I Am Stumped. Please Anandtech Readers Help Me Out....

[GlassDaddy90]

I recently built 3 systems for a few of my friends. They all had basically the same hardware which include..

Inwin ATX 250Watt Case
Intel P3 933mhz CPU
Gigabyte GA-6VXE7+ Motherboard w/133mhz FSB
Micron 128MB PC133 SDRAM
30GB HDrive
GeForce 2 Video
Sound Blaster Live! Sound
56K Modem
Windows 98 SE installed
....and the usual other stuff...

Here is where my problem lies. Everything installed and worked fine. One of my buddies went to plug in a USB printer and all hell started busting loose! Everything from the blue screen o' death to fatal errors, to not booting up correctly (with the USB device plugged in on reboot). However, when I would remove the USB device and reboot the machine it would be just fine. We tries 2 others USB devices, 3 total (Saitek X36 Flight System, Gravis Gamepad Pro, Lexmark Printer) and got the same results. I thought it might have just been the OS installed improperly, but I went and checked it out another one of the Pc's I built and got the same problems. What is this?? I've went to Gigabyte's homepage and couldn't find anything and haven't received any e-mail back from them either. I heard that Anandtech's forums were my best bet. Any help would be so greatly appreciated. The motherboard has the Apollo Pro 133 chipset. Please help soon!!! Thank you in advance!!!

J. Beck
Biloxi,MS

 

[tjll11a]

Possibly a bad Motherboard????

 

[gcy]

check the device manager if there are any shared IRQ. you might have a problem with devices sharing. you might have to move one of your card to a different slot. do not use pci slot-1 as this is used by the video card. hope you resolve your problem.

 

[maddmax]

Refer to the motherboard manual. Look for something like hardware setup/expansion cards. Check out the pci slot irq sharing scheme. I suspect the SBlive is sharing an irq with usb. Windows device manager will not show a conflict. Make sure the SBlive is in a slot that does not share with usb. In bios setup, I generally set pnp operating system to no and assign the the SBlive slot to use irq 5. In windows device manager,creative misc devices,sb16 emulation,properties set SB16 emulation to share irq 7 with lpt1. Good luck.

 

[GlassDaddy90]

I don't think it will be a bad motherboard. I bought 3 of them and all of them do the same thing. Lemme try the IRQ thing. Thanks!!

 

[Gogga]

It should be a problem with IRQ sharing. I had the same problem with my Asus A7V when the network card shared the same IRQ as my USB controller. You should also disable SB16 emulation in the device manager. Also install the newer USB drivers from Via's site.

 

[GlassDaddy90]

Ok, ok. I finally troubleshot my way to the resolution to this. Tell me if this isn't just plain weird!! First off, I tried everything mentioned here, and I thank you for the direction. Unfortunately, nothing solved the problem completely. So after hours of trying different things, I decided to reformat and start over. After Win 98SE successfully installed itself, I went ahead and first installed all the device drivers for the cards (video, sound, modem) and rebooted a few times. To my surprise, everything was working in unity! I tried hooking up a USB device and it was recognized and functioning properly. So I was elated.... THEN!!! I got to install the 4-in-1 drivers provided with the mobo and it happened!!! Upon reboot, the system threw all the same errors at me from left and right. However, when I would unplug the USB device from the port and reboot, everything would function as normal again. As soon as I would plug a device in again, it would start freaking out. So I uninstall the 4-in-1's and everything was back to normal again. So I decided to do a bit more. I installed a driver one at a time from the 4-in-1 to find out which driver was actually screwing up my setup. I do them and only had problems with the driver that lets you enable DMA mode for your drives. Every time I tried that driver, it would create all of the errors. All of my drives are DMA capable (Sony CD-RW 8x4x32, Affrey 50x, Samsung ATA/66) so that couldn't be the problem. So next I uninstalled all of the 4-in-1 components again. This time I decided to enable DMA mode manually through Device Mgr one at a time. First the Sony....reboot and no prob. Next the Affrey....reboot no problems again. then the Samsung....reboot and SLLAAMMM!!! There are the blue screens and errors. Keep in mind that the only time I would get these screens is when I would have a USB device connected to a USB port. When I would unplug the device for the port, all configurations worked fine. I even tried 3 different USB devices and got the same results. So basically what I have found is that when I try to enable DMA on my Samsung hard drive only, and use a USB device in conjunction, I get errors. Weird. To test for consistency, I tried the other two Pc's and got the exact same results. Can anyone tell me the relevency to this situation between components? I can definitely say that I won't purchase another VIA chipset motherboard based on the Apollo Pro 133 chipset, but I sure would like to know the reasoning behind this.
Thank you for your help, you all are true professionals.

 

[Peabody]

Sounds like a Samsung HDD problem to me.

 

[Mem]

Did you install the Via USB driver?


<< Please Note: There is some confusion as to whether or not the USB Filter Driver is required for Operating Systems other than Win95. The VIA USB filter driver is REQUIRED for ALL Windows Operating Systems, (Whether or not this driver is effective is another story). All information to the contrary is in error. The asterisk next to the USB Filter Driver on the recently revamped VIA Driver Page, refers to the fact that USB is only available on Win95 version B &amp; C, not that the filter driver only applies to Win95 versions B &amp; C. >>



For more USB trouble shooting guide go
here

 

[dbwillis]

Im kinda stumped on this, since its my first post-sorry if its not correct.
Ive got an Abit BX133 board, at bootup it beeps 1-long, 2-short. I cant find this in the Abit book when I glanced, nor on the Abit web site.
After it beeps, no display is on the screen and the monitor light stays 'orange' instead of 'green'.
The only thing thats changed is I removed the MS Intellimouse Explorer [USB] and the video cable came unplugged while the PC was powered on.
Im thinking the vic card died (ATI Xpert 2k).
Any help is appreciated, thanks!

 

[gcy]

check that your agp card is in the slot all the way in. this sounds like a problem i had. you did not mention if this a new build-up or a computer you had running for a while.

 

[dbwillis]

Sorry, its been running for over 3 months (almost straight)
I believe the card was in all the way (I removed all other cards to rule them out[scsi, ide, 2-nics, sblive, isa modem, usb gamepad also]), but I will double-double check tonight

PIII-700@933
256mb toshiba 133 ram
20gb WD on ata100
30gb WD on ata100

Worked fine all the time, any clue to what the beeps are? or does it indicate video prob?

Thanks again!

 

[Peabody]

The beeps are from POST and mean a certain problem according to which BIOS you have(Award is a common one).
Mobo manual usually will give the code for some of the POST beeps.
Try your Bios or mobo web Page

 

[dbwillis]

Thanks, I didnt think of that (its Monday). I checked Abit and its Award, from the Award web site:
The only AwardBIOS beep code indicates that a video error has occurred and the BIOS cannot initialize the video screen to display any additional information. This beep code consists of a single long beep followed by two short beeps. Any other beeps are probably a RAM (Random Access Memory) problem

Thats the beep I got, vid card died or came loose.

Thanks again everyone

 

[dbwillis]

vid card was loose, reseated 2x and all set now...then I thought about it,maybe the agp vid card didnt like running at 2/3 of 133?

 

[rcraig]

I am running the P3V4X with W98 and two USB devices connected. Both run fine so I don't think it is a VIA chip problem. Sounds more like a problem with the HD not playing well with others.