MSI K7T PRO2A Crashing

[Wyvern]

Just received my K7T Pro2-A to replace my Abit KT7-RAID and I while it is more stable than the Abit board, I occasionally experience lockups where the mouse will freeze, the keyboard becomes unresponsive, and sound just loops. Isn't that characteristic of a souncard issue? I'm currently using the drivers that shipped with the hardware because I got the MB the day I left for home and haven't been able to update them since the connection is too slow (Once I get back to school, things should be better), but I was wondering if there was an issue with the SBLive and what PCI slots I should have the cards in. My system is as follows:

700MHz Duron
Stock HSF (Temps are reasonable and I'm not OCing yet)
128MB Mushkin Rev 1.5
30GB IBM Deskstar 75GXP
Pioneer DVD-115 DVD-ROM
Hercules 3d Prophet II MX
SB Live X-Gamer
Etherlink Etherfast 10/100
Win98SE

Something you can say about the Abit Kt7-RAID was that the BIOS was easily understood and the board was well documented... not quite so with MSI. Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[compuwiz1]

Must be something you have or have not done, as most people are very happy with the ease of set up. Did you delete all the old drivers when you changed boards. Ideally a clean install would be better, but you can also delete the ENUM key from the registry then redetect and install your hardware. I'd do one or the other, then load the 4in1 drivers as well.

Get the latest drivers for the sblive too.

 

[holdencommodore]

MSI says to install the soundcard in either Slot 2 or 3.

 

[Wyvern]

I figured it's probably the drivers. I did a clean reinstall, but since the comp doesn'y have a modem and I'm on a slow dialup for the next few weeks while I'm away from school, I thought I'd see if there were any problems and if there was a preferred/recommended slot for soundcards. Thanks for the advice and I'll see how it goes once I get back.

 

[shockeye]

I recently received an AMD1.1 / MSIK7TPro2A combo from Monarch and have had similar poblems with
sound-loop lockups. I used PCI manual assignments and some card juggling to solve them ( so far )
Here is my system and current card placement:
AMD1.1G / MSI K7TPro2A
crucial 256 + 128 PC133 cas2
AGP creative geforce2
PCI1 sblive value
PCI2 3com905b nic

Not my first choice because of cooling, but sblive hates to share. I manually set PCI assignments in BIOS,
and disabled onboard sound. This is how I think slots and IRQs are mapped, after many reboots and probes.
Assignment in BIOS:
PIN IRQ
1 9
2 10
3 11
4 AUTO


PIN SLOT SLOT (shared) OnBoard Feature (shared)
1 AGP - -
2 PCI1 PCI4 Sound
3 PCI2 PCI5 USB
4 PCI3 PCI6 PS/2

--

 

[undercover]

Which slots are which?

Do you count from one from the AGP side?

 

[Ranmaz]

Hi, I am having problems too with the SBLive and the MSI K7T Pro2-A mainboard.

I believe the two are incompatible with each other when you install the VIA ATAPI Vendor Support Driver with DMA enabled.

But I don't want to sacrifice the performace of my harddrive, I rather go out and buy a Monster Sound MX400.

I would like people to give this a try and let me know your results.

The stress test that I use is the following:

Open multiple sessions simultaniously of Windows Multimedia Player playing a 5min mpg of some sort (eg.musicvideo).

Open around 10 and start moving them around.

Almost immediately or before a minute, your system will freeze with sound looping if your system is not "stable".

so I would like to hear from the people who own this mainboard and who have a sblive in their system.

Enabling DMA with their fast ATA100 Harddrive and running "my windows multimedia player stress test".

A system should not do this (freeze), and it is not normal, it should be corrected with a patch from either VIA, MSI , or Creative.

Again the only way I've found how to bypass this "freezing" is to either disable DMA or replace my sound card with another (which in my case I did, with a SB128PCI). 100% stability.

 

[holdencommodore]

It will tell you in the m/b manual which way to count the slots from.......I think it is from the AGP slot.

 

[Ranmaz]

bump

 

[Ranmaz]

bump

 

[holdencommodore]

Ranmaz, did you install the 4-in-1 drivers or the new IDE drivers from the Soltek site. If the IDE Miniport driver is installed, it is likely to cause problems.

When I had my old VIA MVP3 system, when I installed the later VIA drivers and enabled DMA, I had mayjor system satbility problems. Try using the ones theat came with Windows 98.