• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

K7VZA v3.0

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

Kingslayer

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 12, 2001
Location
Port Charlotte, Florida
Is anyone here running a K7VZA v3.0 with an XP chip and running into any problems.

I would list mine, but they are far to long to list. Half the time it wont boot. I mean it powers up but doesnt post, no video nothing. I have to power it totally off and power it back on about a dozen times before it will boot. Then once it does it's totally unstable. Soldier of Fortune crashes, it sticks in a sound loop and locks up. I still have control of the mouse, but I can't do anything. Internet Explorer will crash now and again.

We thought it was power. I know have 2 power supplies running this thing. One for the motherboard and one for the fans and drives.

We thought it was drivers, but everything in here is updated, patched, fixed, and worked.

We thought it was heat but this thing has a MCXC370 on it, and the whole system is hooked up to an air conditioner in a case that ran dual PIII 800EB's at 1002Mhz each. So it's not heat either.

Hardware is as follows

ECS K7VZA 3.0 w/ 3.6 bios and latest 4in1's
XP 1800+
2x256Meg Crucial PC-133
Soundblaster Live w/ latest drivers
Radeon 8500 w/latest drivers
3Com905B NIC w/latest drivers

Onboard sound is disabled. Bios is set to lowest and slowest settings. Soldier of Fortune has been patched. WinXP has been patched for use with XP CPU's. I have done everything I can think of.

Want to chance a guess or three, at this point I'm ready to put the dual Intels back in and chuck this thing in the river....
 
I used to use a K7VZA and to put it bluntly the board is just a piece of junk. I personally used it with a Duron 750(budget system) and haven't had too many problems with that one but another one that I used with an XP had a lot of stability issues and random reboots. It ended up dying for no apparent reason. I have heard that the board doesn't work very well with higher speed cpus. Try a BIOS update. Its possible the newer BIOS will be more compatible with the XPs and resolve many of the problems. I think one of the few positive features of this board is that you can update the BIOS while in windows. Also, sometimes people have trouble running these boards at 133 mhz fsb. Thats all I can think of right now....I would just chuck the board if I were you. Newegg has a refurb epox 8k3a for $55 w/free shipping. Thats a very good deal IMHO. Good luck with figuring out the problem.
 
You said that WinXP has been patched for use with XP cpu. Was this a clean install or did you migrate hard drives? I'm sorry but I think the only real solution is getting a new board.
 
Kingslayer said:
Is anyone here running a K7VZA v3.0 with an XP chip and running into any problems.

I would list mine, but they are far to long to list. Half the time it wont boot. I mean it powers up but doesnt post, no video nothing. I have to power it totally off and power it back on about a dozen times before it will boot. Then once it does it's totally unstable. Soldier of Fortune crashes, it sticks in a sound loop and locks up. I still have control of the mouse, but I can't do anything. Internet Explorer will crash now and again.

We thought it was power. I know have 2 power supplies running this thing. One for the motherboard and one for the fans and drives.

We thought it was drivers, but everything in here is updated, patched, fixed, and worked.

We thought it was heat but this thing has a MCXC370 on it, and the whole system is hooked up to an air conditioner in a case that ran dual PIII 800EB's at 1002Mhz each. So it's not heat either.

Hardware is as follows

ECS K7VZA 3.0 w/ 3.6 bios and latest 4in1's
XP 1800+
2x256Meg Crucial PC-133
Soundblaster Live w/ latest drivers
Radeon 8500 w/latest drivers
3Com905B NIC w/latest drivers

Onboard sound is disabled. Bios is set to lowest and slowest settings. Soldier of Fortune has been patched. WinXP has been patched for use with XP CPU's. I have done everything I can think of.

Want to chance a guess or three, at this point I'm ready to put the dual Intels back in and chuck this thing in the river....

It really sounds like systemic problem. It is easy to dismiss it as a problem with the mobo, but I am not sure. Flaky performance sounds more like memory or power, to me.

Have you tested that memory/ tried it with just one stick at a time?

Also, I know you have two psu's but those newer AMD's can really suck the life out of a psu. A low 5V or too many fluctuations might be messing with it. I had a K7S5A that became flaky when I upgraded from a 750 Duron to a 1.2 Morgan...sometimes it wouldn't boot, other times it wouldn't complete a windows install, and it would seem to crash randomly...
I put in a different psu, and the problem was solved.
 
The memory has been checked 6 ways from Sunday. The powersupplies are running fine.

One thing I have noticed is that when I do get a blue screen it seems to be centered around win32k.sys. And from the research I have done so far, is that this seems to be a common problem with AMD CPU's and WinXP.

I'm going to borrow a different PSU or two and see what is going on.
 
Re: Re: K7VZA v3.0

flounder43 said:

It really sounds like systemic problem. It is easy to dismiss it as a problem with the mobo, but I am not sure. Flaky performance sounds more like memory or power, to me.

Have you tested that memory/ tried it with just one stick at a time?

Also, I know you have two psu's but those newer AMD's can really suck the life out of a psu. A low 5V or too many fluctuations might be messing with it. I had a K7S5A that became flaky when I upgraded from a 750 Duron to a 1.2 Morgan...sometimes it wouldn't boot, other times it wouldn't complete a windows install, and it would seem to crash randomly...
I put in a different psu, and the problem was solved.

I still think it is the motherboard. The K7VZA has a lot of compatibility issues that were obvoiusly never addressed in BIOS updates. I have had a lot of experience with this board and I think there is definitely a compatibility issue with XP cpus and T-birds that are 1.2-1.4 GHz. Maybe the board just isn't fully stable at 133 fsb....who knows.:confused:
 
hmm i have a xp 2000+ running in one now and its fine im thinking of getting a 1700 tbred and putting it in there
 
Back