K9A Platinum problems with PCI-e video

[jtelep]

This may seem like a strange place to be posting this but I am convinced there is something up with the system board. So first, my spread:

Hiper modular 580W PSU (2 +12V rails #1@20A #2@18A)
MSI K9A Platinum system board
AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800 am2
2 GB (2@1 GB sticks) Kingston Hyper X
MSI X1950PRO 256MB PCI-e
1 250 GB WD 300Mb/s
1 120 GB Seagate 150Mb/s
1 Pioneer DVD-ROM
1 LG DVD-Writer
Xoxide case
All of the other peripherals (sound, LAN, etc) short of the video are integrated onto the board

The problem is that I get XP Pro loaded, install SP2 and then install the ATI drivers. I reboot the system per ATI's instructions after the video driver is loaded at which point the system crashes with a BSOD giving me a "STOP 0x0000007F" error. I have tried everything I can think of to rectify this situation and am at the end of my rope with ideas. I have replaced the graphics card, memory and processor. I have tried a different PSU that had 34A on a single +12V rail and replaced the system board with all the same results, the same BSOD STOP error I have been getting from the beginning. I have loaded all of the drivers for the board (of which there aren't many) before installing the ATI drivers, I have tried different versions of the driver (from 6.10 all the way to 7.2), I have changed the memory speed and timings from aggressive to laid back and nothing has changed this. I have run both different CPU tests as well as let memtest x86 run for 6 hours and neither test has given me any indication that there is a problem with either.

I don't know what else to do but I am thinking that maybe I am missing something really stupid on the board or in the configuration. One thing I noticed was that, although the hard drivers are both SATA that XP didn't require any special driver to be loaded in order to use them so I am thinking that is because they are running in "Native IDE" mode (an option in the BIOS that comes standard) instead of RAID or something else. Aside from that I am out of ideas. If anyone has ever seen this problem before or has any clue as to what they think it could be please let me know. (I have tried the MSI forums but completely struck out.)

Thanks.

 

[myocardia]

Update the BIOS to the latest version. But give your RAM more voltage first, since BSOD's are nearly always caused by RAM problems. I'd try both more vdimm, plus a lower RAM divider, at least while installing the new BIOS.

 

[jtelep]

I just tried running at 4-4-4-12 2.1V and still no good. It's the strangest thing I have ever seen. It gets to XP fine but just as soon as it goes to bring up the display you hear a click in the hard drive (that's normally indicative of the same sound you would hear when it reboots) and then up comes the BSOD.

This may sound like a dumb question but could it be the hard drive? Is it possible that for whatever bizarre reason there is some sort of compatibility issue between the hard drive and the video card or motherboard or combination of the three?

 

[nidhoggr]

When a BSOD occurs, Windows shuts down the HDD to prevent further data loss or HDD damage. That might be the clicking and the BSOD might not be rlated to the HDD at all.