DFI nF4 Ultra-D Problem...please help

[WillKlein]

Alright, so for the past month I have been ordering pieces of my upcoming computer. Friday(Yesterday) I receive my final piece, my processor. Get everything hooked up, check my jumpers and all that again, turn it on. Its a go! Put in my XP CD to install, it recognizes it, and begins to load all of the generic drivers. I get to the point where I can press enter to get to choose which Hard Drive I am going to install it on, and set up partitions. Around this area it either A. Freezes completely B. Gives me the blue screen of death with some error saying something like "IRQL_less_or_not_equal"(something along those lines, I am so frustrated that I dont feel like messing with it for another couple of hours, although if you guys have any suggestions, I will find out the exact error if needed) or C. It goes to something I have never seen before, it goes to a red background of setup and says its examining my Hard Drive, and then proceeds to freeze. 98 percent of the time it gives me that error about the IRQL_less_or_not_equal, it has done the red background thing once, and freezes on rare occasion.

Here are my specs of my new computer:

Thermaltake Soprano with 430 Watt Thermaltake Power Supply(with 20 to 24 pin adapter)
DFI nF4 Ultra-D Motherboard
Mushkin 2x512 PC3200 Redline ram
AMD 64 3500+ Venice Core processor
Lite-On DVD Burner
2 Western Digital 80 Gigabyte SATA Hard Drives
ATI x800Pro 256MB(actually MSI calls it a RX800, but the chipset is an x800pro, dont even know if this matters) with Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer 4 Rev. 2

Now here is what I have tried to do, and what I havent done:
I have tried swapping DVD Drives
I have tried switching to an 80 Gig WD IDE Hard Drive
I have tried putting my ram into different slots, currently they are in slot 2 & 4
I have tried fooling around with BIOS settings that probably wouldnt even matter

I have not tried updating my bios
I have not set up my raid yet

Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated, as I think that this is a motherboard based problem.

If you would like to contact me besides here, my AIM name is ent1ty4l1f3 and my email is ent1ty4l1f3 @ gmail . com

 

[11427]

Have you made any bios changes?
My guess would be your memory needs a little more volts. I'd try at least 2.8v

 

[stevty2889]

Well since your motherboard has memtest built in, the first thing I would do is run memtest, that ram should be compatible, but the DFI board is known for being picky about the ram. IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL usualy indicates either a ram problem, or a driver issue. You may also want to try installing windows using just a single stick of ram.

If you aren't trying to run raid yet, disconnect one of the SATA drives while installing windows to the other. I'm not too fond of thermaltake power supplies either, then tend to have a weak 12v rail.

Also be sure you have all of the power connections connected, in addition to the 24pin atx, and the 4pin 12v atx, that motherboard also has a 4 pin molex, and a floppy drive power connector.

 

[mechBgon]

Here is an illustration showing the locations of the four power plugs that stevty2889 mentioned, if they're eluding you: http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/mechBgon/DFI_SLI_POWER_FITTINGS.gif

If problems persist then I second the motion for some other brand of PSU from a company with a good reputation. Also, I'm not sure if your variant of that video card has an auxiliary power fitting, but if it does have one, then definitely hook it up.

Welcome to the Forums

 

[11427]

I also think you'd do better with a native 24 pin psu and at least 480w,.... but right now I'd be willing to bet that Redline is not getting enough voltage to get it going. It will likely need 2.8v - 3.0v just to start up in Windows at stock settings.

 

[WillKlein]

alright, well, got some good news, and a little bad news.

I feel like a retard for the most part, lol. The molex and berg connectors were NOT plugged in, as I forgot to do that. Hooked those back up, got into setting up Windows, and bam, a new error. "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL." So I sit there...ponder what am I gonna do now, and I remember that someone suggested memtest. So I boot it up, run it with all 1024 of my memory in. Starts out well, then around test 8 I ended up with like 27000 errors. That made me sad. Then I turned it off, took out 1 stick of ram, and unplugged 1 of my HD's. Finally got to install XP and I am currently on the computer! Now the bad part. The computer will NOT let me put in the 2nd 512 stick in the computer, or I get the blue screen.

