*** Official ASUS A7N8X/Deluxe (nForce2) Thread ***

[Assimilator1]

Does the drive work on another PC?

Btw...
<--- still the owner of a A7N8X after nearly 4 years!:Q (though I shall be upgrading in a few months)

 

[Gunlance]

While I have not tried the drive on another computer (seeing as that would be a huge pain in the ass). I am more than sure it is fine. In WinXP it worked fine for years and about 14 hours ago it's just until I installed vista that I don't have access to it....because for some reason it causes vista to just die >_<"

 

[JSSheridan]

Are you sure the jumper is set to slave? Tried a different cable? Tried connecting the drive to its own IDE port? Tried getting a IDE -> SATA dongle and connect it to an SATA channel?

 

[Gunlance]

I don't own a IDE -> Sata dongle. Do you know if I could purchase something like that at say radioshack? That seems like a good idea.

I unplugged my DVD drives and plugged in samsung and it was the only hardware on that channel and it still gave me the error. I have never had to use jumpers, but I did try all those configurations. The western digital has 5 different positions I can set the jumper while the samsung only has four. I don't know if I did anything wrong but if you could make a suggestion I will try it.

I am going to try a differing cable right now and I will report back! Report:

Same error. With a different IDE cable.

 

[Assimilator1]

So you've tried both slave & cable select?

 

[Gunlance]

Originally posted by: Assimilator1
So you've tried both slave & cable select?

Yes.

The HD is detected fine in the BIOS every time I have it plugged it. ANd to add. If I boot off the WinXP disc, Gparted, or anything like that and the HD is connected everything is fine and dandy.

 

[JSSheridan]

Originally posted by: Gunlance
I don't own a IDE -> Sata dongle. Do you know if I could purchase something like that at say radioshack? That seems like a good idea.

I doubt RadioShack would have it, but a local computer store may have one.

This is starting to sound like an OS issue now. It may be an issue with the bundled IDE drivers. Asus or Nvidia haven't released Vista drivers that I know of, but hopefully they will.

 

[Gunlance]

Well a lot has happened in the last 12 hours or so...

I have pretty much decided that I am going to do a hard drive upgrade soon using Vista as the excuse : ) I am going to go for a raptor drive and then keep the 80 gig in there to replace the role of the samsung that is giving me my vista problem. The samsung really isn't a great drive...it's a 160gigs with only 2mb of cache. With those specs and personal experience of browsing and playing video files I don't think it's worth it to turn it into an external drive. I would rather go all out with a 300gig or higher capacity, and one of those Vantec Enclosures with the USB hub.

Right now I am back on Win XP. Vista ran great even the AC'97, and the Nforce onboard audio drivers were found automatically. Even though Nvidia is not supporting Nforce 2 with vista : (

Thanks for all the suggestions and support though I sure do appreciate it. I still think Vista rocks even after all this can't wait to go back lol.

 

[Cadaver]

Just as an FYI for anyone thinking about Vista on this board - seems to work very well. There are a couple of caveats...

The Vista install DVD didn't have drivers for the SATA ports, but putting the driver on a USB flash drive during the install took care of the problem.

Not sure how the built-in sound works (turned off in BIOS), but I've got an Audigy 2 ZS card which works fine. I've read the nVidia SoundStorm chip isn't supported.

Haven't tried the on-board 10/100 ethernet ports since I use a gigabit card anyway (US Robotics, which works fine after downloading the driver).

I have the on-board game, serial and parallel ports turned off in the BIOS (since I don't use 'em anyway), so I don't know if they work or not.

Other than those couple of limitations, everything else works great.
On-board USB and Firewire work fine.
SATA and IDE drives work fine (SATA requires driver).
I've got 1.5GB installed on the motherboard, and all is recognized (3x512MB).
Also have 1GB of ReadyBoost flash RAM on one of the USB ports.

My A7N8X Deluxe system is running a Barton 3200+ processor at stock speed, a 320GB SATA HD, a Pioneer DVR-107 optical, and a 256MB AGP nVidia 6800GT video card. Vista Home Premium runs just fine. The user interface is responsive and even Office 2007 runs just great.

Windows Expereince Index score is 3.7. The processor's score is what brings it down to 3.7, every other index is high 4's or low 5's.

Anyway, while not an overclocked Core 2 Quad processor with SLI 8800GTX cards, for general computing it runs perfectly well.

 

[stuman74]

Hi all...hoping someone can help me out.

I just set up a PC for my daughter with a motherboard that I had in a box for a year or so (Asus A7N8X). It has a Barton 2500+ processor and 512 MB Crucial RAM running Windows HP Home.

I had previously used this motherboard with the same processor for a couple of years when I got it and never had a problem. The new setup is working perfectly with one small issue.

Whenver I tell Windows to shut down, it goes through the shutdown sequence, but instead of shutting down, it reboots. I have no idea why or if there is a setting I need to change. Telling it to reset of course reboots as well. Trying to shutdown with the front button on my case also results in a reboot unless I press it again at the start of the boot sequence when it is rebooting.

