Gigabyte GA-7VA

[glc650]

Anyone know how to get a Gigabyte GA-7VA (VIA KT-400) to detect an AMD Athlon XP 1900+ (1.6GHz) at full speed? I've looked throughout the BIOS tree times and can't find any such setting and it detects it as a 1.2GHz CPU.

TIA>

-g.

 

[mechBgon]

It looks like Gigabyte has a FSB switch just below the front end of the AGP slot, so start by making sure that's set for Auto and not 100MHz. Page 10 of the manual shows where to find it, and it looks like they set it to 100MHz by default.

Beyond that, look at page 30 where it shows the master BIOS menu. At the bottom left there's Frequency/Voltage Control, and if your 1900+ still isn't running at 1.6GHz, then dive in there and enable CPU Host Clock Control (they document that section on page 47). After enabling CPU Host Clock Control, you should be able to set the CPU Host Frequency to 133MHz if needed.

Hope that helps

 

[glc650]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
It looks like Gigabyte has a FSB switch just below the front end of the AGP slot, so start by making sure that's set for Auto and not 100MHz. Page 10 of the manual shows where to find it, and it looks like they set it to 100MHz by default.

Beyond that, look at page 30 where it shows the master BIOS menu. At the bottom left there's Frequency/Voltage Control, and if your 1900+ still isn't running at 1.6GHz, then dive in there and enable CPU Host Clock Control (they document that section on page 47). After enabling CPU Host Clock Control, you should be able to set the CPU Host Frequency to 133MHz if needed.

Hope that helps

Thanks, the FSB switch was at 100, so switching to auto did the trick. I don't know how I missed that. Guess b/c its been a long week and I'm in too much of a rush.

Now for the next problem. The former motherboard for this system, an ECS K7S5A, died on me a few days ago. This Gigabyte board is its replacement. Anyway, while booting Windows I get a blue screen stating something about an inaccessible boot device. Any ideas?

 

[mechBgon]

Throw your Windows CD in there and boot from it. When it gets Setup going, it will come to the screen where it says to press Enter if you want to run Setup, or R if you want to repair. Press Enter.

Next it will do some stuff and then make you agree to the EULA. After that, it looks at the hard drive and says "HEY! I see an existing Windows installation, do you want it repaired?" and you say "Sure, Mr. Gates, go for it " and it reinstalls the OS over the top of the previous one.

This may not result in a 100% happy system, but it should get you going for long enough to back up your files so you can do a proper reinstallation. If you're lucky, it will come out 100% working and all your programs are just like they were on the previous board.

Good luck!

 

[glc650]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Throw your Windows CD in there and boot from it. When it gets Setup going, it will come to the screen where it says to press Enter if you want to run Setup, or R if you want to repair. Press Enter.

Next it will do some stuff and then make you agree to the EULA. After that, it looks at the hard drive and says "HEY! I see an existing Windows installation, do you want it repaired?" and you say "Sure, Mr. Gates, go for it " and it reinstalls the OS over the top of the previous one.

This may not result in a 100% happy system, but it should get you going for long enough to back up your files so you can do a proper reinstallation. If you're lucky, it will come out 100% working and all your programs are just like they were on the previous board.

Good luck!

Thanks. I'll give that a try in the morning.

 

[glc650]

UPDATE:

I went ahead and tried a fresh install of Win2k, as I already have what I need backed up on my D partition. Anyway, Win2k install fails at the DOS portion, after it detects hardware and begins to copy files to hard drive. Says something to the affect of no hard drive recognized. So I tried agian, but this time hit F6 at the beginning. I coppied the IDE drivers from the latest VIA 4 in 1 pack to a floppy and pointed to it, but got an error about a missing txtsetup.oem file. Any idea?

TIA>

-g.

 

[mechBgon]

That's uncommonly resourceful to manually extract the VIA drivers and use the F6 route! But it shouldn't be necessary; Win2000 should be able to handle this just fine with its own drivers.

Excuse me for asking a dumb question but the drive does have both its power and data cables plugged in and firmly seated, right? (see, told ya it was dumb ) Also, if that's a Western Digital drive, try setting its jumper to the "Single Drive" setting and sticking it on its own cable if it isn't already. Maybe try the other IDE port on the motherboard too, if none of that helps.

If it still doesn't fly, you might download the diagnostic utility from the hard-drive manufacturer and run it, to see if it sees problems. Since your K7S5A died, you gotta wonder. Good luck!

 

[glc650]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
That's uncommonly resourceful to manually extract the VIA drivers and use the F6 route! But it shouldn't be necessary; Win2000 should be able to handle this just fine with its own drivers.

Excuse me for asking a dumb question but the drive does have both its power and data cables plugged in and firmly seated, right? (see, told ya it was dumb ) Also, if that's a Western Digital drive, try setting its jumper to the "Single Drive" setting and sticking it on its own cable if it isn't already. Maybe try the other IDE port on the motherboard too, if none of that helps.

If it still doesn't fly, you might download the diagnostic utility from the hard-drive manufacturer and run it, to see if it sees problems. Since your K7S5A died, you gotta wonder. Good luck!

Yup, it's got power and a ribbon. (not a dumb question as crazy as things have been lately) The drive is already set to single and on its own cable/IDE channel. Yeah, I don't understand why 2k can't detect it either, but it is a KT400, which was released some time after 2k. Also, BIOS detects the drive just fine and I can format it (full format, not just /Q) just fine. I'm doubtful its the drive.

EDIT: Oh I tried a diff cable too, BTW. And I'm running WD's diag. soft on the drive now just to be sure.

EDIT 2: Diag. complete and drive checks out, so it's definitely not the HD.

 

[glc650]

RECAP

Windows setup blue screens (see bleow for blue screen error) after initial hardware detection phase (right before you select the installation partition and setup copies files to the installation folders).

I have doubled check both connections (power and ribbon), tried both IDE controllers, tried a different ribbon, and the drive checked out clean according to Western Digital's diag. program.

The drive contains two existing partions, both FAT32. Partition C has been formatted. D contains my backuped data (My Docs, Faves, etc.). When I boot to DOS, both partitions are fully readable (of course C contains no data though). BIOS detects the hard drive correctly regardless of the IDE channel it is placed on.

Blue screen error

STOP: c0000221 Unkown Hard Error
\SystemRoot\System32\ntdll.dll

I'm completely baffled. I think I'm going to be returning a motherboard next week.