Very strange problem with my Asus K7M, win2k and new bios revision. Something like time acceleration !

[Thor_Sevan]

Hi, I give up ! I tried everything and I just can't understand the source of this problem and how to fix it.
Here is the story.
BEFORE, I was using win98 on bios revision km1007 and everything was fine with no problems.
Then, I installed win2k on a second partition and I had some strange problems. For example, I was UNABLE to make CS, half-life to work ONLINE. Every other game was ok but not this one. When I tried to connect, I had a message "unable to complete connection" like if the time allowed wasn't enough. Passed 8 months where I was playing CS sometimes on win98 and everything else on win2k.
THEN, I recently scrapped my win98 partition an reinstalled a clean version of win2k while still temporary keeping the old win2k.

I then flashed my bios with versions km1008, km1009 and the new beta km132 here is what I get:
Km1008 and km132: UDMA works fine BUT strangely WCPUID reports WRONG cpu speed like 1.4 mhz Strange behavior and many games appear to have some sudden acceleration peeks ! Like if every 10 seconds I was suddenly teleported further in the game. Very annoying.
Km1009: I am UNABLE to make UDMA work. I get BSOD at bootup telling me win2k is unable to find the IDE boot devices bla bla.
I tried putting km1007 and tried some games and the behavior is even more strong. In Star fleet command, when I begin a mission, one second later the mission ends ! At least, with km1008 and 132 I can play but have the sudden acceleration peeks.

Anway, I tried every bios available after km1007 (supports my 30 gb) and its not working fine in win2k. I don't know what to do.

Thor

 

[Evadman]

1.44 MHz? That's kind of slow

Sounds like a bad Burn. Probably need a new Bios chip.

 

[Thor_Sevan]

No no... it sais 1.4 mhz but it runs like 600. The bios detects correctly 600, some programs detect 600 but some others like 3dmark 2000, 2001 and wcpuid are erratic. Its strange, some programs run very well while others that seem to use some specific time or clock generator are running woohoo !

 

[stevewm]

I see this exact same behavior on my Asus P5A motherboard (Socket 7) in Win2k and XP. ACPI on my motherboard does not function correctly in Win2k. Here is was Asus tech support told me to do, when you go to install 2k and it says "Press F6 to install drivers......." press F5 and select "Standard PC". This fixed it and all programs now correctly report CPU speed. When I allowed it to install as ACPI PC (which is the default for most motherboards) SiSoft Sandra would say I had a 10ghz processor and WCPUID would say 10Mhz. There is one side effect though, your computer will no longer shut itself off when you shutdown, you'll have to hit the power button. If I use a older BIOS version (1007a) it works correctly with ACPI. If I use the newer Beta BIOS (1011.004) I start getting these problems.

 

[Thor_Sevan]

Well, I am not sure ACPI could be a problem because in theory, my board supports it. Well, that is what asus says.


Thor

 

[BitSpit]

Is the hard drive an ATA100 drive? Are you using an ATA66/100 cable to connect it? If your answer to both questions is yes then you might want to try a regular IDE cable with the 1009 BIOS. Win2K wouldn't work at all until I tried that.

 

[Thor_Sevan]

The drive is ATA66, its an IBM 30 GB 75 GXP and has worked fine on win98 and win2k with bios ELSE than 1009.
I am unable to make the udma 4 work on win2k with that bios. But that is one part of the problem...

Thor

 

[Thor_Sevan]

Anyone ?

 

[Bozz]

Common problem, click here for a solution

Solution number 2

 

[Thor_Sevan]

Bozz, the reason why I posted this message on this forrum is because not everybody can answer this. Is is highly technical and related to how the bios works and how win2k and some bios and the board k7m relate each other. As you can see my problem is still unresolved and your answer has not helped me. I also posted topics on general forrum but had no answer maybe because it is really a very unusual problem.

Thor

 

[Trip2way]

I suggest you back-up your important data and wipe the drive,
Go with the last know stable Bios version that supports your CPU and/or other new compontents.
Start of with a fresh install of the OS(s) of your choice.

The speed perks you speak of may be due to the changes you have made with the MBs Bios and OS/partitions setup.
See, there may be residue of the prior configurations causing conflicts.

If that doesn't work.....well I think it was said already.

 

[Thor_Sevan]

I might give a try to winxp and see what happens. Maybe microsoft fixed some bugs related to the K7M motherboard.
I don't think it will fix anything but I'll see.

The most interresting thing is to see how different bios changes the way the problem occurs. With old bios, wcpuid works but cs won't connect (or any other game or program that uses a specific time measurement) because the times goes too fast. With newer bios, the problem is LESS important. Results are still inacurate (wcuid doesn't work) but programs are able after many tried to connect or to perform their operations with strange acceleration peeks.

Thor