Anyone else ever have this issue or a remedy? Thanks!

 

[Assimilator1]

Bizzare ,sounds like windows may of got screwed up ,that's a guess though.Sorry I can't help ,anyone else?

 

[stuman74]

So I found something from a Google search. Apparently, the A7N8X board has an issue shutting down sometimes when a PCI video card is used, but not when an AGP card is swapped in.

I took an AGP card from another PC and tried it out and whaddya know, my A7N8x system shuts down without issue. What the hell? Now I need to get another AGP card for this thing.

 

[Assimilator1]

Huh! wierd ,but nice find ,you don't want to use an ancient PCI card in it anyway

 

[MrKenmore]

I have been having an unusually problem with my A7N8x Deluxe. Recently, when I go to shutdown it goes through the normal procedures but once it is complete and should turn off, it reboots. I have tried OpenSuse 10, Kubuntu 6.10 and Kubuntu 7.04 as operating systems and they all do it. I swapped out the power supply but that did not help. I even pulled the power button leads thinking the button was stuck. That didn't work either. Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[Univac]

Ummm...what kind of video card are you using????

 

[MrKenmore]

It's an ASUS V9280 TD (128 MB) AGP Graphic Card NVIDIA GeForce4 TI 4200

Thanks for any help.

 

[Assimilator1]

Does it do it with windows too?


Inccidently I finally retired my old A7N8X from my main rig about 3months back ,was going to sell it on but I discovered that 1 of the main capacitors by the CPU had bulged ,that explains why I couldn't run the XPM @2.5GHz anymore too.

 

[MrKenmore]

No Windows.

 

[Salvador]

Did you read just above your post? It appears that someone had that very same problem with this board just a few months ago. It was his video card. Do you have another video card that you can swap out with the one that you're using? Maybe that's the problem?

 

[Assimilator1]

That was with a PCI card, he's got AGP.

MrKenmore
Was it originally shutting down OK with those OSs?
Have you altered any bios settings recently?

 

[MrKenmore]

It was shutting down fine. I tried a few things. My fix that I thought would work was too clear the BIOS. That didn't work. I then flashed the BIOS to the latest version. That didn't work. My problem is different from the situation described above. My machine goes through the shutdown procedures fine but as soon as it gets to the point that it should turn off it boots back up without me doing anything.

 

[Salvador]

I just ran a google search on this. It seems as though others have had this issue after reading a few threads. One fixed it by swapping power supplies and another fixed it by swapping cd rom drives. One other guy wasn't ever able to figure out the problem on a clients computer.

One thing that I'd try is unplugging or pulling anything like optical drives or sounds cards that you don't absolutely need and see if it fixes the problem. Did you try a different video card?

Troubleshooting these kinds of problems can be a PITA. I had a random reboot problem one time. I basically rebuilt the system and my problem turned out to be the very last thing that I tried replacing (the motherboard).

 

[Assimilator1]

I don't suppose setting the 'AC power loss re-start' option is set to on? (not that that should cause it to reboot but its worth trying)

 

[itakey]

I want to upgrade my XP2100+ chip on my A7N8X Deluxe. What is the best chip to go with? Fastest, and most cost effective? And can any of these higher ones be overclocked like I was able to do with my XP2100 around 2.2GHz?

Any info will be helpful on some specific chips I should be looking for.

 

[Assimilator1]

XP-M 2500s (& up) are the best on average ,many overclocked to 2.3-2.4 GHz with some going higher ,mine had an XPM 2500 o/ced to 2.5GHz & I tested it right upto 2.63 GHz! ,though it get very hot at that speed.

You are highly unlikely to be able to buy any new skt A CPUs nowadays ,but I'm sure they are still common enough on ebay.Last time I checked (here in the UK) about 3-4mths ago XPM 2500s were going for about £25-35 ,mine sold for only £22 (not the above mentioned CPU but another XPM 2500 ,incase you're wondering my XPM is in my sons machine now ).

Btw if you do get an XPM & you have a v1.0x mbrd you will have to join 2 specific CPU pins to allow multipliers over x12.5 ,its easily done with conductive paint,a mag glass & a steady hand

However don't expect a massive boost from the upgrade, even taking into account that the XPM (Barton core version) has 512KB L2 cache (which is worth about a 5% speed boost over your XP2100) and IF you got a good overclocker which could do say 2.5 GHz, then that's roughly a 20% speed boost over your current CPU.(Maybe a few percent more for a higher FSB too I guess).Is that worth it to you?
I guess it also depends how much you could get for your old CPU.
(Inccidently I went from an XP2400 @2.22 GHz to the XPM @2.5GHz to get the most out of my rig ,I've probably got some benchmarks somewhere if you're really interested).

Naturally if you got a CPU that could only do 2.3GHz then it would be a very small boost (at best 10%) & almost certainly not worth it.