big problems with a tbred 2200+ system

[NesuD]

Heres the story. My wifes brother wanted a new system so he and I ordered the following parts from newegg.
Msi K7T Ultra2-r motherboard
Oem Athlon XP 2200+ processor
Chieftec silver aluminum antec clone case with window and turbolink 420 watt supply. (actually ordered a steel silver case with no window but they sent the aluminum instead)
512 meg kingston pc2100 ddr ram
chaintec ti4200 vid card
Thermalright AX-7 heatsink
3 sunon 42 cfm fans
Western digital 40 gig 7200 rpm hdd
Liteon 16x dvd

Well when i got it together it was flaky as hell. locked just cpying files for the win xp install on the first try. Second try got it to install win xp ok. Installed all the appropriate drivers and at that point everything seemed to be going ok. It seemed to have no problem running prime 95 torture test but when i tried to install 3dmark2001se so i could show him his new kickass graphics it would lock and eventually reboot while trying to decompress textures. Temps on it were very good never went over 40c cpu. voltages were also very good. very similar to my 400 watt antec supplys voltages. I tried a different brand of ram but had the identical result. Tried a different vid card (geforce2 gts) got severe data corruption when i did that. Tried a different hdd and got the same thing as well. I eventually installed my old Asus a7v133 with a 1.33 gig tbird cpu i have and all his parts seem to work fine there except obviously i didn't use the cpu or his ddr ram in that board. I have basically tested everything with either a different known good part or in a different system or both except the motherboard and the cpu. I am leaning to a defective motherboard. i think a defective cpu just simply would not work. we rma'd the board and should get the replacement in a week or so.

Please offer any opinions you may have. I beat myself silly for about 20hrs last weekend trying to get it to work for him and had to at last concede defeat. First time that has happened with an all new build to me.
A very frustrating experience.

 

[MrDudeMan]

yes this same thing happened to me, except when i got the RMAed motherboard, it was broken also. sounds like either bad RAM or a bad motherboard. i know you said you tried different RAM but you need to try something like mushkin high performance or kingston or crucial. you need to try known-to-be-good RAM that works with everything. a hard drive would not cause that nor would a CPU. it has to be either memory or the motherboard. only other thing it could be is a hot as hell CPU but you said that is fine. this is all i can come up with.

i hope someone else can tell you something useful

 

[Markfw]

OK, sorry to sound like a broken record to the others reading this thread that may have read my replies before, but this suggestion helped me two different times personally, and at least one Anandtech forum user:

Check the CAS setting on your ram. If it is set to 2, then try 2.5 and see what happens. Either that is your problem or ??? At least try it, and please let me know if that fixes the problem or not.

 

[NesuD]

Thanks man. I think it is the board. As i listed in my original post we were using a 512 meg stick Of Kingston pc2100 right off of msi's recommended ram list. Also tried a 256 meg stick of crucial with the identical result. Only reason i tested the hdd was at one point i wrote zeros to the drive with the wd utility and ran a diagnostic while i was at it and it returned a 0210 error code once but tested ok every other time. you could hear the drive struggling as if it was getting bad signals and kept doing the same thing over again. kinda hard to describe. It never did this after i put my old asus board in there so i think the board caused an innaccurate result on the drive diagnostic. Hope the replacement board works ok he was pretty disappointed when i told him the board was bad. He has had a pretty tough time the last few years and had a Kidney transplant about a year ago. He is really just starting to live a normal life again after years of dialysis and numerous extended hospital stays and was pretty excited about this system. I told him to relax sometimes stuff is just bad and we will get it replaced for him. Kinda felt responsible and like i let him down somehow although i know there wasn't anything i could do. Just wanted his first computer build to be a positive experience for him. Unfortunately it wasn't.

 

[MrDudeMan]

ah good point. yes indeed that has been a problem for me in the past also. the wrong density and the wrong CAS are often overlooked.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: NesuD
Thanks man. I think it is the board. As i listed in my original post we were using a 512 meg stick Of Kingston pc2100 right off of msi's recommended ram list. Also tried a 256 meg stick of crucial with the identical result. Only reason i tested the hdd was at one point i wrote zeros to the drive with the wd utility and ran a diagnostic while i was at it and it returned a 0210 error code once but tested ok every other time. you could hear the drive struggling as if it was getting bad signals and kept doing the same thing over again. kinda hard to describe. It never did this after i put my old asus board in there so i think the board caused an innaccurate result on the drive diagnostic. Hope the replacement board works ok he was pretty disappointed when i told him the board was bad. He has had a pretty tough time the last few years and had a Kidney transplant about a year ago. He is really just starting to live a normal life again after years of dialysis and numerous extended hospital stays and was pretty excited about this system. I told him to relax sometimes stuff is just bad and we will get it replaced for him. Kinda felt responsible and like i let him down somehow although i know there wasn't anything i could do. Just wanted his first computer build to be a positive experience for him. Unfortunately it wasn't.

well my apologies to both of you then. if nothing else it will teach him some more patience for when the computer breaks in the future

not saying you will do a bad job, but it is inevitable that every computer will have an annoying a$$ problem

 

[Markfw]

OK, I know the memory is the right kind, but what is the setting in the BIOS ??? The memory could be fine, and every symptom you say could result with bad bios settings, other ones than I mentioned even. Before you give up, at least check the settings. Please let me know.

