A7V8X problem

[Cremaster]

My brother has a A7V8x, bios 1011, Athlon XP2600, 512 Corsair 3200 (one stick), WD 80 gb 8mb cache, XP Pro. Last week it started freezing and on restart would hang after going through the bios and detecting the drives. I ran Memtest for 48 hours with no errors, we changed the power supply for an Antec 400 watter, still no joy.
He sent it to some "gurus" who could only say it was either the Mobo or the Processor. Today I stuck an Athlon 1.4 gig T-bird in it and it seemed to run fine until i checked Hardware Manager and found it was running at 1050mhz (10.5 x 100). I bumped it to 1400( 10.5x133) and it hangs right before it detects the drives, can't even hit Del to get into bios. So, whaddya think it is? Kinda sounds like the mobo, but is there such a thing as a 133 bus going south?
Thanks for any ideas

 

[Cremaster]

Anyone???

 

[Twista]

my mob doesnt do this ;-( Maybe a faulty one or somethig RMA it.

 

[dszd0g]

If it's related to bus speed it could also be one of the cards not handling that speed anymore. If there is a cheap PCI card in the system that could very well be the culprit.

One of my systems has been running on an A7V8X for a year now (Since Sept. 2002) without any issues that weren't worked out during the first few weeks. Just checked, last crash/reboot was on 8/25/2003 9:20:21 PM when I was messing around with some new software. I would consider the machine very stable for a Windows box (104 days on my Linux box due to a kernel upgrade).

 

[Cremaster]

The only card in it is an AGP video card. Too old to RMA it(the board,not me)

 

[dszd0g]

If you have another video card around, you can try swapping video cards and eliminate that as a possibility. It never hurts to eliminate things.

 

[Markfw]

What are the memory timings set to ? No matter what the ram is rated at, try regular mhz at CAS3. If that is stable, then memory is your culprit, forget memtest, and get some different memory.

 

[Cremaster]

Thanks everyone. I tried different RAM and always at the default timings, no joy. He ordered a new mobo and processor today.
in the meantime, I'll try a different video card. Thanks again

 

[VansTheMan]

Oh no! That's the exact setup I have and am about to assemble when the RAM gets here... :Q

 

[Cremaster]

Van,
It ran fine for about a year before it went tits up.

 

[VansTheMan]

Ah, good to know.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: Cremaster
Thanks everyone. I tried different RAM and always at the default timings, no joy. He ordered a new mobo and processor today.
in the meantime, I'll try a different video card. Thanks again

Default timings ? Didn't you read my recommendation ? I had the same problem. The SPD default timings (in my case) said CAS2, but it would not run stably at that timing. I went to 2.5 and all is fine now. I am pissed, but don't want to spend more money for a few percent increase in speed. If you want to buy a new motherboard and CPU without trying my suggestions, its yours money................

Edit: I recommended CAS3 since that is the slowest, and anything should run at that. Then try 2.5 if that fixes your problem.

 

[Cremaster]

Sorry Mark, I guess I didn't read close enough. I'll try CAS3 and see what happens.

 

[Cremaster]

Mark, the only options available to me are CAS 2 and CAS 2.5. I tried 2.5 and it still hung up. I'm still going to try the video card idea tho.
Thanks again