msi K8N NEO4 PLAT PROBLEMS PLEASE HELP

[imperfectcircle25]

Ok so i was building a new system and I choose this mobo because ive had great luck with the neo2 nforce3 boards in the past. SO i got everything installed and i get the thing up and running and its working fine. But after i let it run for a while stuff starts getting weird. First my SB X-fi stopped working and wouldnt boot unil i removed it from the board. Everything was back to normal until a few hours later I had to restart for some XP updates and it wont boot again, it posts and then when it gets to the XP loading screen it restarts it self and posts again and just keeps going around in that circle. Its not the HD or a bad XP install i tried 3 differant drives. Any ideas what could be wrong?? Could itbe the power supply, im using the cheapy that came with my cheapy case until my Ultra Xfinity comes in the mail. What else could it be what would produce these kinds of problems?? Please help these things get me really frustrated i think ive smoked a pack of reds in the last hour trying to figure it out.
thanks
Frank
thanks
Frank

 

[Puffnstuff]

Ps.

 

[imperfectcircle25]

Well i tried another PSU, Silversyone Zues 650wat and it didnt solve the problem, so im thinking the mobo is bad. It was on clearnace at Microcenter and looks like it may have been a return, so im going to return it and get a brand new board. Have the Xfire 3200 boards come out yet??

 

[Aries64]

Originally posted by: imperfectcircle25
Well i tried another PSU, Silversyone Zues 650wat and it didnt solve the problem, so im thinking the mobo is bad. It was on clearnace at Microcenter and looks like it may have been a return, so im going to return it and get a brand new board. Have the Xfire 3200 boards come out yet??

I haven't seen any other Crossfire 3200 boards out other than the A8R32-MVP Deluxe (hereafter called A8R32MVP). Great build qualty, lots of BIOS tweaks, nice board layout. Attractive black board with blue and black color-coded RAM slots.

Switching gears, this may be a silly question, but did what BIOS were you running on the K8N Neo4 PE? You probably already know that it is normally best to update to the latest BIOS revision, but this isn't always the case.

Also, did you try moving the X-Fi around to different PCI slots? Lots of times this will do the trick. I had problems when I originally set-up my first K8N Neo2 PE I had to move my Audigy2 ZS to PCI Slot #5 (the orange Communications Slot). I couldn't use PCI Slot #1 because it was blocked by my HIS Excalibur IceQ II X800 XT PE. Since I wanted an adjacent slot next to my videocard, I couldn't use PCI Slot #3. That left PCI Slots #3,#4, and #5 for my Audigy2 and my Adaptec 29320R Ultra 320 SCSI adapter card.

The SCSI card didn't "like" the PCI Slot #3 or #5, but it is fine in #4. When I bought my X1900XT-X I went with a K8N Neo4 PE like you, but found that the X-Fi was picky too, so I mimicked the arrangement I had in the K8N Neo2 PE systems. The X-Fi worked fine, but the SCSI card had major IRQ conflicts and more often than not would require 10-20 boot attempts before I could boot. Once booted into Windows the system was rock solid (48 hours of Prime95). But that is BS, so I bought my A8R32MVP.

Guess what? The A8R32MVP doesn't boot right away every time either - once again it seems to be the SCSI controller but it is usually OK so I am staying with it. Too much crap on the boards these days that I don't even use like SATA and SATA II. Disabling this stuff in the BIOS doesn't help either. I want on-board U320 SCSI but I don't want to start using server boards again like I have in the past.

 

[imperfectcircle25]

I tried the bios that was loaded origionally and when it didnt work I treid the newest and still nothing. I tireid the X-fi in every pci slot on the board and still didnt work, i got weird things like when the system posted it listed like 15 unknown pci devices when the only one i have is the Xfi on the board right now. I had great luck with the older MSI K8N Neo2plat which really is why I bought this new one. The Xfi worked with no problems in the Neo2 and I neveronce had the system not boot when set at stock speeds, that Neo2 was a decent OC board to! Well i just got the Neo4 packed up and im bringing it back. Im not sure what to do. Should I get a new one thats not on clearance or go with something else. Id liek to go with something either SLI or Xfire since Im thinking about trying out some games like BF2 and would like the capability to have a dual card setup. I have an ATI 1600pro right now so Crossfire would be the better way to go for me, but the only board out there is the Asus right now and its a bit out of my budget @ almost $200. And your right the boards do have tooo much ****** on them these days. I want a board with nothing so I can add just what i want and nothing more. But since they dont exist , o well. Thanks
Frank

 

[Puffnstuff]

Did you ever flash the mb to the latest bios? I would try that with the x-fi removed then try it again after the flash.