Salvageable or time to build?

[anindrew]

Hi all!

For nearly the last 5 years or so, I've been using an Athlon64 3500+ socket 939 with an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum. I built it after the northbridge fan on my Abit Athlon XP system stopped working, causing the system to have a steady decline in reliability until it was virtually unusable.

The MSI board uses an nforce3 ultra chipset. Instead of having a separate northbridge and southbridge, they are integrated into the same chip. A small heatsink/fan cooled it. That fan started making grinding noises, which told me it was about to die. I recalled what happened to my Abit system and wanted to prevent that, so I bought a replacement heatsink/fan for the chip.

Removing the old chipset HSF required me to completely remove my motherboard due to the clip system used to attach it. Of course, that required me to take out all of my PCI cards and my AGP video card. When I reassembled the system, XP found some new hardware. I thought I put the cards back in the same slots, but perhaps I didn't. I uninstalled the drivers for the 3 cards. Upon reinstalling the drivers, XP failed to recognize the cards. Several attempts failed. I even tried to install XP onto my other HD. The same thing happened. After much checking, it seems that my cards are recognized in POST and the TYPE of card is recognized in XP. But, XP will not recognize the name of the card, nor will it use the drivers. Example: instead of finding my D-Link Wireless Adapter, it simply stays listed as "Network Adapter." The same occurs with my Soundblaster and M-Audio cards. I even tried to use the on-board audio, but the drivers will not install. This means that none of my PCI devices and probably most of the integrated ones work.

So, I believe my system is FUBAR. Perhaps I damaged the mobo while installing the new HSF on the chipset. Perhaps the same thing happened to my MSI board as my Abit.

If anyone has any suggestions for a fix, I would greatly appreciate it. Otherwise, I think I'm stuck having to build a new system. I've been wanting to, but there's a difference between wanting to build and HAVING to build. I suppose I'll look at the P35 boards and maybe the 680i's.

Thanks for reading!

 

[Severian]

Try removing all the extra cards, and just install one at a time.

The onboard sound driver for the Neo2 Platinum is a separate download from the Nforce drivers, make sure you have the correct one.

good luck

 

[anindrew]

Hi Severian!

Thank you very much for telling me about the audio drivers! I was trying to use the nforce ones and didn't realize I instead needed the Realtek AC97 driver. I used MSI's Liveupdate to get the correct ones. I have sound again! I've tried reinstalling my PCI cards one at a time, but to no avail. I ended up buying a USB Network Adapter. So for now, I'm back up and running. I think I'll be able to survive like this until I can build a new system. It sucks not being able to use my PCI cards, but I suppose it's not that big of a deal for the time being. Thank again!

 

[Severian]

Have you thought about simply reformatting and doing a fresh install of Windows? This really sounds to me more like your drivers have been corrupted, not the hardware. Everything shows up properly in BIOS, you're not getting any errors outside of Windows, it's probably been a while since you did a clean install?

I'd definitely try formatting and doing a clean install of XP before I assumed the hardware was at fault, with your symptoms.

good luck

 

[anindrew]

Hi Severian,

I forgot to mention that I reinstalled XP on a second hard drive. It had the same problem with the PCI cards. I had actually reinstalled XP on my main drive not that long ago. That was a very good suggestion as XP can get screwy when moving PCI cards around.

I wonder if somehow the BIOS or memory is storing the location of those cards and is having a problem updating their new location. I already tried resetting the BIOS. Perhaps taking out the memory, restarting, and then putting it back would help. I have my doubts about that, though. This MSI board is great when it works, but it certainly does some odd things sometimes.

Thanks for your help again!

 

[Severian]

I've had four of those Neo2's, they are great boards. I've still got three running on my LAN now. I think before I gave up on your board, I'd download the latest BIOS from MSI, and flash that. There were no updates for nearly two years for the Neo2, but they've put out two this year. Give it a flash, and see if after you clear the CMOS and load up the defaults, that your driver problems aren't any better. I'd also uninstall the cards in Device Manager, then physically remove them from the machine.

If the driver stack is corrupted, a clean install of Windows is often the only way to correct it.

Worst case scenario, MSI will repair the board if it's past warranty for $35, which is still cheaper than a complete rebuild.

good luck