Asus P4B Problems...Help?

[Doomfist]

Hello All.

I've been running an Asus P4B - 1.9mhz on Win XP Pro since Christmas with no problems.
A few days ago, I started to notice that XP Pro would suddenly freeze up and could only be accessed again with a cold reboot.

When rebooting attempted, the motherboard came up to the BIOS with a warning that it was unable to autodetect the CPU speed and was running in 'Safe Mode'.

Did some research, and decided to flash the bios to newest version 1008 ( I did an incremental flash upgrade from 1003 to 1005 and then 1008 ).

Everything seemed fine.

After the system had been powered off overnight, the bios hung up after displaying the detected devices.

I did a reboot and everything was fine.

Checked on the IRQ listing and I have a network card and USB controller sharing an IRQ (23) and have Santa Cruz and Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System sharing an IRQ (22) in XP Pro.

IRQ's 4,5,7,9,10,11 are free...

However, when the system boots, the bios displays that a Serial device ( com1 ) and the network card are sharing IRQ 9.

XP states that each are functioning properly with no conflicts.

I suppose my questions are:

Does anyone have any suggestions as to why my system is hanging up on the BIOS screen after several hours of "power-down time"?

Has anyone seen this behavior before?

Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

System Specs:

Intel 1.9Mhz ( CPU Temp - 39C/102F )
Asus P4B - Socket 478
(1) 512 SDRAM - Crucial
40 gig Maxtor
Pioneer DVD
AGP Creative Annihilator 2
Santa Cruz sound card
Linksys network card
ANTEC Case - 300W

Thanks.

-Scott

 

[AndyHui]

If the POST fails for any reason on a recent ASUS motherboard, ie you reboot before POST completes, or your CPU cannot handle an overclock, the next boot will put the BIOS in safe mode, and will need you to reselect the processor speed.

If you have APIC mode Enabled in the BIOS, 24 hardware IRQs are available to the Win2K/WinXP ACPI HAL to take advantage of, rather than the conventional 16. It is normal to have some very strange IRQ assignments under Win2K and WinXP.



<< 1.9mhz >>

1.9GHz.

The only thing I can think of just looking at the specs that you posted is to make sure you have standard SDRAM and not ECC SDRAM. The P4B tends to show problems with ECC SDRAM.

 

[Doomfist]

Thanks for replying so quickly.

Well, the memory module I'm using is:

512 Crucial # CT64M72S4D75

Specs:

SDRAM, PC133 ? CL=3 ? Unbuffered ? ECC ? 7.5ns ? 3.3V ? 64Meg x 72

So, I am using memory with Error Correction.

Went to Asus site and found this in an FAQ:

Q : Does P4B support PC133 SDRAM which has ECC function?

A : Yes, ECC SDRAM is supported by P4B. An additional item named Data Integrity Mode will appear in the chip configuration menu of CMOS setup if you install ECC memory and there you can choose to enable the ECC function.

Do you still believe that may be the problem?

Thanks.

 

[AndyHui]

Have you enabled Data Integrity?

Other than the RAM and possibly a power supply on the slightly small side (which shouldn't cause the problems you have been experiencing), it's hard to say.

Check the Event log, and if possible, post the error it is giving you at the time of WinXP freezing.

 

[Doomfist]

As you were replying, I was checking 🙂

And Data Integrity Mode was set to Non-ECC...so I enabled ECC.

I haven't experienced any messages when the system locks up, and I'm not quite sure how to access the eventlog in XP ( or any OS for that matter ).

 

[AndyHui]

The event logs are only available to Windows 2000 or Windows XP.

Go to Control Panel, then Administrative Tools. The Event Log viewer is in there.

 

[Doomfist]

Okay...

Under Event Viewer...Applications...

There are multiple listings on Info, Warnings, and Errors

The only Errors being reported over the last 7 days are a:

True Vector Service and/or True Vector Engine

 

[AndyHui]

Anything under the System Log?

 

[Doomfist]

The same 5 errors listed below are occurring each time XP starts/restarts:

(1)
The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:

tbgmsg

(2)
The TrueVector Basic Logging Client service depends on the
TrueVector Internet Monitor service which failed to start
because of the following error:

An instance of the service is already running.

(3)
The TrueVector Internet Monitor service terminated
with the following error:

An instance of the service is already running.

(4)
The tbcspud3 service failed to start due to the following error:

The system cannot find the file specified.

(5)
The tbcecho service failed to start due to the following error:

The system cannot find the file specified.


Does this help at all?

 

[AndyHui]

Seems to be a problem with Zone Alarm. Are you running the latest version?

 

[Doomfist]

Zone Alarm Version 2.6.362

One other thing may be of interest, when leaving the computer on, no screen-saver, no power management features running and then returning to the computer say 2 hours later....

Upon touching the mouse, the system locks up entirely.

This is the original problem which led me to upgrade the BIOS version.

And unfortunately, its still occurring as of last night.

I'm not sure if that could have been a problem with the ECC issue, but my guess is that its another problem and my main problem.

 

[AndyHui]

See how the system goes now that you have the ECC setting enabled in the BIOS.

 

[Doomfist]

Thanks for letting me pick your brain.

Appreciate it.