Uh oh....KT7A-Raid.

[Muso]

I have noticed, as well as everyone else, that this board seems to be a bit(no pun intended) of a booger here lately. Well...guess what? I just put my new system together with bare bones just to get it up and going:
1.4 Amd
Floppy-Sony
Cd-rom-Pioneer
Leadtek Geforce-2 Ultra 64mb
Now this is my first system that I have built from the ground up but I have dealt with switching out components and upgrading various hardware but I think Im beginning to get just as agititated as some of the other 'problemed' users. Mine is coming from more of a 'first timer' point of view though.
I am fairly sure I have all the settings exactly where they are supposed to be and still this thing will not make it past the PCI Listings page. At first it was giving me an error that said DISK BOOT FAILURE Insert system disk and press enter. After what seemed like hours of checking the Bios to make sure everything was correct I switched out the floppy drive since that was the step(loading the 98 start-up) where it was stopping. After I switched out the floppy drive and it makes it all the back to the same screen where it leaves me with this message - Verifying DMI Pool Data. . . and a blinking prompt. I press ENTER and can here the floppy drive run for a second but it doesnt pick any thing up. I have tried alot of start-up disks and switching the ribbon to see if maybe I had it backwards...no go. Any suggestions to get me into the boot seq? No Iwill users please, I already know your answer...lol.

 

[GOD]

have u checked that all the drives were selected to auto in cmos.

GOD...

 

[M@€$†®Ö™]

Gonna throw a couple normal questions at ya. What bios version do you have with that system ? What sound card do you have ? Please list all of your components in detail as I have it can help with your problem in this or future posts and saves time in helping or giving advice =)..

I will refrain from giving advice at this moment other then what worked for me. I cleared the CMOS and used the factory optimized defaults and backed off the CPU speed to get things going.

There are others more familiar with the 1.4 ghz ABIT KT7A-RAID combo then me. Best of luck ! Happy Overclocking !!!

Maestro

 

[Fiz]

Have you tried booting with just the ram, hdd, and video card in there? When I first had my KT7A-Raid, I was getting registry errors like crazy, I had to take out the IDE cables, put in new ones, and finally, they have to be folded a certain way. The other things I have had happen are, when I had the dram speed at anything higher than "fast", it wouldn't detect my hdd's, or it would get stuck at the "verifying DMI pool data" screen. If I put the VIO past 3.3V, the computer locks literally for one second out of every 30. It doesn't crash, just stops for a second, then goes again. I have read that the bios revision on these boards is very important, I have YH on mine and seem to be ok. The most popular are the WW and WZ revisions. I have also had to move my hardware around about 900 times to get it to work right. After all of these stupid thing I had to do, I finally got the thing rock solid, the only time it crashes is when I do something stupid to it. Alot of people say they don't like this board, I personally think its great, once I got all of the "bugs" out of my way, I find it to be a great performer. Good luck.

Fiz

 

[TT120]

Do you have anything in the PCI slot right next to the AGP slot? Mine did the same thing when I had any card in that spot.

 

[Muso]

Its just bare bones. Like I said the only thing I have in it and hooked up is the video card, the hard drive and the floppy. I have tried clearing the cmos numerous times with different settings afterwards without any luck. I havent changed any settings in bios except for the CPU to user defined along with the multiplier to x10.5 which is 1400 with the additon of changing the cpu fsb/pci to 133/33. All in all it sorta looks like this:
CPU operating speed = user defined(1400)
Multiplier=x10.5
cpu fsb/pci clock=133/33
speed error hold= disabled
cpu power supply=default(1.75v)
I/O voltage=3.40v

Prim master=hd40gig wd 7200 u/100
prim slave= none
secondary master=pioneer dvd-rom
sec slave= none

The ram is 256mb ordered from Crucial specifically for the board which is cas 2 and I have even set the SDRAM cycle for 2.
It picks all the components up when posting and the boot sequence is floppy->hdd->ls120->with Boot other devices set for enabled.
As far as settings for peripherals, I havent touched them and all are set on either auto or enabled.
When it makes it to the PCI listing screen and then pops up with Verifying DMI Data Pool. . . it should boot from there with the start-up diskette in but it reads it, then stops. I can continue to press enter and listen to the floppy talk to me but the screen switches to all black with blinking cursor as if it tried to go into to boot up but just stopped.
Lemme know if you guys need more info cuz as I said before Im new on the scene and enjoy working with these things but sometimes I realize when I need someone to throw me a rope...heh. Thanks for all the help.

