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Gigabye GA-K8NF-9 nforce + Leadtek GEForce 6800 + Windows

S

Shiptar

Junior Member
Hi All, thanks for reading post. I just got a new Cyberpower machine, I'm having some trouble with I believe to be the graphics card. The whole machine completely lockup at very random times. It MOSTLY freezes while playing WoW, however it has frozen while sitting at the desktop, both in WinXP and Win2k. WinXP froze before I could put WoW on, so I don't know how that fares. I couldn't get the nforce4 stuff working with the 64Bit version of Windows, so gave up on that. The following is the main stats.

GIGABYTE GA-K8NF-9 NF4 PCI-E
939PIN ATHLON 64 3200+
LEADTEK PCI-E GEFORCE-6800 256MB
WD 360GD RAPTOR 36.7GB SATA10000RPM
512MB PC3200 PC400 DDR - GEIL
X-CON 500W ATX PS ULT31554

I ran Prime95 overnight, got no errors. I think that means the CPU itself is ok. I ran 3dMark05, looped 10 times, and couldn't get it to freeze. I'm going to extend the test for longer, and see what I can do. I've taken the RAM out and put it in another machine, and the memory works. I also tested it with Everest, and it seemed to get pretty good marks on the latency/bandwidth and the other test. So monitor, worked fine with my old machine.

What have I missed? Is there some better utilties to check the video card with? Nothing is overheating, I check whenever it locks up. The one concern I'm having is with the Motherboard's chipset not having a cooling solution other than a heatsink. I check with Speedfan, and it claims it's running at about 69-70C. However no matter what I do, I can't get the temperature to increase. All of the the pictures for this motherboard show it with a cooling solution, but since the graphics card is a PCI-E, the fan cannot fit over the motherboard, so it's been taken out. The temp is a pretty constant 69C, so I don't think that the chip is heating up and bothering the video card.

http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-K8NF-9.htm#

The pic in that link shows the motherboard with the fan, the gold square I believe. I just have a heatsink, and am wondering if this could possibly be the cause? Has anyone had experience with this type of issue before?

Thanks!
 
I have that board, and the heatsink does get warm. However, I have a fan in the front and back of my case.

What kind of warranty does Cyberpower offer on their machines?

Do you have the newest chipset drivers for the motherboard loaded? Are you running SP2 for XP? What driver version are you running for the video card?

Windows XP is not giving your any error codes when it restarts? Are there any hardware conflicts or problem devices listed in your "system information"?


 
I've the same board with a 3000+ winnie and a 6600GT.

My issues are as follows:

Windows refuses to restart - so I just leave it running

Sometimes explorer crashes - so I just restart the process

HDD's will only run at DMA100 - In went a IDE controller card now upto DMA133

Wierd Artifact issues - Not sure whats causing it

Nvidia firewall stops ALL TCP/IP connections - so I use Zonealarm and IEE1394 for networking

I've updated all drivers, running F2 bios, temp are OK, Voltages are OK, XP SP2 with the latest updates.

Let me know how you get on
 
Thanks for response!

About XP, I only went to SP1, thought that would be more straightforward to get things working and tested. That could be my next step, I should have stated that I ran all of those tests on Win2k. WindowsXP locked up right after I installed the nVidia version of the drivers, so I just blew it away and tried the 64Bit version. As for conflicts, I usually just check device manager, and see if windows doesn't know what something is. Should I look elsewhere? I'm not familiar with XP, but I found device manager there and nothing was missing. So on Win2k at this point there isn't anything missing, and the only things that had been missing were the USB controller and the IEE1394 connection. Those were resolved by installing the respective drivers from from the GigaByte website. (Which may be the problem)

At this point, I'm running Win2k, with the nforce drivers from nvidia's website. There ARE drivers that were provided with the machine, and off the gigabyte website. I've tried both of them, and still have gotten the lockups. I have only run the stress tests with the nvidia chipset drivers, as it seems to be locking up less, however perception is rarely reality. I haven't had it lockup on the desktop since reinstalling Win2k with the nforce chipset drivers from the nvidia website.

For the video card, I was running 66.93 from nVidia, however I ran WoW for a few minutes, and it crashed right up. After surviving a Prime95 run for the day. So I switched over to the Leadtek drivers that they provide, and just started playing WoW, was able to lockup after two hours. I'm at work now, and I set the 3dMark to loop 70 or so times, I guess if it survives that run, there isn't too much I can complain about other than a software issue.

As for warranty, I got it about 6 days ago, and am trying to decide whether to get an RMA, or if it's my own ignorance/foolishness that is causing the problem. I have a 30 day moneyback guarantee, and I also got 3 year onsite limited warranty. It's just I'm not sure what a tech could come out to my house to do, as it seems to be a problem buried somewhere.

Oh, and for XP error codes, I did not see any, but I also wouldn't know where to look, nothing comes up other than the Windows loading animation, so I can't see what's going on, I've never been able to turn that off. Does it write off to a file or something? I don't think Win2k does that, so I can switch back to XP and run thru the tests and look for the error messages. Also, XP is professional edition, not home!

Thanks!
 
On XP (I think the same for W2K): Right click on 'My Computer' > Manage > then have a look at the Event Viewer and google the codes with 'errors' and 'warnings'.

When Installing XP SP2 use the 'slip-stream' CD by following This
 
I will try it out, thank you kindly. It will probably be a few hours until I can accomplish that after work, so I will update when I've tested it out with SP2.

Thanks!
 
So I ran 3dMark05 all day long, looped 70 times, and didn't get any lockups. So was feeling good about it, and started up World of Warcraft. I wasn't actively playing, just had it sitting, as that was usually a good way to get it to lockup. According to the plan, after an hour and a half, got it to completely lockup. This is under Windows 2000, I haven't put XP with SP2 on yet.

