KT7 IRQ madness - I need help outta this frustration

[grendelkhan]

The new WZ series is out, dunno if it'll make a big difference on the non-RAID boards, but at this point, what can it hurt?

 

[Microbman]

I went into BIOS and did some changin. I disabled ENHANCE CHIP PERFORMANCE. I disabled 4-WAY INTERLEAVE. I enabled BOOT OTHER DEVICE. In POWER MANAGEMENT I set the modem to use IRQ 9 (which is free at this time). I have IRQ #10 set to legacy. And now my puter runs like crap! Even my desktop is locking up. When I get into the game the game freezes after about 2-3 minutes of play. The chip is running at 37 C on load.

HMMMM. Let's look at what is happening here. Lockup when video is used. No modem involved. All drivers current. NO PROBLEM DEVICES in SYSTEM INFORMATION. System will boot. I am able to open any application or my one game (so far loaded...maybe I should load up Alice and Giants and see if they will load?)Some IRQ conflicts but the way they are now set no two primary devices are running on the same IRQ. Am I crazy or is it looking more like a compatability prob...like maybe my good ol reliable tnt2 ultra??? or my new Turtle Bay Santa Cruz sound card???

My RAM I just bought from a guy on these forums; Mosel Vitalic PC133 Cas2 6 layer non-ECC. Other posts say it is good stuff and very overclockable (although I am running at default settings of 10x mult., 100/33 clock, 1.75V, IO/3.3V). I was hoping this would be a good purchase for my 1 G bird.

Let me know what you think about either my sound or video being incompatable. I'm still seriously considering fomatting and starting fresh... but what a pain and a lot of time. Pls let me know..TX

 

[Heretik]

My bad....I was thinking of another board (2.2 BIOS is for MSI boards). But installing latest BIOS might help. Also, I've heard some people having problems with TNT2s with newer detonators. Are you using Nvidia reference drivers or most current drivers from manufacturer? It may help to do a fresh reinstall, but if you do, start only with your vid card installed then add components one at a time, rebooting between each component added and installing the appropriate drivers.

Check out this link at www.apushardware.com for help on doing a fresh install with trouble hardware.

 

[Microbman]

apushardware and icrontic are the best man. I absolutely live for this site. It went down just before i was going to put my sys togerther and i was paranoid. Some slimebucket hacked it. I will check there for tnt2 probs. I have a virtual library of downloaded and printed material on setting up KT7 systems. Tx for the feedback. I posted a new title about tnt and k7/bird but no rplys either way. I downloaded my detonator drivers from nVidia and not Creative the first time round. I will use Creative this time. By the way i rester my bios to the settings described by apus/icrontic and my system is running better but still blues out after playing cfs2 for about 15 min. If it was an irq prob i would think that the lock up would begin earlier.

 

[Microbman]

Next night update: I did a clean format, installed windows98se, then 4 in 1 4.28, then via usb filter driver, then patch for same, then usb patch,then TNT2 U drivers (TNT@ U is AGP, then sound card slot 2, then usb joystick, then combat flight sim 2 and guess what....it still crashes just like before with a fatal OE exception error in VXD TBCSPUD! How lucky can I get. Oh yeh and I was very carefull to restart after EACH installation. So...anybody got any ideas?????????????

 

[Quaggoth]

Try I/O of 3.4. It might be my PS, but at 3.3 it doesn't seem to run very stable (I AM OC'd from 700 to 981, but I seem to remember having to set that to run stable at 700). Sorry I forgot to mention earlier. Who knows if it will work, but it's worth a try, and I have heard of people running as high as 3.6, but I don't recommend that (Mostly just because I haven't tried it myself).

Maybe the mem is getting too warm (Rare, but pos.), and needs a little more V to cut down on E-migration. This will also help the vid card and sound card I think. I think they use the 3.3V and the 5V curcuit. I have heard of some TNT2U's needing plenty of power. This was a problem when the SS7 platform was maturing if I remember correctly. Of course, I could be WAY off base too

PS - My PS is an Antec 300.

 

[Vamp Armand]

oh wait wait.... I remember having a problem with a certain driver from creative labs that I installed once. I was getting fatal exceptions. My problem came from the following:

I had two sb live cards..... one SB Live Value and one SB Live MP3+. I accidentally used the cd the mp3+ for the live value or it might have been vice versa.... and whammo..... fatal exceptions started occuring. I fixed this problem by doing a clean format/reload and loaded the sb live drivers from the creative labs site. I don't know but this might be worth a try.

