problems after upgrade

[stevty2889]

I just upgraded my computer, and I am having several problems with it. I upraded from an asus p4t-e(850 chipset) with 512mb of pc800 rdram and a 1.6Ghz p4 to an Asus P4R800(ATI 9100 IGP chipset) with 512MB of Kingmax pc3500 DDR and a P4 2.4c(800mhz FSB). The motherboard has integrated video(radeon 9200) with which my first problem comes. All other part are the same(60GB seagate hard drive with winxp pro + SP1, same sound card, same CD-Rom, same case, 350W enermax power supply, ATI Tv wonder VE). When I try to use my tv tuner card with the integrated video, it instantly locks up my computer when I start the software. I read that a hyperthreaded cpu can cause locks up, so I put my 1.6Ghz proccessor back in, and it still instantly locked up. I put the 2.4c back in, and then tried putting my geforce 3 back in. The tv tuner then worked perfectly and didnt' lock up. I then tried a pci video card also, and again no lock up. I tried again with the onboard video, and it instantly locked up again. When it locks up, I have to either turn the computer off and back on, or hit reset, as I can't Ctrl-alt-del. When I hit reset, it gets an error at bootup saying my bios has a checksum error, and it attempts to load a backup. The only time this happens is if I hit reset, after the TV tuner locks up the computer with the integrated graphics. The other problem I am having, seems related to the IDE interface possibly. The computer is very slow to react when I try to open any programs, or do much of anything with it. It takes 15-20 seconds before I get any reaction after double clicking an icon, open a text file, or anything else. This happens when using either the integrated video, or the the PCI or Geforce 3 video cards. I still have time to RMA the motherboard, but I am hoping something else could be causing these problems, so I am open to suggestion. P.S. I have already updated all of my drivers to make sure I have the most recent ones. There are no BIOS updates for this motherboard yet, but hopefuly soon, as that may could fix some of these problems.

 

[Gravity]

Well I've only had one cup of coffee but let me see if I get this straight:

Your prob is mainly with the ATI card? You have all the current drivers but the card causes lockup. If that's the case, you might try an ATI driver that is one or two older than the one you are using. If the card is good and you are 100% sure it is, then I'd rma the board asap. Otherwise, rma the card. I'm less and less of an ATI fan as time goes on. I think that the nvidia drivers are much more stable. That's just my opinoin, of course.

Don't get discouraged, you are doing more computing than 99% of Americans!

Gravity

 

[stevty2889]

The problem is mainly that the TV tuner card won't work with the onboard video. It works fine with an AGP or PCI video card. I wouldn't be suprised if ATI's drivers were the problem though, as I have had problems with their drivers at every upgrade. There is only 1 driver for the TV tuner card that is compatible with windows XP, so I have no options there. I tried the drivers that came with the motherboard with the onboard video, and also tried updated drivers as well, which made absolutly no difference. Also kinda strange that the bios checksum error, only shows up after hitting reset because of the tv tuner card causing the lockup. Any other time I hit reset, it works perfectly normal..

 

[stevty2889]

Well even without using the onboard graphics I am still having problems. It is still slow and unresposive, takes 15-20 seconds before I get any response and the programs start..for example I click on the internet explorer Icon on the quick launch bar, and instead of it starting up, the Icon stays pushed in, and I get no hard drive activity for up to 30 seconds, and then it comes up. Now I am starting to get the blue screen of death frequently, and getting an error thats says something like IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

I saw several posts saying that could be related to memory, so I ran memtest86(currently still running). Looks likes it's on pass 9(first time I have used it so not sure how many passes it does), and so far I have 166 errors, so it looks like I have a bad memory module. I have 2x256MB modules and all the erros are showing up above the 350MB mark, so I am guessing only one stick may be bad, guess I'll have to RMA and hope all the problems are the memory, and not the motherboard too.

 

[stevty2889]

Ok, I am getting quite frustrated with this computer. So after I got the memtest errors, I tried 1 stick at a time. With the first stick(stickA) I got no errors, so I booted into windows. Booted into windows much quicker than before, so I started running some programs. No problems, the 15-20 second delay I was having went away, no blue screens of death. So next I tried it with the second stick(stickB). Exact same results. No memtest errors, and windows running normaly. So now I try it with both sticks again, but now stickB is in the first socket, and stickA in the third. Again, no memtest errors, so I boot into windows. Seems to be working well for a while, but then the Blue screens of death return. Still getting the IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error, but also getting a PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA. So I was thinking maybe the third socket was the problem. So now I try each stick 1 at a time in the third socket...and again everything starts running normaly, no errors, no blue screens of death. So again I try it with both sticks, stickA in socket 1 and stickB in socket 3. Again after a short time, the blue screens of death start to return. So this time I try putting them in sockets 2 and 4. Still get the blue screens of death. Everything seems to work fine if I only use one stick, but with any combination of the 2, I get the blue screens of death. I also looked in my event viewer. There seems to be a large amount of page file errors, but the errors are showing on the D drive. My page file is set to use the C drive. Both the C and D drive are on the same hard drive, just seperate partitions. The D partition is used for for all the files I want to keep backed up, so if I need to re-install windows, the files are already there. When I get home in the moring I am going to swap the memory and cpu from this system, with my other system. (other cpu is a 3.06Ghz P4 533FSB 1 gig of pc2100 ddr). This computer is driving me nuts. Not sure if it's just a driver issue, if my memory or motherboard is bad, or if it could even be the hard drive because of the page file errors...HELP!!!!!!!!

 

[stevty2889]

Well I decided to buy a new stick of memory. I am now running it with 1 512mb stick of corsair memory, and flashed the bios now that an update finaly came out for it. I also ran check disk and it had found some error's on the D drive. It is now working flawlessly with no more crashes. I threw the 2x256 Mb stick of the kingmax memory in my other computer, and it is working fine there, so I guess it was just incompatible with this motherboard.