Blue Screen of DEATH! (fixed)

[Stokes]

I have been following the overclocking guide for A64 processors which is extremely helpful with my setup that is listed in my sig. I first tried to find the max FSB, but in doing so, my windows became corrupt? And I had to reinstall windows, no big deal since I didn't put anything on the computer yet.

After while I thought I would just go down to find my CPU's max settings. Everything was going great. I was hitting 2350Mhz, running stable in Prime95 as noted in the topic. Right when I upped the FSB to 240, the blue screen of death awaited me. And won't go away! The setup all worked before so I know everything is compatitible and working just fine. I put the bios settings to MSI's 'Fail Safe Defaults' settings and still contiune to get my blue screen of death. I'm pretty sure I could just reformat again and install windows and this would be gone. But what ensure that I won't hit that wall again at 2.35Ghz. No way thats my top overclock on the Venice.

The motherboard has V1.8 Bios on it which is what Monarch Computer loaded for me when I bought the bundle from them. What do you suggest?

 

[Viditor]

clear the bios with the jumper and try again...

 

[n7]

Make sure your AGP is set at 67.

Make sure you are NOT using the unlocked SATA ports physically below the AGP slot on the board; only the two above the AGP are locked & okay for use with OCing.

Make sure the LDTxHTT is set to equal a total of below 1000.
IOW, if HTT is over 200, LDT should be at 4x; if HTT is over 250, it should be at 3x.

 

[Stokes]

Originally posted by: n7
Make sure your AGP is set at 67.

Make sure you are NOT using the unlocked SATA ports physically below the AGP slot on the board; only the two above the AGP are locked & okay for use with OCing.

Make sure the LDTxHTT is set to equal a total of below 1000.
IOW, if HTT is over 200, LDT should be at 4x; if HTT is over 250, it should be at 3x.

Thanks for the advice, just let me clarify as I am at work and don't have my system with me. For the SATA ports, use the one right near the AGP port then? Cause right now I am using the one closet to my hardrive with is Sata 1, and now that I remember, it said use 3 or 4 for overlocking. So that is probably 1.

My AGP is at the default 66 I believe it is and did not have it at 67, which is problem 2. Btw what exactly does this do.

And I have been watching the LDTxHTT and making sure its below 1000 at all times, so that is not a factor.

So I'm guessing I still need to reformat and reinstall? Or will this maybe fix this problem?

 

[theMan]

doing all the stuff n7 said will fix your problem. i did what you did twice, and believe me, reinstalling windows, and troubleshooting that much isnt fun. when you set it to 67 it means that the pci bus frequency wont change, so the sata controller wont get overloaded, and fail which causes corruption.

 

[imported_NoGodForMe]

I feel your pain.

I fried my BFG 6800 Ultra OC, artifacts on the screen, then my machine would not boot.
I think the heat is what did me in. I was folding, playing games, and pushed it a little bit too far. Lucky for me, BFG has the lifetime warranty on the cards, and they're still in business, so my RMA is due back today.

Starting over with a reformat is not that bad, I've had to do that too. Let's just hope you didn't fry something on your hardware.

 

[SNM]

Originally posted by: Stokes
My AGP is at the default 66 I believe it is and did not have it at 67, which is problem 2. Btw what exactly does this do.

And I have been watching the LDTxHTT and making sure its below 1000 at all times, so that is not a factor.

So I'm guessing I still need to reformat and reinstall? Or will this maybe fix this problem?

If the default AGP speed is 66 that's fine too. You're just setting the speed (in MHz) of the AGP bus and making sure it's locked (as opposed to increasing as the fsb speed increases).

 

[HDTVMan]

Im not sure why overclockers avoid ghosting/imaging their hard drive prior to overclocking. This should be added to every overclocking guide.

Fresh install of OS.
Windows Updates.
Drivers Updates.
Applications you cant live without.
Windows Updates again.

Image or Ghost your hard drive.

Now overclock.

If you corrupt the OS in the process of too extreme an overclock you can always ghost it back in just a few minutes instead of going through the process of reinstalling everything. If you dont corrupt the OS then its still ok you have a quick restore point should you need to rebuild the PC.

Good luck with your overclock and keep us posted.

 

[Stokes]

I don't have any sort of ghosting software, although that is an extremely good idea. Is there some sort of free software I would be able to use to accomplish this?