 

[Microbman]

Here goes try number- hell i can't remember anymore. I plan on the usual clean format and install the service drivers from the cd, then go back in and delete them and install the 4.28 final i have on floppy. Maybe these drivers are not taking from the downloaded floppy initially for some reason. I will also increase my voltage by 0.1 and maybe that will juice up that TNT2. Someone told me about creative tnt2 u's maybe needing a little kick. That may solve the OE VXD blue screen. But then there is that sound cut out thing.... Actaully the more I read and talk about this KT7 the more i wonder if it and the drivers are a little too premature for real life. It's so dam finicky u never know what will set it off or make a necessary correction. I'll let ya know in a coupla hours. As for the video drivers i thnk i will stay with my old drivers + the detonator (the most stable this KT7 sys has been was when i had those in together for some unknown reason), Heeeer goes.....

 

[Microbman]

I DID IT...I FFFFREAKIN DID IT!! MUCO thanks to you Quaggoth as you got the winning number on this one. I increased the I/O voltage from 3.3v to 3.4v. It looks like the sys wanted some more electron food to run that video and stuff. It may have helped the RAM out too. I did the usual clean install and used the KT7 CD drivers ( aside from the VIA USB patch i downloaded) and NOT the 4.28 4 in 1. I will delete the old drivers and try the 4.28 later but I want to enjoy this puter first. I did NOT attempt to install the other drivers I downloaded. I just never felt comfortable with the way they installed. Aside from these changes not much else. I have the AGP setting on 4x turbo and I played combat slight sim 2 on max settings (for my tnt2 u)and NO FREAKIN BLUE SCREENING...just screaming corsairs and zeros. Thanks also to Grenl and Heretik for ur input. It's good to know there actually is a place to go that will help out the needy.. thanks to Anand too (I'm in a generous mood). Good gamin to you guys and take it easy

 

[grendelkhan]

FANFREAKINTASTIC!!!

Watch out for the 4.28 drivers, at least with Win2k they have some serious issues. I'm using the 4.26a drivers and they work like a champ. In fact those combined with DirectX8a and nVidia's 7.52 drivers have me posting 7400+ in 3dMark2000.

Glad to see you finally got your board working. I've come to the conclusion that Abit boards are not quite plug and play and not for those unwilling to do some serious tweaking, but once you get them going, they are great performers and rock-solid stable.

It's just that high learning curve that comes with them that's a kicker!

 

[JustStarting]

Congrats- my KT7-Raid was a small pain in the a$$ with my SBLive!, but well worth it now.

 

[Quaggoth]

NP man. Glad to help Besides, I am a senior member now thanks in part to this thread

PS - Sorry I didn't think of that sooner

 

[Microbman]

I guess this is my nemesis. I went on the Zone and played combat flight sim 2 (I'M hooked) and guess what happened...yep, the old bluescreenareeno! Guess I spoke too soon. But wait there is hope tho. I can play with all the video screemin off line and np. So was it the modem? It is on it's sharing IRQ 3 with PCI steering so there's np with that. I guess I'll just have to tweak this or that and one day it'll just up and work for me. Bad luck of the draw on this one. At least I can challenge the puter gamin. I need to install tournament and some other games and see how she does. If ya got any ideas I'll keep checking this site and update it as I go. Guess I got one of longerst running threads goin with this. Cya again.

 

[grendelkhan]

There's a nifty program that I found (I think on ZDNet) called CPU Stability Test. This thing will chug out RC5 type things until you hit stop.

Where this might be useful for you is to run it and see, not only how good your coolingis, but if the problem is in your CPU at all. If you can run this for a couple hours, obviously, it's not the CPU and the problem is in another subsystem.

 

[Microbman]

So here I am happy as a fat man in a circus. I ditched the KT7 and bought an IWILL KK266. The FIRST time I set up the cards I HAD NO IRQ PROBS!!! Everything went in slick as nsot. I thought I had a winner as I actually could play combat flight sim 2 online, but only for about 20 min until I got the same OE VXD error again. RATS! I thought I'd get a new hobby and give this sys to the salvation army. After much ado again I found that after installing a Geforce 2 64 DDR (replacing my TNT 2 U) that I was STILL getting that OE error. Low and behold I replaced that Santa Cruz sc with my old Aureal Vortex that I took out cuz it would conflict with the KT7 board, and I've been happily playing anything I want online or off for several days now. If anyone out there bought one of those Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound cards and want to put it into a KT7 or KK266 your gonna have problems. Ditch it and get a sound blaster or use ur old vortex card. Mine works terrific! I now LOVE my new system. Also, if ur gonna upgrade to a 1 G tbird and new mobo u may as well go out and get all new stuff. I also found my old 32 X CD ROM drive would not load Windows properly until i used my wifes newer 48 X CD ROM.
May as well spend the xtra $ or get ready for lots a probs and head scratchin. TX to you that gave my lotsa help