Abit NF7-S Probs

[bigpig]

Hello all,
First of all this is my first time on this forum and I'd like to state that looks to be a great resource for troubleshooting.....which is what I need. I recently purchased the NF7-S along with the rest of the system:

XP2600 Processor
2X256K Giel PC3200 Ultra
Radeon 9700 pro (another story with that all together feel free to ask if you'd like to know)
Windows XP Pro SP 1
20Meg WD HD 200BB

And so the story goes....

I put everything together and installed a new 30gig Maxtor HD but it seemed to cause my system to crash hard. "Hard" meaning that it lost the System file after an unpredictable number of reboots. (one odd thing I'd like to point out here is that the system file was twice the size of the norm when it crashed (approx 4 meg.)) The reboots that led up to this problem was caused by instability while running 3DMark and/or Neverwinter Nights. 3DMark would sometimes run fine and sometimes lock up and sometimes just exit the application. A few times I actually re-ran the benchmark immediately after the crash without making any changes to the system and it would pass fine. Neverwinter Nights would run fine for a while but would spontaneously reboot my computer and/or exit the application. (System temps were fine....higher than expected but not "high") So after numerous reformats/WinXP clean installs, I decided to put in my HD from my other computer. I haven't lost my System file since but I still have system instability.

I decided that I would update my BIOS to 12. (Bad Idea). The BIOS updated fine but when I rebooted after the install, WinXP would not boot. It would get all the way up through the welcome screen and show the desktop pic but would not load the desktop. I can still run programs from the task manager but nothing else. I have tried safe mode, rolling back the BIOS, and clearing the CMOS. But none have had any affect. I hope someone has another idea other than ANOTHER RFORMATE.

Thanks,

(I the Pig posted this for a freind as he didnt know where to find a good forum)

 

[chizow]

Hmm, not familiar with the Abit's BIOS features, but I would check in there first. Disable any functions you aren't using. Also, try disabling onboard sound as that seems to be giving people issues. I would even try to underclock your CPU if you can. Run it at 133 FSB with memory synced and optimal or standard timings. Lock your AGP bus at 66mhz, disable 8X AGP, and turn off fastwrites. Set AGP aperture to 64MB. Then see if everything runs through benchmarks. At least that way you'll be able to isolate your issue some. I think there were some issues with Geil RAM even with the KT333 and KT400 chipsets, so that may be something else to consider. Key is to get it running stable with the bare minimum...then work back up to spec from there. It worked for me, because the nForce2 BIOS has a ton more options than my old KT266A board (8KHA+).