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Help with system lockup...

R

Rosstarino

Junior Member
Hello

I hope and pray that some knowledgeable individual can save my investment.

System:

AMD Athlon 1.33
ASUS A7A266 Motherboard
512 m DDR Ram (Crucial)
Creative SoundBlaster Live 5.1
Elsa Gladiac GT (Nvidia) 32 m DDR graphics card (AGP)
I/O Magic 16 m graphics card (PCI)(Second Monitor)
80 g IBM Deskstar 7200rpm HD
2 g Western Digital 6400 HD (used as swap disk)
10/100 Network card
Copper ORB heatsink

Operating system
Windows 2000 Professional

Abstract:

The system smokes when it is working, but all too frequently it freezes and I have to perform a hard shutdown to reboot. Occasionally I get a blue screen, but most of the time it just freezes. No mouse movement no ability to CNTRL ALT DELETE, nothing responds. For example, during a typical 2 hour time period it may crash 3 times and it seems to be directly related to the load on the system (go figure, ha ha!) Particularly when gaming (Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Unreal Tournament, Myth) I have the problem. I have noticed that all of my added devices graphics cards, sound cards, etc are using IRQ9 and offer no way to change them, other than designating them in the BIOS. From what I understand this is OK that newer technologies allow multiple uses of the same IRQ. I have tried all the things in the following list to resolve this issue.

Posted at Google Forums for ASUS Motherboard
Read post replies (looks bleak for ASUS)
Tried moving sound card to #3 pci slot
Tried running RAM sticks by themselves (2 sticks of 256 m DDR)
Tried running single AGP adapter (took second PCI video card out of picture)
Reinstalled operating system 3 times(one installation of Win98 2nd Edition)
Removed 1 of 3 exhaust fan (was told could be causing negative airflow inside box)
Downloaded and installed BIOS and software/driver updates from everyone!
Disabled AGP Fast Write in BIOS nothing else in BIOS has been tampered with.
I am not overclocking and temperature thresholds seem to be within acceptable levels

None of the above mentioned things have resolved the issue, if any of you can provide some advice or something else to try I would greatly appreciate it.

A severely worn out and frustrated computer hobbyist
 
do you have sp2 installed?
IIRC, that m/board needs an agp miniport driver which should be on the m/board cd. is it installed?
what version video drivers are you using?
what wattage psu do you have?
 
Yonux

Do you really think the manufacturer would have mislabled the processor speed? I could try that but it seems like that would be a really strange thing to do, other than the fact that it would create a more stable processor. I don't think it's the processor though, I really think the problem has something to do with the compatability issues. I was hoping someone might know something about the combination of components I am running, BIOS settings, or possibly a motherboard jumper that needs to be changed?

Thanks for your input
I'll look into underclocking for more stablility

Rosstarino
 
I am running a 350 watt CPU Fan
I have installed the latest AGP drivers from ASUS as of January 15 2002

Service Pack 2 is one of the first things I install after installing the operatind system.

All great questions

Keep em coming maybe we'll hit something I have'nt tried

I am thinking about dropping the ASUS board I am very uphappy with the AliMagik1 chipset

I was thinking about switching to an Epox board with via chipset?

Thanks Rosstarino
 


<< Occasionally I get a blue screen >>


do you recall the error message?
have you tried just using the AGP card to see if anything changes?
 
The error I get when I do get the blue screen is something like

Physical memory dump (some numbers)
IRQ L non existant blah blah

I don't have the error written down, but it always says something about IRQ L and then performs a memory dump and freezes. Now this does not happen every time (less often than more), usually the system just freezes. Sometimes I get a the horrible long beep from the motherboard then it freezes.

yes I have tried running just the AGP card and it still freezes

Someone at another chat room said I need to Allocate my IRQ's in the BIOS and disable Plug n Play operatings system in the BIOS. This other person thinks that the fact that IRQ 9 is holding all of my devices could be the problem even though windows 2000 should allow IRQ sharing.

They left me this link to find out about disabling windows 2000 ability to allocate the IRQ's for devices
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q252420

Let me know what you all think
 
Even if W2K allocates IRQs (incidentally, so does W98SE) or allows sharing, some devices do not like to share IRQ #s. Look in the manual to see which IRQ #'s are free. Then look for options in the BIOS for setting/assigning an IRQ # for the AGP and the PCI slots for the NIC & SoundBlaster (leave the other PCI vid card out for now). Additionally, SB requires an additional IRQ (#5) for Legacy emulation.
 
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