ABit BE6-II with "BEHXU" BIOS Upgrade & PIII-933/133 EB CPU - NOT Overclocked, but wor

[powerjak]

ABit BE6-II with "BEHXU" BIOS Upgrade & PIII-933/133 EB CPU - NOT Overclocked, but wor

Have had for some time, but ongoing "weirdness" with earlier PIII-500/100 CPU and new PIII-933/133 EB CPU (both non-overclocked). Have heard BE6 can be "unstable" when NOT overclocked. Don't know if "weirdness" is due to instability, Win98 Reg issues, or both. Never been "solid" since put together. Only marginally better as reconfigured (cards & I/O setups) thinking problems rooted in IRQ or DMA conflicts. Won't shutdown gracefully. Always locks up at Win shut down screen or blue screen. Often get Fatal Exception OE @ 0028:Cxxxxxxx in VXD APIX(01) ... or NVCORE(01) at boot or shutdown - always need to do "hard off", then Safe Mode start, reset all video settings, then can get reboot. Shutdowns NEVER complete. Usually power down at locked screen, boots up next time, but often get sys lockups that forces restart.

A "veteran" out there who enjoys challenge and sharing expertise? Would appreciate help me get running as "rock solid" as those read about in forums. Like to learn some OC tricks too! My setup is:

ABit BE6-II w/ BEHXU BIOS (QJ, SH & UH before)
SDRAM = 384MB (3-Infineon 128's)
AGP Slot - Leadtek GeForce 2mx (1280x1024 True Color)
Slot 1 - Empty
Slot 2 - Empty
Slot 3 - Adaptec 2903B SCSI Card (for HP CD Writer 9200i, ZIP-100, CanoScan FB1200S)
Slot 4 - Kingston KNE110TX PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter (for Speedstream 5260 ADSL LAN Modem)
Slot 5 - Turtle Beach Montego II Sound Card
Slot 6 - ISA LPT2 ECP Port (EPSON Stylus Color 800)
(Also wanted to install ATI-TV Wonder ... but won't work on repeated reboots with any card slot combo using PCI steering - so dumped.)

A: Drive - Standard 1.44MB Floppy
B: Drive - LS120 (Mode 2; IDE 1 Slave)
C: Drive - Fujitsu 3.2GB (DMA-33; IDE 0 Master) - for Win98SE Op Sys & basic
D: Drive - Maxtor 20 GB (DMA-33; IDE 0 Slave) - for Progs & Data
E: Drive - Iomega ZIP (SCSI ID#5 - Card Ext connection; daisychain to scanner)
F: Drive - HP CD Writer Plus 9200i (SCSI ID#6 w/Active Term- Card Int. connection/cable)
G: Drive - AOpen DVD-9632 (DMA-33; IDE 1 Master)
H: Drive - USB CompactFlash Reader
Scanner - CanoScan FB1200S (SCSI ID#2 - Terminated)
Com 1: Disabled
Com 2: USR 56k V.90 Fax/Modem Ext
LPT 1: NEC SuperScript 1260 Printer (EPP)
LPT 2: Epson Stylus Color 800 (ECP)

SoftMenu III is set for:
CPU OperFreq=933/133
Video BIOS Shadow = Disabled
PnP OS=Yes
RAS-to-CAS Delay = 3
RAS Precharge = 3
CAS Latency = 2
Precharge = Disabled
System & Video BIOS Cacheable = both Disabled
AGP Aperature = 4MB
DMA-66 IDE Controller = Disabled (used before; dumped to avoid conflicts)
Onboard Com1 = Disabled

On past ocassions, during bootup, hardware "re-recognized" hardware & reinstalled drivers, then locks up. At one time, Reg had 3-5 entries for each device. Fatal OE errors, bad shutdowns, system locks are frequent.

I'd appreciate some assistance ... learning something new ... and getting to know some new techies.

Hope to hear back from you,
powerjak

 

[LutaWicasa]

Welcome to the forum powerjak. Did this prob just come up when ya flashed with the XU bios?? I read something elsewhere of someone having probs with that bios (I've got to look around and find where/what)?

 

[sifu quoc]

i wasnt stable when i used all 3 dimm slots.... try not using the one nearest the slotket.... thats what got me stable....

i wasnt stable at 700 when i used 3x 128 mushkin rev2... so i used 2 and it works good

 

[powerjak]

LutaWicasa (May 14, 2001 11:12 a.m.):
Welcome to the forum powerjak. Did this prob just come up when ya flashed with the XU bios?? I read something elsewhere of someone having probs with that bios (I've got to look around and find where/what)?

Thanks for the response. Nope! It was "weird" with other BIOS priors as well. Let me know if I need to backup one Rev on the BIOS after you do some checking. However, another helpful suggestion was that things can be weird when all DIMMS are populated. I'll pull the one closest to the slotket as suggested to see if things settle out. With all prior BIOS's, I did have that DIMM populated. Won't it be great if it's that easy. (But, when is it ever!)

Any knowledge or suggestions on "OCing" the 933/133 EB?

 

[LimeyGreg]

Early versions of Win98 had shutdown problems on some systems, I believe there is an update/fix on the MS site. I have never experienced this problem on my system.

Just tried a search and there are quite a few pages on this problem. Open start and click on Windows Update, then at the MS site click on search and then select Microsoft and do a search on Shutdown Problems.

 

[powerjak]

LimeyGreg (May 14, 2001 02:24 p.m.):
Early versions of Win98 had shutdown problems on some systems, I believe there is an update/fix on the MS site. I have never experienced this problem on my system.

Just tried a search and there are quite a few pages on this problem. Open start and click on Windows Update, then at the MS site click on search and then select Microsoft and do a search on Shutdown Problems.

LimeyGreg,

Thanks for the suggestion. I am running Win98SE and have most (if not all) updates, but I'll check it out. Which BIOS do you have installed?

 

[LimeyGreg]

Presently running the 'XU' bios without any shutdown probs.

I read a little on the MS sight about troubleshooting the shutdown problem and it seemed quite detailed. I did notice that 98se also has a shut down trouble shooting guide as well.

Good look with your quest. Ever since I did a clean re-install here my IE doesn't seem to respond as quickly, it's like it ignores me while it's thinking about going to get the page I just asked it for, but it's not consistent.

It could be worse, I got home from work only to find my comp was not crunching F@A frames, my wife had been on the comp doing e-mail and it locked up so well the LS-120 floppy wouldn't even eject the disc - it's okay now though.

 

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

You can try disabling "fast shutdown"..this is/was a problem with 98 and SE, but I don't remember where it is...I think you need tweek UI to do it, if you know what tweek ui is, then just look on the w98 cd and install it, and you have got more tweeks than most people know exists.