MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum - can't do a warm reboot

[stas27]

Hi, everybody!

After lots of reading, I finally decided to upgrade my home system. I bought:
MSI K8 Neo2 Platinum motherboard (Rev.1, Bios 1.3)
AMD Athlon64 3000+ processor
2 sticks of Corsair value RAM (PC3200). They are in dual-channel mopde in banks 1 and 2.
An old (but seemingly working) Adaptec AHA2940UW SCSI Adaptor
Radeon 9700Pro 128 MB video card
Antec Sonata case.

At this point almost all settings in BIOS are default.

After some problems with the case (power supply was dead) I put this system together. It works more or less fine (WinXP Home installed with no problems, I'm now typing on this machine), except for 2 issues:

1. ATI Control Center won't run.
2. Computer won't perform warm reboot (Ctrl-Alt-Del, or "restart" from Windows menu results in motherboard being hung at the stage of processor identification, according to these nice LEDs at the MSI bracket). Pressing "Reset" switch or powering system on-off brings things back to normal.

Is it a bad motherboard, processor, both? Or any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
Stas.

 

[Duvie]

I would flash to a newer bios...there are many above the 1.3 listed all the way up to 1.51beta issue....What is the specs on the power supply, and how are the rails???

 

[stas27]

Well, I don't want to go to higher BIOSes yet - I'm thinking about RMAing this board...

The rails seem OK:
Vcore 1.42 (that's strange - changing it in the bios doesn't affect it)
+3.3V = 3.25V
+12V = 11.80V
+5V = 4.99V
Battery +3.19V
+5VSB = 5.05V

As reported by system's BIOS.

BTW, couldn't help myself - modest OC of the front-side bus to 215MHz did not result in any appreciable changes in the system's behaviour...

 

[Kovie]

Im going to have to guestimate its the sonata's truepower supply. Many people are having problems with this board and that PS.

 

[stas27]

Nope, changing PSU didn't help. I had a brand-new ThermalTake PurePower 420W lying around (or, more precisely, working in my old computer), put it in - same problem. I'm RMAing this motherboard to Zipzoomfly, where I bought it. Well, we'll see... If the next one won't work as well, I'll probably will have to go with Asus A8V (never had problems with Asus boards - all 3 of them that I purchased at various points in my life worked flawlessly, P2B-S is still powering my home computer I hoped to replace)...

 

[stas27]

As a new development, today ZipZoomFly.com claimed that this board boots fine in their hands (and imply that I don't know how to do a warm reboot from Windows, or was lying about it, or something, leaving me somewhat pissed). Now I have to decide whether I want this board back, or switch to Asus A8V (I always had very good luck with their boards)... I have also contacted MSI tech support regarding this issue. We'll see...

Is there a consensus if Asus AV8 is less problematic than MSI K8N Neo 2? I am not a fanatical overclocker, besides, it's my understanding, that in ver 2 of Asus board AGP/PCI lock works as well as in MSI board...

Meanwhile any ideas/experiences/suggestions will be most welcome...