Few decent problems....

[Kielgard]

System:

Athlon XP 1700
Epox 8K5A2+
256 MB DDR333 K-Byte RAM
80 mm Case Fan
Thermaltake Volcano 6Cu heatsink&fan
Maxtor 20 GB 7200 RPM ATA 133
Lite On 40x12x48 CDRW
Mitsumi FDD
Allied 450 W PSU (AMD and Athlon XP recommended).. dual fan
Chaintech Geforce 4 MX 440 64 MB DDR
Windows XP
Samtron 77V 17" Monitor

Ran through:

memtest
3dMark SE 2001
PC mark
Sisoft Sandra
Directx Diagnostic

All devices working fine, passed all benchmarks and tests with typical system expectations. MBM is reading nice temperatures (27 case and 40-41 CPU). Sandra and PC Mark would like one of my fans to move faster.... but its on and keeping nice temp.

Problems:

1) Occasionally/randomly , particularly on a restart to upgrade drivers, comp won't boot into BIOS and monitor turns off (fans etc continue to move Epox board has the C1 post code). Have flashed to newest bios... it was doing this before flash as well. POwer down for 30 secs and/or reset CMOS and things are fine. In bios boot up it may say CPU Clock change failed etc.... or a CMOS Checksum error.... sometimes no error. Can F1 past BIOS and have no problems and boot up fine many times.

2) 3.3 V reads 1.6ish in PC Health, Post and MbM. Heard this is an EPOX reading problem and not to worry. Plus I was told to get a new power supply to fix this (had a 350 W at first) and got the allied and same readings... although all rail readings are a lil higher and much more stable.

3) In Earth and Beyond quickly crashes to desktop. Was doing this in lobby test of 3d Mark too but I dropped back to 31.40 drivers and got through 3D MArk. Still crash to desktop in EnB. Have all newest drivers and bios and XP upgrades etc... Except the detonator which I dropped back to the 31.40 from the 40s. Did not crash to desktop in 3dmark or Neverwinter NIghts after going to 31.40. Which driver would be best then?? And should I do a XP reinstall and redo with default XP Drivers and see what happens? I seemed to have partially solved by moving from newest to older drivers. Yes video bios shadowing and video to ram cache are disabled. Have run geforce tweak to no avail.

4) My HD LED and Power LED do not come on ever. I heard there was an 8K5A2+ relationship to this.. could be the case??

5) Sisoft Sandra and PC MArk can't find my CDRW and FDD. FDD couldn't read a disc last night but has been fine... did not thoroughly check it (tired). CDRW Was having problems but is fine now (think it was a cable problem).

I'm running optimal settings with onboard LAN, RAID, with video settings above disabled. Think doing some setting changes to RAM may do something??? Going to failsafe kept 1 and 2 problems. Have not tried fail safe with 3rd problem.

Was getting bsods... particularly the loop error but that has been solved with the new power supply.... coincidentally?? Don't think I need bigger than an Allied 450 W... not enough peripherals.

Got all the parts last week... upgraded PSU yesterday and have round ATA 133 IDE Cables coming perhaps today or tomorrow to solve any cable problems.

How do I solve particularly the crash to desktop and the Bios won't boot sometimes (I think latter may have to do with changing BIOS Settings.. often happens when changing a setting... but happens sometimes when changing drivers on the restart which should not affect BIOS boot??).

 

[rogerdugans]

If I haven't said it to you before......Welcome to the Forums!

I don't have that mobo, but I may have a few ideas for you:

the voltage error- I don't think it is. On my 8KHA+ boards one of the voltages is AGP and you probably have the same thing.

The bios/no reboot error- the initial bios that my boards had did the same thing. In my case a bios flash fixed it, but perhaps the bioses you have tried have the same bug my first one did. See what bios others are using with that board.

Video- I am far from a video expert....but I know that often different versions of drivers have problems with certain configs of hardware and software: you may have to try a number of different ones to find one that works; patches for the games you have trouble with may also exist.

There are plenty of people here with 8k5a's so someone may reply with exactly the answers you need.

 

[Kielgard]

Thanks

Thanks for your suggestions.

