Trouble using KT7Raid

[Bluester]

I'm having a lot of trouble getting my system stable. The problem is that is freezes fairly often. While it has locked up at other times on occasion, the easy way to make it happen is running a game called "F1 Championship Season 2000". It will freeze at various times. I'm not overclocking, not using RAID, not using USB. Just down to a basic system with video and sound (btw, the game doesn't run at all without sound card). I've tried various things. Even went to "fail safe" settings in BIOS. Got the latest video and sound drivers, & using 4.25a VIA drivers.
About to do another clean install (Win98) disabling ACPI. I read somewhere that using "setup /p i" disables ACPI...?
The kt7 faq page seems to be unavailable at the moment.
I'm not sure what brand my RAM is...it's stamped "PQI"...
Any help appreciated...

 

[Nafur]

In which slot do you have your SBLive ?
You should avoid PCI5 ... But since you're not using RAID this shouldn't be a problem anyway.

Have you tried changing AGP Aperture size ?
And fast write ?

I don't think ACPI will be the problem, the board supports it flawlessly.

Perhaps it's just Win98 ... try the new install.

 

[Bluester]

The SBLive was in slot 4.
I hadn't changed fast write because I don't know if the board supports it. Aperture size - can't remember...I've changed so many BIOS settings.
FYI I originally had a NIC card in as well, but system took a couple of minutes to boot. Took it out and it boots much faster.
I haven't achieved the new Win98 install yet. I reformatted and tried to boot from CD. It didn't want to know about it. Reset BIOS to fail safe setting, then tried again and it wouldn't boot at all. Cleared CMOS (which worked last time) but no change. Someone else had this problem somewhere the other day, but I forget what the answer was. Now checking RAM seating. (RAM is in DIMMs 3 & 4 but Sandra reports it in 1 & 2??
Really getting p'd off now!

 

[Nafur]

Well, the NIC card does bog down the startup, but if you set an IP address in the networking interface in Windows it will boot normally.
Without IP specified the NIC will search for a server on the network to get his IP address, that's why it takes so long to boot.


Why won't he boot from CD ?

 

[Bravoexo]

Always make sure "Enhance CPU Performance" setting in SoftMenuIII is enabled. That should make your system stable.

 

[Bluester]

I got it to work! Did a clean install of Windows with only video card, HDD & CD installed. Skipped installation of drivers for RAID initially. Then installed Via 4in1 4.25a, HPT370 drivers, video card drivers in that order. Then had IRQ 5 for USB, 9 for ACPI, 10 for video, 11 for RAID. Disabled USB in device manager. Installed SBLive in slot PCI4. Installed SB drivers. Then had SB on IRQ 5 by itself (SB16 emulation disabled). Installed DirectX 7 and was in business!

Thanks for your advice. Now I'm about to try adding the NIC card...