Oh this is bad... I really hope its through some mysterious fault of mine that my system doesn't work, or Asus has produced a truely faulty product. I have just bought a new A7A266 mobo with an athlon 1.2ghz, an older AGP ATI rage 128 graphics card, and a regular harddrive/cdrom from my older computer.
I posted a bit earlier in the thread "A7A, major problem" or something to that effect, because 2000 was crashing when trying to boot up after installing the new motherboard. Anyway, I had to end up reformatting (after backing _everything_ up... ugh) and changing the partition back to Fat32 in case I wanted to try windows 9x (glad I did). Anyway, upon reformatting and installation of 2k, the system mysteriously freezes (NO error reporting) when the startup procedure enters windows (prior to the login prompts etc). I thought ok, what is this garbage... so I booted in safe mode. It happens that I COULD boot in safe mode (important for later), but I still couldn't figure out why the system would hang in a normal boot.
When it did hang, the system would not respond, and I couldn't turn the caps lock key on/off, which means that the motherboard was also "hung" (if thats what the caps problem indicates). Anyway, in safe mode I was getting all kinds of weird errors, thinking that it was the hard drive. I did multiple scanning diagnostics on the hard drive, and it turned out fine in all checks, and defragmented fine. In safe mode, I could not connect to the internet through a modem (even with networking support enabled in safe mode). The program that sets up the internet connection (the wizard, as microsoft calls it) crashes everytime I try and set up a connection. Anyway, a bunch of Misc. problems like that. After many trials and tribulations I guessed that it was my hard drive so I changed hard drives, to a smaller drive... I thought that with the new hard drive and its fat32 partition, I could AT LEAST boot into windows ME and get rolling on some things. I reformatted whatever was on the drive and set up windows ME through boot disks. Works!? ... no... crashes the EXACT same way that win2k did, which is suprising since they are completley different operating systems... execept in ME I can't even boot into safe mode, that hangs it as well.. and remember, this is the same hanging error across two different hard drives, and I have the latest bios.
So, its obviously the new motherboard, because both hard drives work on the old motherboard I had, with the ram. I'm guessing its the ram, but I wonder, does ram cause such problems? I can think of no other variable in my system that could cause problems except the ram. Could it cause a system hang like that, ONLY in windows btw? Dos and linux boot fine (well, linux has some odd problems, but it does not "hang"). I was using a 256 card of 133 SDram - I remember when I bought it off of price watch it was labled "low quality" but I didn't really care what that meant, and it worked fine when I got it. Well, while working on the two motherboards (had to switch often because one wouldn't work and the other had access to the net) I came to find out upon one of the switches that one of the gold connectors on the 256 card was literally burnt off. The circuit board on the ram was burnt as well (black). I only noticed this when trying to boot from the new motherboard and it wouldn't post; I put the other 64 card in and it worked fine, and inspected the 256 card afterwards, noticing the blatent burnage.
With that in mind, I was wondering if someone could specify if the ram is a possible culprit for the system hangs (note the 64 card that is in the machine while it hangs works fine on my other machine) and why on earth would the 256 card be burnt all of a sudden? I guess I should be more mad, I mean I did lose a 256 card of ram, but it didn't cost that much, and I'm getting DDR ram soon anyway. If this new motherboard is the reason it was burned, then I don't want to take the chance on frying any other devices. Can a motherboard do that to a card of ram? Does it have something to do with the power supply?
So anyway, here I am, with this new motherboard that doesn't work on any micorosft OS, and generates errors in linux relative to something about the partition sectors generating errors... sounds like a HD problem, but it checks out ok and installs/formats/boots fine (just hangs later), and the hanging is consistent on 2 different hard drives. I really don't want to accuse the motherboard, because I don't want to go through the trouble of sending it back, but honestly this thing hasn't worked with either operating system and is pissing me off!! =)
If anyone has any suggestions, I would be happy to hear them. Would it be advisable to go borrow someone else's 64 card and try it out on the new mobo? Should I trying adding another 64 to what I have to see if it hangs or not? (I would try the damn 256 card but that's gone forever....)
WHere I'm at right now is I just bought a new, higher wattage power supply and am hoping that was the reason the system was hanging... not enough power or something... if that doesn't work, which it probably won't, I'll wait for some replys here (this is my friend's comp) and see if I should try some new ram or something.
These new A7A ali magic boards from ASUS are causing me all kinds of problems and seem to be causing other users problems too.... I hope theres some fix that we can all use on these motherboards, either now or sometime soon, because so many failures in compatibility are unacceptable.