I read in the manual that indeed thevoltage should be 1.52 when running a 4x AGP or it will change to 3.3 if running 2x or less AGP.

I also wonder whether the C1 post code at the boot lock up has something to do with RAM (according to Via/Epox it does). If I'm running my Athlon 1700 at 1.47 that means I have 133/133 so 266. But the RAM needs 333 (DDR 333). So I will check RAM settings when home. If its set by clock speed the RAM probably "is incompatible with setting" because its not 266 RAM. I have to run CPU plus 33 speed... will have to see if that solves anything.

Crashes will continue to go back in date for drivers to find right one. guru3d also has a patch for the crash (may work they say). It has to do with closing something off so that when newer drivers with 3d intensive programs push your card and system that it solves a RAM utilization problem that causes a crash. Its in the VIA drivers at guru3d I believe. Will try.


Any more suggestions for BIOS Settings or anything out there??

 

[Kielgard]

Thanks

Thanks for your suggestions.

I read in the manual that indeed thevoltage should be 1.52 when running a 4x AGP or it will change to 3.3 if running 2x or less AGP.

I also wonder whether the C1 post code at the boot lock up has something to do with RAM (according to Via/Epox it does). If I'm running my Athlon 1700 at 1.47 that means I have 133/133 so 266. But the RAM needs 333 (DDR 333). So I will check RAM settings when home. If its set by clock speed the RAM probably "is incompatible with setting" because its not 266 RAM. I have to run CPU plus 33 speed... will have to see if that solves anything.

Crashes will continue to go back in date for drivers to find right one. guru3d also has a patch for the crash (may work they say). It has to do with closing something off so that when newer drivers with 3d intensive programs push your card and system that it solves a RAM utilization problem that causes a crash. Its in the VIA drivers at guru3d I believe. Will try.


Any more suggestions for BIOS Settings or anything out there??

 

[Tarzan]

You can get correct readouts by using EPoX 8KHA in MBM - that includes -5 -12 (which becomes vdimm) Yeah Epox is a bit alternative, but they all work. You just need to make them, and rename so they fit of course.

Saw one fixing C1 errors by reseating all that could be reseated! Never hurts I guess. Same with hd leds, re-check they are not turned upside down or something - my power led works fine, dont use hdled.

Try increase vdimm 0.1 or 0.2 - all weird lockups might go away. Official DDR spec say 2.5-2.7 so a bit more than default 2.5x is perfectly safe. Use SPD timings until you are prepared to test faster - after its stable. Be conservative for now.

But go through all screens in bios, disable what you dont use, audio, serial port, irq activity monitoring! whatever is possible. Optimized defaults is an ok start

You did reinstall XP after change of mobo? If not that wont limit sources of XP problems, think most would strongly recommend a fresh start, especially since you have some problems. Games means audio, what you use? Got all drivers updated? Controller drivers? HPT drivers should be 2.34 if that controller is active - and so on and so on. Takes time to set it all up, including XP. You can easily have missed something.

Your memory shouldnt care if it runs at 133 or 166, compatible. Not much performance gain at 166 anyway. If you start to pump up fsb a little go for 133/133 if not allready.

Think your problems will go away after some retesting, rechecking, reinstalling - and cursing. I would definitely like to get rid of C1 error... lockups in a game or 2 not disaster on new install, C1 hmmm. Game lockups easier to troubleshoot once you know rest is solid, you cant right now. Hopefully module just hungry for more volt or you have messed up

You should run www.memtest86.com to make sure module isnt bad. No reason to spend hours wondering about BSODs etc. if new memory is only solution.

 

[Kielgard]

Seems to be fixed now. Ihaven't been agressive. I think first XP install I went right out and got all the newest detonators etc... and that the detonators just taxed my system.... that or I had driver conflicts. BIOS is resetting fine/booting fine too. So I'm at nvidia 28.32 right now and VIA 4.37 4 in 1 and I haven't had a problem (although drivers shouldn't affect the bios booting). We'll see in more testing. However I do think a 3dmark score of 5880 is a little low for my system. Will try to kick that up.

Added .1 to VDIMM And that may have helped. And set the DRAM Clock at 166 rather than by SPD. I had run memtest and its fine... all the tests above were fine.