kt7-raid; w2000, gts2 64; random lockups and screen artifacts

[bishop1134]

so I thought I was building a good computer and using quality parts.. and in hindsight I still feel that way, but I'm having trouble, and what's even sadder, is I'm a pretty crafty tech, but this has me puzzled.

I have:

• 1Ghz TBird
• 512m CAS2 Crucial RAM
• KT7-RAID
• Herc. Prophet GTS 2 64m
• 2 30g IBM 75gxp drives(Striped to 1 60g partition)
• Kingston NIC (free with DSL)
• SB Live! MP3+

Problem Statement

I get artifacting on the screen when I'm doing lame tasks in w2k. The initial color splash screen were the O meets the W there is a small shimmering error and there are sometimes similar artifacts in windows. I didn't notice this when I replaced the video card with an ATI xpert@play while the GTS was being RMA'd but that was a PCI card and isn't easily compared.

I have booted into w2k off of a seperate HD not on the highpoint controller and I still get the artifact at the exact same point.

Randomly windows would lock up while running IE5.5sp1 and would have to be reset to gain control.

Temp stays low, I've updated the bios on the mb and cleared it.. the first prophet I got died and was replaced, I have swapped the memory, and underclocked the system, at the moment is is running with the bios fail-safes and is not overclocked.

I'm about ready to order a kt7a-raid and replace and RMA the mb.. I don't have access to another tbird box, so I can't test the CPU to see if it's the problem, but I've basically swapped the video card, the ram, nic, and the hd and I have the same problems..

any thoughts would be much appreciated, I've gone through the bios settings and tweaked the board, tried tweaking the video card with the driving value as well as the aperature and it seems to make no difference. The CPU drive strength makes no difference, nor does the voltage.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this and offering your thoughts.

bish...

 

[bishop1134]

.

 

[Adul]

Drools,


anyways I would look into updating the drivers for the hotpoint controller.

 

[Pearman]

Try to bum a processor off of someone for a while to test if thats the problem. The only 2 things it seems it could be are the processor or the mobo, so theres a 50/50 shot

 

[xyyz]

considering how jelous I am with your configuration... I don't know why i'm helping you...

I had artifact problem with my Asus A7V... and it can be 3 things

1. RAM (unlikely that's the problem)
2. Power Supply
3. Defective MB

Usually, it's the PS... what kinda PS do you have? An Abit tech told me that the K7V-Raid had issues with certain Antec PSes.

 

[bishop1134]

Adul: I've done that and it doesn't make much difference.. I've gone through and brought everything as current as I can, including the 4-1 VIA drivers.. 4.28a or whateva..

Pearman: easier said than done, but I agree, I think it has to be something that is causing the data process to fault.. jibberish, but like a parity problem.. it seems like bad ram or hd, but I've change both out.. I hope it's not the CPU otherwise I gotta wipe these pencil marks off it and send it back. ;-)

xyyz: all this and more can be yours for only 10 easy.. ok nm.. the powersupply is an Enhance Electronics 300w PS that came with my fong-kai fk320; I pulled it apart when I got the case and it's a quality PS compared to some and I was told it was AMD approved, but to be honest I didn't bother to seek it out. I live in a older house with minimal wiring; I suppose power fluctuations could cause it.

fwiw: I installed whistler last night on a seperate HD and it had a lot of artifacts throughout the installation process but that's beta and doesn't really matter.

 

[xyyz]

Call Abit, see what they say about the PS... I know my PS was AMD approved, but it was one of those that Abit said the KT7-RAID had problems with.

Do you have another PS you can swap it out with... just to remove the possiblity of a incompatible PS?