Im giving up on my Asus A8N SLI Deluxe... for the 2nd time.

Vedder323

Member
Nov 1, 2004
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My first board had major issues in Bios. I was getting cmos errors every other boot. Sometimes I wouldnt have a live moniter, sometimes I would. I could NOT install an Audigy 2 card no matter what... Tried 4 times in every pci slot. Finally rma'ed.

Then I get the new board and here is where I am...

Asus A8N Sli Deluxe 1003.08
AMD 3500+ 939 winchester 1.425 volts
Mushkin pc3200 222 special 512x2 2.85 volts
PNY 6600GT pci-E
WD 74gig raptor
PC power and cooling 510 deluxe

I dont even know where to begin...

I came home today and started surfing my usual spots... About 20-30 minutes my moniter blinks and my comp freezes up for a second or 2. Seemed odd so I rebooted. Everything was fine up until I get another freeze. At that point I start thinking about chages ive made in the last day or 2. I narrow it down to my video card drivers. I was using the latest beta drivers and decided id go back to the Nvidia 66.93s. I installed the drivers and reboot...

Windows xp goes into Scan disk and starts deleting files and something mentioned "deleting orphaned" files or something like that. Scan disk finishes and reboots. Windows XP logo comes up and my system reboots in cycles at the Windows XP logo everytime! At this point, im thinking hardware... I check everything, reseat cards, try 1 stick of ram yadda yadda... SAME THING.

I try getting in safe mode- No dice! Frozen!

ok, I toss in my xp disk to reformat and start over... I get to the agreement F8 and guess what! BSOD!

REGISTRY_ERROR

I then tried this... My hard drive came with a WD utlity disk. I booted from the cd and wiped out the drive using the WD utlity. Now... I can get past the darn agreement page!

I did a full format and installed a fresh copy of windows... while I was grabbing my creative drivers... I got a system hang again!

Sure enough, chkdsk and more registry errors.

I was able to keep the system stable for the majority of the night. I had a few reboots and hangs and eventually gave in to thinking it MUST be the hd. At one point my usb ports stopped working while loading a game. I then ran over to WD website and ran a test to search for bad sectors, errors, etc. Passed a quick test and the extended test with no problems. I am about to throw this thing off my roof guys, keep the help coming.

At the moment im formating an older PATA drive I have. Hopefully that will rule out some possibilities.




 

century child

Member
Dec 27, 2004
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Given that the system was running stable at these settings before, it doesn't sound likely, but just to eliminate the possibility, I would run Memtest86+ to make sure you are not getting memory erros as this behavior certainly sounds to me like unstable RAM.
 

Vedder323

Member
Nov 1, 2004
136
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ok, so I just burn the iso on a blank cd and boot from it? Is there anything else I need to do?
 

DerKaiser

Senior member
Feb 12, 2002
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I feel for you man. It seems like you and this board are cursed. Other than that, I'm at a loss for what to recommend. I think memtest would be a good idea if you can get it to work, and/or swapping out whatever components you can. Is the hard drive SATA or PATA?
 

century child

Member
Dec 27, 2004
112
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Originally posted by: Idleuser
RMA and sell it and then get a DFI hopefully sometime in feb :)


Yeah, this DFI board comes from some magical place where no problems exist. This board seems to be everyone's saving grace. Trash all this other crap and wait for the DFI everyone screams. We'll wait and see how many posts with the exact same issues turn up on these boards. Plus some new ones probably. It really irks me how everyone just thinks they know this board is going to be so much better than all the others when it's not even on the market yet.
 

Vedder323

Member
Nov 1, 2004
136
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correct... I extracted the ISO image on a blank cd. Set cd as 1st boot... tossed the cd in and nothing...

Windows just starts up.
 

Vedder323

Member
Nov 1, 2004
136
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So far so good on older PATA drive. So... either my Raptor is broken or I made the mistake of installing the Nvidia IDE drivers?

If anyone can help with making the bootable cd, id greatly appreciate it!
 

Vedder323

Member
Nov 1, 2004
136
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UPDATE

Its not the hard drive and it is not the IDE drivers. My PATA drive I was testing just crapped out on me! PLEASE help me out on making the bootable cd!
 

jamesbond007

Diamond Member
Dec 21, 2000
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Let it run at least one cycle through, until it completes test #7. (at least I think that is the last test it has)

keep us posted!

Good luck!
 

Vedder323

Member
Nov 1, 2004
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It has been running 1:51 minutes and has made 6 passes NO ERRORS

WTF is going on here??? A 2nd BAD BOARD???
 

jamesbond007

Diamond Member
Dec 21, 2000
5,280
0
71
You know, back when Asus released the A7V motherboard, it was trash until they released new BIOSes for it. It would constantly lock up on me while browsing the web, playing games, anything. However, once the BIOS came out that made the board stable, it was very nice to have.

I say to be patient and use another machine until Asus gets this straightened out. There's a lot of issues similar to this in the dedicated thread at the top of this section in the Motherboard forums. If you haven't already, try the latest beta BIOS. It's a pain in the @$$ being the guinea pig, which is why I have not yet purchased this board. I learned this the hard way with the newly released Socket A and A7V back in the day when they first came out.
 

century child

Member
Dec 27, 2004
112
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Originally posted by: Vedder323
if drivers were the problem... wouldnt everone have these issues?


I think (at least I hope) he means don't install the Nvidia IDE drivers. Naturally you have to install the chipset drivers but the IDE drivers you can do without. They are crap, always have been and probably always will be.
 

Interitus

Platinum Member
Jan 28, 2004
2,143
9
81
aye dump the Nvidia IDE drivers...back when i first got my Barton system up and running I tried them out...random crashes, BSOD's, eventually corrupted my WinXP install. They are total trash. Just leaving them off resulted in perfect stability.
 

GooN3r

Junior Member
Dec 24, 2004
11
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Originally posted by: Vedder323

Asus A8N Sli Deluxe 1003.08
AMD 3500+ 939 winchester 1.425 volts
Mushkin pc3200 222 special 512x2 2.85 volts
PNY 6600GT pci-E
WD 74gig raptor
PC power and cooling 510 deluxe

Where did you get the 1003.08 BIOS?