My A7V8X is driving me crazy

[x_kla_x]

I have just about had it. I have tried everything, even underclocking!!! There are some serious stability issues with this board. It first started when installing my system. When connecting the IDE devices ( I have 1 IBM GXP120 80GB , 1 Pioneer DVD , 1 LiteON 48x CD-RW , 1 ASUS 52x CD-ROM ). I connected the HD as Primary Master and the ATAPI devices on the other channels ( not using raid ). The BIOS would not detect my HD. To make it work I was forced to connect it as primary slave and it detects it as UDMA 2, (ATA 33). OK. I thought ill get it up working first and then ill fix it properly. My first lockup came when installing WIN ME. Exactly when reaching 63% of filecopying. At the moment my XP2000+ was running 10x166 fastest timings (this means i was not out of spec). So i restarted and started over with CL 2.5 . OK. I managed 2 get it up and running . So I want back to CL 2. The system worked fine 4 about an hour or so and then it locked up. I cheked my temps ( 26 case, 36 CPU ). Went back to CL 2.5 ( Just notice that on my Epox-8k3a+ I runned this stick at 178FSB fastest timings @ stock Voltage all day long.). Runned under load 30min or so and other lock. At CL3 it would not even post. I have tried BIOS 1008 through 1010 beta at FSB's 133 & 155->166 with multiple x8 -> x12,5. I just cannot belive that my Stick of samsung that OC great with my 8k3a+ is the problem. What I am sure of is that it's a bad overclocker it would not even post at any Voltage what i used to run at stock voltage with my old board

 

[trulyred]

I myself am having a heck of a time with my new mobo. one of the things I am going to try tomorrow is using that e-z flash thats built into the bios(alt+ f2) right after post) down load the latest driver from asus and copy to a floppy then get into ezflash and load in the new bios .Im hoping this will help cause I have tried everything I could think of.my problem is that when my hd is accesed it slams hard and messes up my video and I get lots of lines.I have tried lots of different settings,for the video card(ati radeon64ddr) the hard drive ,cpu and ram .the manual says to test the video with a pci card if the agp doesn't work ,so I'll try that too when I find the agp to pci video settings in the bios. there is so much stuff on this board I'm begining to wonder if asus is going overboard on what these boards can handle.

keep trying though,ya never know what combonation of settings will get you up and running!I have also found that when I leave the p-n-p off it does get further on the boot up before the video gets slamed...........tr

 

[trulyred]

well if it ain't one thing it's another! first off, my power supply died on me ,somewhat.It's what made my pc dump on me after it posted good it would shut down oh maybe 30-45 seconds later.Drove me nuts tring to find that one!bought a new enermax 360 atx power supply.threw it in there and it started up and stayed up fine.Set the bios settings back to default and tried to load my new copy of xp pro.it loaded somewhat.kinda in a perpetual set up phase, I cannot seem to get past that ...yet.I also broke down an bought an ati9700 pro and threw that in there too why not might as well really upgrade while I'm at it.
I had troble with my 1.2 t-bird and had to set up all overagain as well,what a mess but at least I got the a7v8x to recognize my hd,cd,and video card and also to stay on for awhile while I work on it!!Now that my t-birds back up I can down load all the latest drivers that I need to get up and running yehah!!..........tr

 

[trulyred]

I did it!! I finally have my pc up and running! damn it took two weekends to find out what was up but now it runs smooth.first off it was the power supply,then it was mostly a hard drive show.I have a new maxtor diamond max d740x-80gb. that I had on my a7v133 running win98se. trying to get that switched over to the a7v8x was a mistake.what I finally did was reformat the hd with a new copy of max blast plus 2 that supports winxp. I was then able to fresh install winxp pro. the rest was easy. so now I have a nice a7v8x with an xp1800, 256mb pc2700c2 ,ati9700pro ,80 gig 133 hd,plexor16/10/40/ and a creative dvd.yahoo!

 

[x_kla_x]

Im still having trouble making my a7v8x recognize my HD as master. And the worst thing is that 2 make it all work stable I have 2 run everything under spec. Tried 2 flash the newest bios and suddenly it reports my CPU temps at 18ºC and case 24ºC. Strange. I dont know what 2 do anymore

 

[trulyred]

Hey kla,sorry to hear you are still having trouble with your board,cause this thing rocks!!can I suggest to you that you might try running with just one cd-rom,one floppydrive and one HD?. just to get things up and running then you can install all your other stuff once your stable.One thing that really helped me out was updating the forematt software that came with the HD. if your running winxp it really needs it. (at least with the maxtor drives) this board is really picky when it comes to HD setup.(as you are finding out)and once I got over that hurdle everything else went smooth. I also loaded all the drivers that came with the board ,except the gig/lan (no need for it).
Now is it possible your power supply is bad? just cause it posts doesnt mean its fine ,as I found out.how bout your os? I switched to xp pro and have had a far easier time setting up than I did with win98se that I tried to run the board with.(once with a fresh install at that). I hate to say this but it might very well be your ram thats messing you up . Also check your video drivers. I had a lockup problem twice and after some chasing down I loaded a different set of vid drivers (older)for my 9700 pro and that problem went away.I have been able to move settings in my bios with realitive ease (fsb,cpu voltage etc..) which gives me the feeling that my pc is now running the way it's supposed to run and I am confident that I can do a little o'c ing with it ,now that I know where it's at. Time consuming I guess,but at least now I am really getting to know my board! cheers1...............tr

 

[x_kla_x]

Thanks trulyred. What do you mean by formatt software? Do you mean like repartitioning it? I have a new IBM ATA100 GXP120 80GB HD. It should not give any problems with newer boards. Everything I am using with this board worked fine with my Epox 8k3a+ board, including RAM and HD. I am currently using Win XP Pro but I also tried WIN ME. Did not change very much anyway, and I always do a clean install.