 

[NesuD]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
OK, sorry to sound like a broken record to the others reading this thread that may have read my replies before, but this suggestion helped me two different times personally, and at least one Anandtech forum user:

Check the CAS setting on your ram. If it is set to 2, then try 2.5 and see what happens. Either that is your problem or ??? At least try it, and please let me know if that fixes the problem or not.

Thanks for the reply but i tried all of that I can't begin to tell you the things i tried. I worked on it from 2 pm sat til midnight at his place then i took it home with me and fought with it until 4:30 am sun morning. At 9 am i was back at it until about 3 in the afternoon when i basically threw in the towel. I was combing msi's forums trying to pick up something that would help and while i found lots of suggestions nothing there fixed the problem. Came to the conclusion if the board isn't defective then it wasn't worth having if it was impossible to setup correctly. Do have a question about a bios setting i haven't seen before though. In advanced bios features there is a place to select the MPS (Multi Processor Specification) table version 1.1 or 1.4. Why would a uniprocessor board have such a bios option and which one would be appropriate for windows xp pro?

 

[Markfw]

Sorry about that, it wasn't obvious to me that you had checked that specific item. I haven't seen that bios setup, and can't answer that, but my gut tells me that it doesn't matter. Try the MB mmanual ?? Some describe every option. I have never used an MSI board before. I liek to stick to what I know works. Abit and ASUS and DFI. Not saying others are bad, or some of these brands are infalible, just that I have had good luck with these three brands.

Edit: One last idea. Maybe the mobo doesn't like the video card ?? I have seen that, but in rare cases only. Nothing else in your config other than that and drives, unless you left out other cards, sound, nic, modem in your list.

 

[NesuD]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
OK, I know the memory is the right kind, but what is the setting in the BIOS ??? The memory could be fine, and every symptom you say could result with bad bios settings, other ones than I mentioned even. Before you give up, at least check the settings. Please let me know.

On first post i saw that it was runnignthe ram at cas 2 kinda surprised me since i it was set to take the ram settings from spd. First thing i did was change that to 2.5. Usually ram settings are always the first thing i check in a flaky system. Not a Noob here built a lot of systems for the past several years now. There is a get up and running quick thread at msi's forums that suggest the most reliable bios settings to use on a kt7 ultra board. Tried everything they suggested finally started trying different stuff on my own like dropping the agp multiplier down to 2x then 1x experiment with the agp driving control as well as an act of desperation. while i was able to get a marginal improvement by lowering agp to 2x and 1x that was the only time it got through the 3dmark install but it would always reboot or lock if you tried to run it. I tried installing sandra because i wanted to check and see if the pci and agp bus dividers were correct but it couldn't install sandra either. I have to assume that setting the cpu bus to 133 in the bios automatically sets the correct dividers since nowhere could i find a place to set that myself either via jumper or in the bios.

 

[NesuD]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
Sorry about that, it wasn't obvious to me that you had checked that specific item. I haven't seen that bios setup, and can't answer that, but my gut tells me that it doesn't matter. Try the MB mmanual ?? Some describe every option. I have never used an MSI board before. I liek to stick to what I know works. Abit and ASUS and DFI. Not saying others are bad, or some of these brands are infalible, just that I have had good luck with these three brands.

Edit: One last idea. Maybe the mobo doesn't like the video card ?? I have seen that, but in rare cases only. Nothing else in your config other than that and drives, unless you left out other cards, sound, nic, modem in your list.

I try to stick to what i know as well which for me has been MSI, Gigabyte, and Asus. Haven't been to impressed with gigabyte the last couple of times i used one. Asus has always been good for me but is pretty pricey and Msi has always been very good for me and is more affordable. Live and learn i guess. hopefully the replacement will be better. Tried a different video card. A Geforce 2 GTS that i had in a box that was when it corrupted the MBR so i would have to say that made no difference. if anyone is interested i can attest to the compatibility of a chaintech ti 4200 in an asus a7v133 board now

 

[RanDum72]

Its probably the VIA chipset acting up against the GF4. Go to the BIOS under advanced settings, then PCI settings. Look for something that sounds like 'PCI burst caching', 'PCI write caching', etc... and disable it. It would even be better if you can post the actual BIOS options/settings.

 

[RanDum72]

YOu might also want to try disabling AGP fast writes and 1 wait state writes.