Can't even install Windows on A8N-E!

[danchee]

I'm having installation issues with my rig. When I install Windows, 90% of the time it says it cannot copy a file to the disk. Tried 2 different hard drives, different CDRoms, different media disks, different RAM (even tried ECC), different BIOSes and even new motherboard! The times that I can get the OS installed, it will BSOD on me once it gets into the OS. When it BSODs, I can never boot into the OS ever again. Typical BSOD messages (I can't remember the actual string, but they sound like this "IRQL_LESS_OR_EQUAL, PFN_LIST_xxx", physical memory dump).

Temperature wise, the BIOS screen says CPU is sitting at 35^C. Nothing is overclocked, everything is standard out of box and I did not even tweak the BIOS, running setup defaults. I've tried having a big Vornado fan blowing at the system with the case cover off, the thing is cold to touch, so it's really not over heating. Plenty of stable power from a high quality PSU unit.

I got my bundle from the AMD Tech Tour and it was working great for 3 months or so. Then the chipset fan died while I was at work (making grating sound). When I got home, the system was still up, but I promptly shut it down and called Asus. They sent a new fan, which I replaced and the OS started to die. This is while I was on the IDE drive. So I started to reinstall the OS on the 3 hdds listed below trying to find one that would work. The SATA drives are brand new drives. After a week of trying, called Asus and got a replacement board thinking the chipset is bad. But still no dice.

CPU - Venice 3200+ Rev.E
PSU - PC Power and Cooling Turbo-Cool 510 ASL
Memory - Crucial Balistix PC4000
Mobo - A8N-E rev2 (BIOS 1005, 1006, 1008, 1010.003 tried em all)
SATA drive 1 (non NCQ) - WD2500JD SATA drive
SATA drive 2 (NCQ) - Seagate ST3300831AS SATA drive
IDE drive - WD800JB PATA drive
OS - WinXP SP2 (slipstreamed CD so that it can recognize drives bigger than 128G)
Vid card - ATI X800XL
Nvidia drivers 6.53, 6.65, 6.66, 6.7

The only thing that I have not changed is the CPU, which I will be doing tomorrow with a friend's. Any suggestions on getting this resolved?

Thanks!
Daniel

p/s - Should the CPU be the culprit, does anyone know who I should contact to get it replaced?

 

[mechBgon]

And you've got the Ballistix at 2.8 volts, right, not the feeble 2.6V that the board defaults to? If not, Advanced > JumperFree Configuration and set the OC profile to Manual, then boost the DIMM voltage.

 

[danchee]

No but I will try that when I get home tonight. Never had to do that for the 3+ months I've used them, but thanks for the tip!

 

[danchee]

Thanks! That solved the problem! Kind of weird it's been running at the default setting all this while and a new mobo comes along forcing to actually set the voltage higher. Oh well, at least it's working now though the RAM's running a little hot.