A7V and Win2K blues.

[Zerohm]

Several tech sites (including Anandtech) suggested the asus A7V for dream gaming system, and it would be, if it were fully compatable with WIN2K. The original bios won't recognize the secondary IDE, but the new bios that will is completely unstable! Windows is fine but Quake3 and UnReal eventually lock everything up.
Has anyone out there found how to fix this? Is anyone not having this problem?

How can I get ATA100 HD, CDROM, and CD Burner all working at full speed without using the secondary IDE? OR is there a way to get the new bios to be stable.

-Zerohm

 

[Dulanic]

I dont think its the BIOS considering others have run it fine. Do you have the Latest VIA drivers? Do you have the AMD-Win2K registry patch? Do you have the VIA AGP Win2K patch? If you have all of these have you tried changing system performance in BIOS from Optimal to Normal to limit yourself to AGP 2x?

 

[StuckMojo]

Do you have the AMD-Win2K registry patch?

in my experience, thats the one you need. also, you may need to limit your AGP speed to 1x or 2x (i had to go all the way down to 1x). not a problem since agp really does nothing now that vid cards have 32M of ram.

BTW, the above patch is at:

http://www1.amd.com/athlon/config

its the first link on that page. took care of my lockups in win2k and HL and UT (oddly, Q3 was fine) with a geforce or gefoce2. my old TNT was fine.

 

[FastEddie]

The A7V bios 1003 or less has problems with the Secondary IDE Controller in W2K. Solution is to flash your bios to one of the 1004 models. And 4x AGP isn't a problem with nVidia based cards---at least not the GTS based cards. I'm using an Elsa Gladiac GTS in 4x agp with SB enabled, (and with Fast Writes enables in the bios) without any problems. You do, however, have to manually do the registry hack for 4x agp, (disable agp Fast Writes and 4x agp in the bios, install the 6.x nVidia reference drivers, do the registry hack for 4x agp, then re-enable 4x agp & Fast Writes in the bios).

As for the Ultra100 controller, you'll need to dl the latest drivers from Asus, which correct all sorts of problems from the shipping version of the drivers.

 

[paulip88]

For your secondary IDE problem, you can try to downgrade your BIOS to 1002. If you don't have it, let me know and I'll send you a copy.

I have 1004c working without any major problems.

 

[Davegod75]

try here for help also. I had many many problems with mine.

 

[Zerohm]

Paulip, I might ask for that BIOS later, and Davegod, that website might prove useful. Thanx.

The wierd thing is the computer was completely stable with BIOS 1003 but it ran like crap. Tons of Delays everywhere. Now with 1004c it runs fast as hell but will crash after about an hour of use, which is not long at all. Should I have reinstalled WIN after flashing Bios? I've installed most of those fixes but not all of them, which I need to do.