I checked the event log, and found some interesting codes. Every lockup has error code 6005 and 6009 with the same time stamp, and 3 seconds before that, there is error code 4201.

6005 The file was encrypted with a different encryption driver than is currently loaded.
6009 The specified file is read only.
4201 The instance name passed was not recognized as valid by a WMI data provider.

Those are taken from:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/defau...n-us/debug/base/system_error_codes.asp

Could be the wrong error codes for what I'm looking for. If they are the correct definitions, then perhaps this is a software issue, and shouldn't be blaming hardware?

Thanks, apologies if it turns out to be a software issue. I'm going to let it sit at the desktop for the night to see if it locks up again.
 
You haven't put on SP2 yet. Does that mean you're running "straight" SP1, or did you patch it with everything except for SP2? I'm asking because "raw" WinXP SP1 is Worm Central?. You would want to have firewall protection on it before installing the NIC drivers. That could be in the form of a software firewall, or a router that has no other computers attached to it, or both.
 
All of this has been under Windows 2000 Profesisonal SP4. The only thing that's running that I don't recognize is all related to the nVidia firewall on the motherboard. It apparently fires up an apache instance and uses that to allow me to manage firewall things. I have a firewall on the router, along with the nVidia one. Interestingly enough, since the ethernet controller is on the motherboard, the network connection doesn't work until you install the drivers for it, which include the firewall.

I normally use Sygate for Firewall, Grisoft for AV, and the big 3 for malware, Spybot S&D, Ad-aware and HijackThis. IE is the devil. Opera and Firefox are king. With some poking around with process explorer, and probably will add Sysinternal rootkit detector to the mix.

I am for the most part anti XP. I really have a problem with the activation scheme, I like to change my hardware, and I really don't want to be beholden to anyone for it. It should be like Suse Linux Pro or something, just let me install and go. So that's why I'm concentrating on getting this stuff working on Win2k. I am making a slip stream install as was advised above, but would prefer to have it solved on Win2k.

Edit: These are all legal non pirated versions of windows as well.
 
It does not seem have an extra power connector. There is a power connector on the board which seems to power the fan, however it starts inside the fan, and is plugged into the video card. It has 2 wires, red/black, and it seems to be one of the small power connectors. I don't know the proper name for it, so I'm not sure if that's the 4-pin your asking about, or if it's the answer I don't have one, which seems to be the case. Should I check for more connectors and perhaps get the extra cable you speak of in the other thread?

About the bios reading, where can I find that? I've found a heading in the PC Health Status of the bios that is +12V, which says OK next to it. I'll keep looking around, but I haven't seend anything called 12v rail, any hints on where that might be?

Thank you much!
 
Is this what you are talking about for the extra connector?

http://images10.newegg.com/productimage/14-143-025-04.JPG

From the following thread, a few posts away heh:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=27&threadid=1528723&enterthread=y

And I'd assume thats so I don't have a ton of power running through the PCI-E slot? It's definitely doable, but with those error codes, I'm not sure if that will help, as the error codes seemed to be related to filesystem based errors. Altho I'm not sure what the WMI data provider is, I'll have to research that more.

Thanks
 
Well, Cyberpower is known for not building the highest quality machines....
http://www.resellerratings.com/seller6897.html
I had a Cyberpower ordered with an x800 xt, which were on backorder. The site didn't say it was (which was my first gripe) , so then I looked on reseller ratings, ppl were telling of horror stories with cyber power. I then called to cancel my order, the people were freaking a$$holes to me.

When I did cancel, I ordered a PC from www.abspc.com and it's been great. The sales and tech support teams are very friendly, too.
 
This is my second system from them. The first was well made, and hasn't had any large problems for a year and a half. It's also been in a rough environment, dusty, being bumped, loud power machinery being used nearby. Which I think has caused the minor issues it has had. But there are quite a few horror stories there, and with these issues, I don't think I'll be getting another one. I didn't check, I was going on price and personal experience. I am considering sending it back soon however, and that definitely makes me lean in that direction. Just not looking forward to it, heh.

As an update, those are event codes, not error codes. So those are the wrong definition, and the event codes are related to things happening when I reboot after the crash. There don't seem to be any errors related to the times of the lockups. So I've taken the issue over to their tech support forums, to see if it may be a software issue. My apologies again if this turns out to be the case.

On the safe side, is there anything else I could try to see if it's a hardware issue? The tests I've run have come out pretty well, so I think everything is plugged in correctly. Everything else came in great shape (flat screen monitor, ups, sound system) and got a free extra keyboard and mouse =)
 
As an update, I stumbled... on sort of a fix. After being frustrated with the lockups, I was going to pilfer some parts from the new machine and put them into the old, namely the RAM. I took 2 of my 512meg sticks out. As it turns out, I had taken out the network card on the old machine, and given it away, so I cursed heavily, and didn't put the RAM back. Started using the cyberpower, and woo, over a day goes by with no lockups.

So I start to wonder, as I've tested all the ram, and it worked fine, I went and got memtest. Apparently that's a better test than everest. I put all of the ram back into the cyberpower, and fire it up. Memtest lets me know that my OS, Win2k SP4, full patches, only allows a program to use up to 900megs of RAM. Interesting....

So I'm pretty sure my problem lies in the OS and the Programs working out who gets what RAM and not letting things have more or less. I apologize that it turned out that way, and I thank everyone for their input and assistance.

If anyone has an experience with this, please drop a comment, otherwise consider me shamed for posting in wrong forum.

Thanks!
 
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