-Phil Crosby
http://www.philisoft.com
http://www.graphics-design.com
I posted a bit earlier in the thread "A7A, major problem" or something to that effect, because 2000 was crashing when trying to boot up after installing the new motherboard. Anyway, I had to end up reformatting (after backing _everything_ up... ugh) and changing the partition back to Fat32 in case I wanted to try windows 9x (glad I did). Anyway, upon reformatting and installation of 2k, the system mysteriously freezes (NO error reporting) when the startup procedure enters windows (prior to the login prompts etc). I thought ok, what is this garbage... so I booted in safe mode. It happens that I COULD boot in safe mode (important for later), but I still couldn't figure out why the system would hang in a normal boot.
When it did hang, the system would not respond, and I couldn't turn the caps lock key on/off, which means that the motherboard was also "hung" (if thats what the caps problem indicates). Anyway, in safe mode I was getting all kinds of weird errors, thinking that it was the hard drive. I did multiple scanning diagnostics on the hard drive, and it turned out fine in all checks, and defragmented fine. In safe mode, I could not connect to the internet through a modem (even with networking support enabled in safe mode). The program that sets up the internet connection (the wizard, as microsoft calls it) crashes everytime I try and set up a connection. Anyway, a bunch of Misc. problems like that. After many trials and tribulations I guessed that it was my hard drive so I changed hard drives, to a smaller drive... I thought that with the new hard drive and its fat32 partition, I could AT LEAST boot into windows ME and get rolling on some things. I reformatted whatever was on the drive and set up windows ME through boot disks. Works!? ... no... crashes the EXACT same way that win2k did, which is suprising since they are completley different operating systems... execept in ME I can't even boot into safe mode, that hangs it as well.. and remember, this is the same hanging error across two different hard drives, and I have the latest bios.
So, its obviously the new motherboard, because both hard drives work on the old motherboard I had, with the ram. I'm guessing its the ram, but I wonder, does ram cause such problems? I can think of no other variable in my system that could cause problems except the ram. Could it cause a system hang like that, ONLY in windows btw? Dos and linux boot fine (well, linux has some odd problems, but it does not "hang"). I was using a 256 card of 133 SDram - I remember when I bought it off of price watch it was labled "low quality" but I didn't really care what that meant, and it worked fine when I got it. Well, while working on the two motherboards (had to switch often because one wouldn't work and the other had access to the net) I came to find out upon one of the switches that one of the gold connectors on the 256 card was literally burnt off. The circuit board on the ram was burnt as well (black). I only noticed this when trying to boot from the new motherboard and it wouldn't post; I put the other 64 card in and it worked fine, and inspected the 256 card afterwards, noticing the blatent burnage.
With that in mind, I was wondering if someone could specify if the ram is a possible culprit for the system hangs (note the 64 card that is in the machine while it hangs works fine on my other machine) and why on earth would the 256 card be burnt all of a sudden? I guess I should be more mad, I mean I did lose a 256 card of ram, but it didn't cost that much, and I'm getting DDR ram soon anyway. If this new motherboard is the reason it was burned, then I don't want to take the chance on frying any other devices. Can a motherboard do that to a card of ram? Does it have something to do with the power supply?
So anyway, here I am, with this new motherboard that doesn't work on any micorosft OS, and generates errors in linux relative to something about the partition sectors generating errors... sounds like a HD problem, but it checks out ok and installs/formats/boots fine (just hangs later), and the hanging is consistent on 2 different hard drives. I really don't want to accuse the motherboard, because I don't want to go through the trouble of sending it back, but honestly this thing hasn't worked with either operating system and is pissing me off!! =)
If anyone has any suggestions, I would be happy to hear them. Would it be advisable to go borrow someone else's 64 card and try it out on the new mobo? Should I trying adding another 64 to what I have to see if it hangs or not? (I would try the damn 256 card but that's gone forever....)
WHere I'm at right now is I just bought a new, higher wattage power supply and am hoping that was the reason the system was hanging... not enough power or something... if that doesn't work, which it probably won't, I'll wait for some replys here (this is my friend's comp) and see if I should try some new ram or something.
These new A7A ali magic boards from ASUS are causing me all kinds of problems and seem to be causing other users problems too.... I hope theres some fix that we can all use on these motherboards, either now or sometime soon, because so many failures in compatibility are unacceptable.
-Phil Crosby
http://www.philisoft.com
http://www.graphics-design.com
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