Audigy2 PCI card, freezes boot

[tphss]

Hi,

When installing the Audigy2 Platinum Pro card into my machine ("LeToy64" in my computers), when I power the system on it freezes on the BIOS post, not even giving an option to press DEL for setup etc.
The card has a 4-pin power connector which I am 100% sure is giving good power to the card.

I have an option in the BIOS to enable PnP PCI, which is now disabled. I do not think it has anything to do with it since I installed a PCI wireless LAN card with no difficulties.


Do you have any ideas on what should I check?

Nothing really makes sense other then the card being defected. But I don't think it's reaonable I shorted the card.

Thanks

 

[hmorphone]

Try it with PnP enabled or try it in a different PCI slot.

 

[tphss]

If the wireless LAN card is intalled in one of the 2 PCI slots, can I install it in the other one without removing the drivers?

 

[sieistganzfett]

after you re enable the PnP PCI ( that, has to do with how irq, memory address range is given to a card installed automatically if i remember correctly to many years ago) also turn off the onboard sound in the bios, after you save those settings and turn the pc off. put the audigy2 into any pci slot you didnt put it into when it freezes on post (2 slots only so you have to move the wireless card to the other to make sure that slot is good to rule that out and putting the card in question into the known good slot will show if its actually the card that is bad, assuming you are putting the card in correctly of course). You do not have to do anything with the drivers, you can move a pci device between slots leaving the drivers installed without removing them, as soon as windows boots up it will find the card and see the drivers, it may say something like it installed the new hardware but your still ok. if you audigy still locks up the pc on post its probably the card, call creative techsupport to confirm that or return it or rma it for another.

 

[tphss]

I checked the other PCI slot, it's fully functional.
I will Enable the PnP PCI and disable the on board sound and see, but I'm pretty sure the sound card is dead.

 

[sieistganzfett]

if it still doesnt work after those 2 things, i'm sure the card is dead.

 

[tphss]

Ok, after I did these tests, I did disable the onboard card, and so did I enable the PnP PCI, it still freezes on first BIOS post.

Now, I installed this card on my other PC (with the AthlonXP Barton) and it's working fine! WTF?

 

[sieistganzfett]

who made that motherboard which would lock up on the post when you put a SB card in it? do they have any "fixes" for that issue? or an updated bios maybe? once you found out it worked in the other system, did you try it again in the 1st system and find out it still didnt work? how many Watts is the power supply in the 1st system, would putting a mere sound card really cause the system to not have enough power to post?

 

[tphss]

No way. Something is qrong and it doesn't make sense!
I did put it back after I checked it works on the other computer.

In both computers I have strong Brand PSU's, both 400W.
I tried to search on Asus's website- with no luck...

I can't seem to understand how come it freezes.

 

[sieistganzfett]

are the boards different asus models, if so what are they? (both asus right) is the bios on the board that locked up with the SB Audigy2 the latest? maybe try something like flashing it to the latest bios? maybe try resetting the cmos on it? it could just be a wierd compatibility issue with only that one audigy2 card, maybe another audigy2 would work fine in both boards... i cant explain why it doesnt work in that one board, i can only speculate, there are always going to be freak things that just dont make sense though, its really rare though in my experience. maybe try googling the board model with that model audigy and see what it turns up when you put "post" in the search?

 

[tphss]

No, the one I check on and it worked is a Gigabyte MOBO GA-7NNXP.
I'll check if I have the lastest BIOS, but I find it hard to belive it has anything to do with a BIOS version...

 

[sieistganzfett]

GA-7NNXP is the one it worked on and you have another GA-7NNXP, except that one it doesnt? same revision board, same bios version too i guess..

"I find it hard to belive it has anything to do with a BIOS version" - i agree, the problem is wierd with no real answer, i seen it only twice first hand before where certain combinations of hardware just didnt work, seperate them and they work fine, rejoin them and they dont, each part is good though, except in combination, un-explainable still after trying everything, solution ends up to seperating them.

 

[tphss]

No, you should look in my signature into my computers, find all the parts in the first 2 computers, the LeToy64 and Barton.
The one it works on has the GA-7NNXP, the one it doesn't work on is the Asus A8V-MX...

 

[hmorphone]

According to the Asus site the latest bios version is 0503 (12/22/05.)

 

[sieistganzfett]

i'm sorry, i didn't even notice the ("LeToy64" in my computers) ment the "my computers" link in your sig for some reason. After thinking about it more, doing more googling, and reading the parts in both rigs...

my last 2 guesses would be the flash the bios and reset the cmos on the "LeToy64" other than that, the creative sound blaster audigy 2 is new right? since i'm stumped, i'd actually call either asus or creative's tech support during a week day to see if they knew of a compatiblity issue, asus is in kentucky without a toll free # though.

 

[tphss]

It's not new, well, it was in the LeToy64 computer and I purchased all the components for the computer nwe and built it, but then my motherboard and memory modules failed so I replaced the motherboard and memory and also upgraded the CPU (and heatsink).

And I checked, my BIOS is 0305. So I guess I might need to flash it to the newer version.
How do I flash without a floppy drive (don't have one), I understand from Asus's web-site BIOS flash explanation that I need to go to dos and run a file from a floppy disc, I can do that if I burn the files needed on a CD instead of a floppy right?

 

[tphss]

Ok - update:

From browsing the Asus forums apperantly the A8V-MX has some issues with Creative sound cards.

A good word for Asus's tech support, I sent a technical inquiry yesterday and recieved a respond less then 24 hours later!

Quote:

"Please remove that sound card then update bios to latest 0604 with attached file,
after bios updated, please reinstall the sound card back.
It is easy to update bios under windows.

1. Please install the ASUS UPDATE, you can find it in Drivers CD/software/asusupdt, install it.
if you lose your drivers CD, you can download it from here:

ftp://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/flash/AsusUpdt61002.zip

http://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socket775/P5B-VM/AsusUpdt_V70707.zip


2. Please check the attachment file, this is the latest released version bios of your motherboard, decompress it to any folder you like.

3. run ASUS UPDATE from START-PROGRAM-ASUS-ASUS Update-ASUS Update, select "Update BIOS from a file", choose file type to all type, then specify the BIOS image file you have decompressed.

4. When flash finish, it will ask you to reboot your PC, do it.


Thank you for using ASUS products and services!

If you have any problem about our products, you can visit our support site below to search the solution at the first time!

http://support.asus.com"

I'll do this tonight and hopefully have some good news.
Other then that I did order 2 other sound cards, the Hercules Digifire 7.1 and the Terratec Aureon 7.1 Space. The Terratec should have really good sound quality and performance.

People in the Asus forums said they used different brand sound cards, Dynex mostly.

 

[tphss]

Good news.

It works!