Should I be worrying about all those errors I saw in the memory? Also, Im not very familiar of the OCing and doing things in BIOS yet, so I take it you guys are talking about my DRAM voltage. I never changed it, and it is currently running at 2.64 volts. If I turned it up, what else do I have to alter? Will turning it up allow me to put in my 2nd stick of ram?

BTW, in the very near future, I WILL be buying a new Power Supply, as I already see a disaster waiting to happen...

Thanks a whole lot to everyone so far, and I hope this thread helps others too!

 

[bdww00]

id try updating bios idk if it recognizes the fast redline ram

 

[stevty2889]

What happens if you put the second stick of ram in by itself? Does it still get errors in memtest? It could be that that stick of ram is bad. Try just the other stick of ram first, and then I would up the DRAM voltage to 2.8v, as it's possible your ram just wasn't getting enough voltage, you don't have to alter anything else, just up the DRAM voltage. Go in to your bios, go to the Genie Bios Setting section, and chagne the DRAM voltage controll to 2.80v.

 

[Fresh Daemon]

The computer will NOT let me put in the 2nd 512 stick in the computer, or I get the blue screen.

Should I be worrying about all those errors I saw in the memory?

That's DFI for you. I think the only memory brand you can feel safe using on those boards is OCZ.

Also, Im not very familiar of the OCing and doing things in BIOS yet, so I take it you guys are talking about my DRAM voltage. I never changed it, and it is currently running at 2.64 volts. If I turned it up, what else do I have to alter? Will turning it up allow me to put in my 2nd stick of ram?

1) Nothing and 2) Maybe. Sometimes DFI problems are cured with extra voltage, and sometimes RAM will need more than default volts to even run at default speeds.

 

[Kodiak31415]

I had the exact same problem. I solved it by bumping the dram voltage up to 3.0 in the bios setting.

Also, make sure your SLI jumpers are set right.

 

[WillKlein]

Alright, well, I think I got it figured out. The 2nd 512 stick of the Mushkin I believe is bad. The comp will not let me boot windows when I have only that module in it, and it will not let me use both sticks. I even bumped up the voltage before I put in the 2nd module, and still nothing. Guess I got a faulty Mushkin?

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Memtest is built in to the BIOS of the DFI board. Go in there and select it to run Memtest on BOTH sticks. Run them individually and together, at default speeds. If it shows no errors after several passes, both individually and together, then use 1 stick, get into Windows, download the latest BIOS, reset CMOS, and then add the 2nd stick and see if it works.

The DFI can be a tricky board, but I'm confident it will work in the end. I have my DFI running with 4 sticks of the Corsair Value select ram right now, even though the consensus is that Corsair VS and DFI are incompatible. I can prove otherwise.

 

[nikantonelli]

I finally bit the bullet and signed up to a forum - just so I could share what I have found.

I had an Asus A8N-SLI for a while. Seemed to go well except for one problem - blue screen of death with IRQL_less_or_not_equal. I tracked it down to the Marvell Yukon device driver. Disable the device in the bios and the problem went away. Just like that.

I upgraded the Asus BIOS to 1013 and it was the worst idea going. I then couldn't tweak the OC settings properly. It got me so annoyed, I bought a DFI nf4 board

I've been having blue screens and freezes with this one - but only after I enabled the Yukon ethernet device in the BIOS. Disabling it and moving over to the nF4 inbuilt device and my machine is back to being stable.

I tried improving my PSU, memory, moving IDEs as suggested in all the forums I monitored and nothing was fixing it completely, just moving the problem.

So anyone reading this, try disabling the Yukon device and let me know what happens.I think it may be the answer

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Originally posted by: Fresh Daemon

That's DFI for you. I think the only memory brand you can feel safe using on those boards is OCZ.

That seems to be the concensus at DFi Street, but I still told them to stuff it since i can't stand how ugly those reflective metallic OCZ sticks look in my case....especially when I can have some Corsair Xperts spewing funny nonsense constantly.