BSOD Loop, Asus Maximus II

My hardware is as follows:

Q9650, stock cooling, stock clocks & vcore
Asus Maximus Formula II
Mushkin DDR2-1066 RAM, 4GB
Corsair TX650 power supply
GTX-260, C216
1x 320gb IDE HDD
1x 500gb SATA HDD
Windows Vista Home Basic, 32bit

So I just got this mobo & CPU set-up about a week ago and had a few snags along the way with POST & first boot up into windows, got through them and it was working fine for about 3 days. Then one day it started giving me BSOD's while idleing, movie watching, music listening, internet use, & REPEAT BSOD's upon start up. It will get all the way to the bar which slides along during load up, and just before you would see the Windows symbol it BSOD's! The only way I have found to start it up with out it going nuts on me is to have my Windows DVD in the drive, have my first boot device set to my optical drive & my HDD set to second. Then it will get past the windows symbol, but EVERY time it does a scan on the hard disks, restarts, and VOILA! But for the amount of money I spent on this "great" mobo, I should push on, and within a few seconds here I go. I just upgraded from an AMD 5000+ BE on a DFI 790FX M2RS, and I wish I hadn't... What could be causing this? This is a legit copy of windows, a first for me. Freshly DBAN'ed HDD's, took about 1 day to wipe each drive clean. Is my mobo/ram/CPU bad? Is my power supply enough? As I said, I haven't done anything in the way of OC'ing. Only BIOS changes were boot device. Thank in advance. I am seriously thinking of going back to DFI...half the price and it WORKS!

Joe

PSU is enough.

I would check Bios settings and Manual RAM-CPU-NB volts. Raise every volts higher than needed and check stability. Tehn.. start taking each one down one at the time and recheck stability... go down until its no more stable and go back where you were stable. Here ya go you have your lowest possible volts on this part

Use Prime95 or ITB ( intelburntest ) to stress test.

Those BSOD are most likely cpu-ram-mobo related.

I had the Maximus and it was perfect in every way from my experience. Try resetting everything to Auto for now, and see if you get BSOD. The only problem in your system, MAY be that IDE HDD. Now this is probably more than an urban myth than a fact, but I've heard the P45 chipset does not like PATA IDE stuff. See if it works better with that drive disconnected.

So I should check my voltages with CPUZ and HWMonitor? Then bump them up? By how much? I am at work, so I will fool with it when I get there. I think my CPU is running at 1.2 maybe. What is the max RAM voltage while being safe and a max CPU volts while being safe? Should I adjust the NB too? Is this characteristic of Asus? I had a friend who said Asus is really picky with RAM and he had to adjust the volts too... Thanks for the quick response!

Joe

Ya I have it disconnected...my OS and everything is running off the SATA. I was actually about to try and switch the two. I have had troubles with the SATA HDD before, but I thought after a thorough DBAN it would be better. Thanks again

Joe

jmgonza6 said:

Ya I have it disconnected...my OS and everything is running off the SATA. I was actually about to try and switch the two. I have had troubles with the SATA HDD before, but I thought after a thorough DBAN it would be better. Thanks again

Joe

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm not sure about the SATA drive , but I have heard from a few ppl that the P45 chipset isn't too compatible with IDE. Have you updated the BIOS? Before you do any voltage regulation, set everything to auto with those drives disconnected and another (known working drive) connected, see if that works. Just throw on a quick Windows 7 installation on that drive, see if you have troubles.

btw my DRAM voltage is auto. If you're doing OCing that P45 northbridge has to be set to 1.5V if I remember correctly, then you can let the overclocking begin . I wouldn't run that quad 24/7 on anything higher than 1.4V

Another note, I ran 3 Memtest modules at the same time for about 1 hour and they came up with no errors. Should I adjust my timings on the RAM? Thanks

Joe

I really think everything on stock/auto should do it. Run a bunch of things, try an recreate the BSOD. IF you don't get anything you can start overclocking.

I still suspect its the HDDS

Even worse...

So now I am officially lost... I took a BRAND NEW HDD, "tryed" to load Vista. By tryed I mean I received no less than 3 BSOD's during the install. What gives? I am totally lost. I switched RAM dimms. All three HDD's yield the same result. IRQ not less or Equal BSOD or PageFault not in Page Area BSOD. So I just sent the egg an email asking how to proceed with this. I will be honest, I definitely don't want a replacement. What board would be good to have it replaced with? I had unbelievable success, stability, and ease with my DFI board, so I am leaning that way. I also had great luck with Gigabyte boards, but they are ugly IMHO. Thanks in advance everyone. Is it me? Am I asking to much from a $250 board?! I think not Thanks you guys!

Joe

Check in the BIOS to make sure that the controller(s) the HDDs are connected to are set to Legacy IDE mode, and not AHCI.

Hey redduc, how is that DFI? I loved my last DFI and am thinking I should have gone with it this time as well. I was looking at the DK X48 T2RSB though. Now we are at an instant BSOD. It restarts itself some times before my screen has come on!!?? I am totally done with this. I am returning that HDD I got re-thinking this set-up. THanks

Joe

jmgonza6 said:

Hey redduc, how is that DFI? I loved my last DFI and am thinking I should have gone with it this time as well. I was looking at the DK X48 T2RSB though. Now we are at an instant BSOD. It restarts itself some times before my screen has come on!!?? I am totally done with this. I am returning that HDD I got re-thinking this set-up. THanks

Joe

Click to expand...

yeah that board has to be toast, try and RMA it before you sell/replace it.

Ya thats what I was afraid of. Thanks for all the help. How do I get to the classifide section? I want to sell this Q9650. I am having serious thoughts of moving on to i7 & X58...

Joe