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

Originally posted by: HDTVMan
Im not sure why overclockers avoid ghosting/imaging their hard drive prior to overclocking. This should be added to every overclocking guide.

Fresh install of OS.
Windows Updates.
Drivers Updates.
Applications you cant live without.
Windows Updates again.

Image or Ghost your hard drive.

Now overclock.

If you corrupt the OS in the process of too extreme an overclock you can always ghost it back in just a few minutes instead of going through the process of reinstalling everything. If you dont corrupt the OS then its still ok you have a quick restore point should you need to rebuild the PC.

Good luck with your overclock and keep us posted.

Great post. I don't understand this either. Even Microsoft Windows comes with a backup program. I would install everything you want and then backup and reinstall the backup instead of gowing through the pain again and again. Ghost is even better. I love Ghost for overclocking.

 

[n7]

It sounds like your AGP wasn't locked, & you were using the unlocked SATA ports, so you likely corrupted your Windows install, & were trying to run with the AGP slot way outta spec.

Hopefully the HDD is still okay, as excessive OCing with HDDs on unlocked ports can potentially damage the HDD itself too.

Reinstall Windows after you correct the above issues, & you should be good to go.

BTW, when you reinstall Windows, you will have to make a floppy with the Silicon Image SATA drivers so Windows can use those SATA ports.
The drivers are hidden on the CD in the SATA drivers folder (can't remember the exact name).

 

[Stokes]

I reinstalled windows with no problems. The hardrive is now operating from SATA 3 and when I reinstalled it, it did not have any problems with recognizing like you mentioned.

The only thing I did have to do is run a chkdsk to fix the amount the hardrive was reporting at. When I installed windows this last time it told me out of my 160GB HDD that i was already down to 130GB, saying something was taking up like 26GB!!

I tried to ghost it and ghost gave me an error and suggested I ran chkdsk which fixed the problem and it is now ghosting! Damn big file, should have bought some DVD-R for that instead of normal CD-R, gonna take four of those! lol.

I'll ghost then get back to the fun.

 

[n7]

Good luck!

I was actually just about to bump this up for an update...keep us posted

 

[Stokes]

Ok just an update: I have been extremely busy with work, girlfriend, etc. And finally am gonna ghost my hard drive tonight on my old hard drive which I connected to the comp. (I almost think that hard drive is slowing my windows load times, but that doesn't make much sense since that has nothing to do with windows, but not sure.

My reason for this post, my Geil Ultra ram thats in my sig, is running single layer only! There is no setting to change it to dual. CPU-Z recognizes it as single too here are what its telling me:

Freq: 167.5Mhz
FSB : DRAM: CPU/12
Timings: 2-4-4-6

I read my motherboards manual and it told me to place my ram modules in the green slots first, which appear to be 2 & 4. 4 being closest to my CPU. So I'm not sure whats going on here.

Any ideas?

 

[Stokes]

Looks like I found the problem:

I did some research through google about it and a user mentioned this:

To get dual channel, install two identical dimms in the first two
slots (green and purple). If running single channel, install into the
green slots first.

The manual/website says to install into the green first:

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=607

 

[fishbits]

To get dual channel, install two identical dimms in the first two
slots (green and purple). If running single channel, install into the
green slots first.

The manual/website says to install into the green first:

Funny had the same problem trying to get my RAM to run well on the same board. Even looked back to AnandTech since I got the board largely off their review and saw... (scroll to pic)
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2128&p=10

"Hey, they're using slots 1+3 for RAM just like the manual says... why isn't this working?!" Was frustrating to be sure, but amusing now.

 

[Stokes]

Ain't that something lol.. It must just be how MSI words it. Although why do they say to go in green first?

 

[Ike0069]

Just to defend MSI a little bit, look at the table at the top of page 2-8.
It shows that for dual channel you MUST use slots 1&2, 3&4, or 1,2,3&4.
Then is states:
Dual-channel DDR works ONLY in the 3 combinations listed in the table shown (above).

Now it does sate:
"Always insert memory modules into the GREEN slots first, and it is strongly recommended not to insert the memory modules into the PURPLE slots while the GREEN slots are left empty.

This just means that if using one stick, make sure to us a GREEN slot.
If they worded it slightly different it would make sense.
For instance:
...the GREEN slot first, ...into a purple slot while both GREEN slots are left empty.

 

[Stokes]

I'm not bashing MSI at all, just thought that was worded in a manner that made it hard to understand. I am satisified with my board!