Please help sorting out Voltage/boot/temp problem with A7V8X-MX Board

[unbiased]

Two of my friends have bought identical systems.Only one has problems.
The following are the main components,
Athlon XP 2600+(333 Mhz FSB) with stock cooling/thermal pad
ASUS A7V8X-MX Motherboard
Transcend DDR333, 256 MB Ram
Samsung sp0411N , 40 gb hdd.
ATX Cabinet with Case fan and 300 Watt SMPS.
etc

The problems are following,

1. When the computer is powered on the HDD activity and power LED light up and fan /hdd sound is heard but after a second or so both LEDs stop glowing and the rotational sound also stops for 1-2 seconds, then again starts. This haapens once , everytime I power on the computer.

2.The voltage as indicated by the hardware monitor in the bios as well as ASUS probe shows 12 volt level fluctuating between 12.5 to 12.8(sometime even higher), and 5 volt at 4.75 volt. I tried replacing the SMPS but to no avail.The irony is that the identical twin of this system has 12 volt level at 12.2-3.

3. The temps as shown by the hardware monitor in bios as well as by ASUS probe are

Motherboard- 32 c
Processor- 50 c (idle) , 60-65 c load.

These temps are at the ambient temp of around 25 c. The twin brother of this system has
Motherboard temp- 30c
Processor temp-40- 45 c(idle) and 50-55 (load), at the same ambient temp.
I have checked, the system is not overclocked.FSB-166, RAM by SPD-166.

4. It takes ages to boot into either WIN 98 SE or WIN XP SP1(it takes longer in XP). I tried reformatting and fresh install and even when there is only the OS on the disk, it still takes too long to boot. I tried disabling all startup items but to no avail. The twin of this system has considerably lesser bboting time even with a plethora of software installed. I also checked and made sure that DMA is enabled.I also tried loading the drivers from the same CD as provided with the other system.

Now if you had the patience to read up till now, please have the goodness to answer my questions.
The questions are,
Can this problem be due to BIOS problem? Will reflashing the BIOS help? Both the motherboards have latest 1006 version BIOS( I checked on ASUS site).

Guys on the tech help forum advised changing the SMPS but did,t say anything about the bios. Do you agree?

 

[unbiased]

Bump!
Please Respond O wisemen of the web!

 

[mechBgon]

One possible cause of slow booting is that the motherboard's onboard network adapter is trying to find a DHCP server to assign it a network address ("IP address").

As for the problem with the temperature, check right away to confirm that your heatsink is on correctly on the hot-running system. I've taken the trouble to make a photographic guide (click pictures to enlarge if desired). If it's backwards, you can expect Trouble.

Is the 300-watt power supply a respectable brand, such as Antec, Enermax, Enlight, Sparkle Power, PowerMan...? Quality, quality, quality... and then a robust amount of wattage on top of that, although it sounds like your system is not too heavily decked out (no mention of any whopper 50-watt+ video cards or four hard drives, etc).

Regarding the cooling, also be aware that the stock thermal pad on an AMD heatsink melts to fit the microgap between the CPU and heatsink, and is intended as a one-use-only item. If the system is started up and the pad has melted to fit, then if you take the heatsink off after that you'll need to scrape off all of the melted thermal pad and use high-quality thermal grease or a fresh phase-change pad. So if the hotter system's heatsink has ever been removed after initial installation, that alone could be the problem.

 

[unbiased]

Thanks a million Mechbgon, for such a detailed reply.The installation guide is a real help.

"One possible cause of slow booting is that the motherboard's onboard network adapter is trying to find a DHCP server to assign it a network address ("IP address")."

Can you elaborate about what to do to improve booting time?

Now, The processor was not taken off after installation so the thermal pad has not been disturbed. do you think that scraping off the pad and putting some thermal paste will help?

Yes, the system is not a very heavily decked one. One HDD, One CDRW,One FDD, and onboard graphics and yes the power supply is a No-Name brand.I guess it has to be changed.

The reason I have been harping upon the BIOS thingy is that I read somewhere that the bios can have effect upon booting speed. One more thing , the board is A7V8X-MX which should support 8X AGP bus but in the bios it does'nt give the option beyond 4X. Is it because of onboard graphics being used?

Please Clarify if possible.

Thanks in advance.

 

[lsman]

if you are not using in the network (boardband or so). Simple disable it.
Or in windows. set it up as a static IP address. (note the slow down happen when you see the windows start up screen) like a 192.168.1.6 subnet 255.255.255.0