Specs:

Asus A7n266-VM
Athalon 1400
256MB PC2100
Enermax Case and 350W PS
(2)WD Caviar 20GB drives

Assembled everything, powered up and POSTs fine. No problems with the incorrect CPU jumper settings that were printed incorrectly. But the first go round loading XP, it bombed out with a blue screen when trying to finish the installation. Restarted the install, XP finshed the install without any issues. Booted up the first time and once it gets into windows are start getting all sorts of error messages. Explorer.exe, multiple .dll file errors, etc.

Check hard drives with utility disk and they are good, reload XP again, no problems on install but hoses up in XP. Sometimes it will boot into windopws, other times it will lock up before it gets to the welcome screen. One occasion it rebooted itself and kept going in a loop, contantly rebooting itself. I dont think its the OS, or the hard drives. Now it sometimes boots fine into XP but errors out and sometimes it just hangs before it even gets to the welcome screen. Any suggestions?

 

[Swanny]

Sounds like your CPU is overheating and causing crashes / corrupting data. Check to make sure you mounted the heatsink right on the CPU and that the fan is working. Also check to see if anything is obstructing airflow around the CPU.

 

[Doomer]

Try swapping out the memory and the HD. Diag programs won't always catch problems.

I had a flakey system that nearly drove me nuts. I tested the mem and HD many many times and they both came clean. I finally decided to swap out the mem and it made no differnce. I swapped out the Maxtor HD and all problems and issues magically dissappeared. Maxtors Diags. showed no problem with the drive but they got it back anyway. To this day, the system has been problem free.

 

[cheapgoose]

i have the same problem, same mobo paired with an 1800xp tbredb, using WinXP.

on cold boots, it always goto blue screen, if you reset, it's fine. it's weird, I did swap out ram, same problem.

I have a window mod on my HDD, thought that was the problem, swapped hdd, same problem.

weird!

 

[mechBgon]

What brand of memory are you using, and are you leaving it at SPD timings (yes = good)? You might also try a fresh IDE cable to your optical drive (what brand & model of optical drive is it, by the way?), and confirm that your power supply is set for the correct input voltage for your region (110V/220V). You may also want to update your BIOS to the latest version, since some of the updates listed improved memory compatibility. I've been using Crucial PC2100 in a couple dozen of these at work.

Also, let the system idle in the BIOS's Hardware Monitor area for about 15 minutes and tell us what the CPU's temperature reading ends up at, with the case closed as usual. Athlon 1400's run darn hot, so I'd expect a socket-thermistor reading in the ~45C area.

 

[JustStarting]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Also, let the system idle in the BIOS's Hardware Monitor area for about 15 minutes and tell us what the CPU's temperature reading ends up at, with the case closed as usual. Athlon 1400's run darn hot, so I'd expect a socket-thermistor reading in the ~45C area.

Good advice. On a new build I always go to the PC Health screen in the BIOS and check things out for a few minutes.

 

[ender1031]

I checked the CPU heatsink, (its seated correctly) swapped memory into different slot, and it is still very flakey in XP. Temp readings for CPU are in the 40s.

Then I took the jumpers on the motherboard, which are now set to run the CPU/DRAM at 133mhz/133Mhz and changed the jumpers to run at 100/100mhz, and now the thing runs perfect. Solid as a rock, no errors, boots up everytime. THe CPU however is running at 1.03GHZ now instead of 1.4GHZ.

Any suggestions? I have some generic 256 MB PC2100 memory that I purchased along with the motherbaord from pc-beyond. It seems to be ok. But I guess the system wont run stable if the bus speed is set to 133MHZ.

 

[mechBgon]

Try a stick of Crucial, it works in ours at work, and mine at home.

 

[ender1031]

i guees thats all thats left that i can try. Hope it works.