 

[Fiz]

are you sure that are using the 133/33 not the 133/44? I have done that before and the comp will sit there like a log. try setting your ram to a lower speed just to see what happens.

Fiz

 

[Muso]

yea...thats the setting 133/33.

 

[Muso]

Do you have anything in the PCI slot right next to the AGP slot? Mine did the same thing when I had any card in that spot.

Nothing...My card is agp and I havent installed my sound card yet. I was in the process of preparing myself for the upcoming probs and have only what I need in it.

Have you tried booting with just the ram, hdd, and video card in there? When I first had my KT7A-Raid, I was getting registry errors like crazy, I had to take out the IDE cables, put in new ones, and finally, they have to be folded a certain way. The other things I have had happen are, when I had the dram speed at anything higher than "fast", it wouldn't detect my hdd's, or it would get stuck at the "verifying DMI pool data" screen.

I have tried the booting with only those attached but I havent tried that particular setting on the ram. Right now its worth a try. BBL and tell ya what it did.

 

[Ferg]

I had the same problem. What my problem was my older hard drive, Fujitsu 2.4 GB 5400 rpm couldnt spin up in time for the bois to detect it. So i put a 2 second delay on the hard drive and it starts up fine about 80 percent of the time now, thats prolly the best your gonna do with that drive. Thank god i finally ordered a new IBM 60gxp. Hope that helps it took me a month to figure it out.

 

[Fiz]

Have you tried loading the fail safe defaults in bios yet? That should set everything to its most conservative settings so if there is a bad stick of ram or something like that it may be able to run ok. Have you tried different ram, a different hdd, different video card? I noticed that you haven't mentioned you PSU, how many watts is it? If you are running a 1.4 and your PSU is less that 350, that could very well be what the problem is. Especially if you have a good amount of fans and stuff in there. Hope this helps, i'll be back if I think of anything else.

Fiz

 

[Phil]

Ok I've not seen anyone ask this or you mention this so what heatsink and fan do you have and have you tryed at a lower speed?
and what power supply do you have, make and wattage

 

[Muso]

I think the make of my psu is Future Power and its a 400 watt. I have tried just about every speed(lower than 1400) that was applicable. I have also tried both the load safe defaults as well as the other default setting. My heatsink is very nice also, its a cak 38 globalwin. I dont think I have any problems with that particular stuff. If anyone knows of any conflicts or issues please let me know. Everything checks out ok thats what has me so puzzled. Was there anything strangley unusual that you had to do in the bios before booting? I mean I have most of the my settings for default except for the softmenu III setup where i changed the speed and multiplier. Like I said tho, I have had it at fail safe and optimized and still no go. Im clueless guys...I feel like a blond in a room full of mathematicians. :/

 

[Subzer0]

just an idea, as i had a very similar problem when i flashed my bios ,fat32 was gone, so i reformatted my hdd and then after the new install ,everything ran fine....hope it helps you mate.....................................

 

[JEFF]

is it a new wd drive?,,,did you format and partition?
my wd's didnt come formatted

 

[Muso]

No...its brand new(the hdd), no format, no partition. Should I stick it in another system and format it then? It hasnt booted the first time yet and I havent been able to get to the a:\.

 

[Fiz]

There should be a floppy disk that came with the hdd, put it in the drive then boot up, it should bring you to a program that will let you format and partition the drive. My WD and MAxtor both came with them. The only other thing I could suggest is using a partition magic rescue disk. Good luck.

Fiz

 

[Fiz]

oops, forgot one thing, try swapping out the floppy drive, I had one go bad and the cmp would detect it, but couldn't use it for anything at all. No booting from floppy's or anything, give it a shot.

Fiz

 

[JEFF]

yes put it in another oem comp. that will format for you unless you have a 98 se startrup disc,change to floppy first boot device and enable boot up floppy seek.this should give you the a:\ promt where you can fdisc format.wd's are cheaper and dontr come formatted.i formatted both mine on my oem computer,didn't even remove drive just pulled out ribbon and cable and pluged into new one.

 

[Muso]

This is how it ends.....

OK...I got it up and running and here is what I had to do to get it there. I removed all other components except for floppy and v-card. Inserted the boot up diskette...wallah. It booted. Shut down, hooked up the dvd-rom, and it booted again. Shut down, hooked up the hard drive and once again it booted. I dunno what that process accomplished but hey it worked. I want to thank all you guys for your help and extensive advice and I will surley come here if any problems arise again.