 

[wyd6969]

Have you guys had any problems relating to voltage on your boards?... I have my 420watt generic PSU running my 2000+ on a A7V8X at default everything and I get god damn ~4.96 instead of a sweet 5.05... Have you guys had similar problems? Any help would be great

 

[x_kla_x]

wyd6969: Im using an Antec 350 watt and my 5V line has been 4.98 with this boards and with my old Epox-8k3a+. The 3.3 is more like 3.33 / 3.30. With the Epox I had from 3.26 -> 3.34 . I do miss a MEM and AGP voltage sensor onboard though. It's nice to have the posibility to check it if you want to.

 

[Lord_of_Decay]

The the HD issue make sure the the HD's jumper configuration is set correctly for Primary Master. I ran into that problem also, sure enough the HD itself wasnt configured properly, changed jumpers and was problem free.

 

[trulyred]

Thanks trulyred. What do you mean by formatt software? Do you mean like repartitioning it? I have a new IBM ATA100 GXP120 80GB HD. It should not give any problems with newer boards. Everything I am using with this board worked fine with my Epox 8k3a+ board, including RAM and HD. I am currently using Win XP Pro but I also tried WIN ME. Did not change very much anyway, and I always do a clean install.

formatt software that came with the hard drive. in this case maxblast plus II.I down loaded the latest version from the maxtor site cause the disk that came with the hd was not winxp compatable.winxp is not a dos oriented os. Anyhow ,I agree a clean install is the only way to go. ........tr

 

[trulyred]

Have you guys had any problems relating to voltage on your boards?... I have my 420watt generic PSU running my 2000+ on a A7V8X at default everything and I get god damn ~4.96 instead of a sweet 5.05... Have you guys had similar problems? Any help would be great

I have an enermax 360w psu and it is @4.972. is there a problem here?my machine is running excellent as far as I can tell. .tr

 

[x_kla_x]

Lord_of_Decay: Im definatly sure that I set all jumpers correctly. HD as primary master
DVD as primary slave
CD-RW as secondary master
CD-rom as secondary slave
the secondary worked fine but the primary did only detect the atapi device but when I changed HD to slave and dvd to master it detected it but the HD is only detected as ATA 33. Could this be some conflict with ata100/ata33?

trulyred: I did not get any software with my IBM 120GXP HD. But do you think PartitionMagic will do OK?

 

[trulyred]

do a little research and see if there is a download for your hd at the ibm website it might be worth your time...........tr

 

[x_kla_x]

Do anyone know how to configure the raid channel as an xtra ide channel without having to use a second HD?

 

[trulyred]

kla,I just re-read your initial post and am wondering why are you using two cd drives and a dvd drive? in other words,can you not do with just a cd burner,and the dvd and forego the other cd? I don't think you can configure the raid for that.You might want to have a scsi card type of cd reader in order to get what you are looking for...........tr

 

[drewthomas14]

the voltages are fine. for the most part your voltages wont be right on.

 

[wellsw]

Setting it up

Here is a couple things that helped me
1. set the speed way down when loading the OS
I set my xp 1900+ to 1200 and xp loaded much better

2. the MB (or OS) would not recognize my second unformatted HD as slave
I disconnected the master HD and changed the jumper and rebooted from the XP CD.. let it format the drive and stopped it before it loaded the OS again. then put both drives back like they were and they both showed up fine.

everything else seems to be real smooth.. I have used Epox and Soyo MBs before and they were ok.. but this and the kt333 that I blew up (my dumb fault) have both been easier to work with...
I think im a Asus fan now.

 

[x_kla_x]

kla,I just re-read your initial post and am wondering why are you using two cd drives and a dvd drive? in other words,can you not do with just a cd burner,and the dvd and forego the other cd? I don't think you can configure the raid for that.You might want to have a scsi card type of cd reader in order to get what you are looking for...........tr

Actually it's because my DVD only reads CD's @ 40x, and my burner writes @ 48x. Thats why I have the extra 52x CD-rom. Pluss acsess times are A LOT quicker.

 

[x_kla_x]

Re: Setting it up

Here is a couple things that helped me
1. set the speed way down when loading the OS
I set my xp 1900+ to 1200 and xp loaded much better

2. the MB (or OS) would not recognize my second unformatted HD as slave
I disconnected the master HD and changed the jumper and rebooted from the XP CD.. let it format the drive and stopped it before it loaded the OS again. then put both drives back like they were and they both showed up fine.

everything else seems to be real smooth.. I have used Epox and Soyo MBs before and they were ok.. but this and the kt333 that I blew up (my dumb fault) have both been easier to work with...
I think im a Asus fan now.

So what your saying is that I should delete all partitions and let XP handle it. I already tried somthing like that but I used Partitionmagic 7 pro to make new one's. It didn't work. What I have come 2 notice is that if I go in to BIOS look at the page where all drives are listed. They all say AUTO if I mark the first one "when HD is master" press enter it wont detect it. But if I skip to the primary slave "DVD-ROM " then go 1 by 1 from there to secondary slave, then at last it detects it. When I save config and restart it goes back 2 where it was. Even If I set HD data manually