A7V Nightmare Continues

[Guest]

I posted a note about my situation a few days ago. I have a t-bird running on an A7V, and I've had nothing but trouble with it so far. With the help of people on this message board, I traced the problem (windows lock-ups) to my Diamond Monster MX300 sound card.

I uninstalled that card, installed a Sound Blaster Live card. I installed it in slot 3, set the IRQ to 5, and reserved IRQ 5 in bios. I then disabled dos support for the card from the device manager, and removed references to the dos driver from the config.sys and autoexec.bat files. Everything was working great, so I installed all of my software and was good to go.

But seeing that my v7700 was running at AGP1x, and knowing that my system seemed to be stable, I decided to go back into bios and try setting the system settings to "optimal", to get a little more speed out of my pc.

Well windows wouldn't even boot, so I went back and set the bios to "normal". Much to my dismay, when I rebooted, my video card was in VGA mode. After about ten seconds, I got a blue screen of death with a message that read, "...a volume that has been removed had open files on it...".

I was horrified, because I had become all to familiar with that message during my earlier trouble. I really am not sure what to do now. I don't know whether the issue is related to my installation of my hard drive on the ATA100 bus, or if it's still somehow related to my sound card.

Please help me! I have NEVER had computer problems like this (and I've built 4 or 5 machines). My cpu runs between 41-49c, so I don't think the issue is heat related.

Here's my setup:

Win98
Asus A7V
T-Bird 1000mhz
FOP-38 hs/fan
IBM 45gb hd -- primary ATA100 master
zip drive -- secondary IDE master
cd-rw -- primary IDE master
cd -- primary IDE slave
Asus v7700 GeForce2 GTS
Monster Sound MX300 -- slot 3, IRQ 5
3Com WinModem

Thanks,
-Conrad

 

[Bubba]

Try updating your bios to version 1005b or 1005c.
Also, when you install the via drivers, pick the AGP turbo mode.

 

[Guest]

I've seen some posts on this forum about the mx300 problems on a7v. You need to go back a few weeks and see if you can find them. Apparently there is a fix for that combination.

 

[Guest]

Most problems stemming from all of the K7 mainboards is the fact that they are running VIA chipsets. VIA has a bunch of fixes for most of the problems on their website. Have you tried their new drivers for your chipset? Try their website.

Or.. go with a mainboard with a chipset from AMD (for the AMD CPU's) and Intel (for the Intel CPU's).

The third party stuff really sucks.

 

[blah]

I have tried Via's driver loooong time ago, once. Never after that. Never will. Never had problems since. Never will. Windows drivers, everything runs, as it should. Even MX300 on the same Via's chipset you guys are having problems with... hehe


K7 + KT7 + MX300 + VooDoo3000 =

 

[Guest]

If you were having trouble with the Via drivers, and found something different that worked, what was it?

 

[Guest]

Perhaps you found the right combination and that's great.

I however, find that the via drivers are a must and make things work as opposed to breaking them (for via chipset boards).

 

[blah]

There was nothing spesual. Even W95 were running stunning on a K7M with classic Athlon which I recently sold. And it terms of stability I had better system than I have now with Abit board. But anyway, I never installed any Via-Shmia drivers after windows installation. Just loaded drivers for video and sound. Never ever had problems with anything. Windows have the basic stuff, I did not need "extra" 3 frames per second in UT as it runs as smooooth as the glass anyway.
So go figure... hehe


K7 + KT7 + MX300 + VooDoo3000 =

 

[Guest]

That's awkward. Perhaps it is the Win95 that is doing it. I find that if I don't load the VIA drivers, the AGP and other stuff.. just won't work right.

But aside, VIA has many other problems, such as not releasing immature products (KT133 and KM133 as examples). Not to mention that their new chipsets, PM/PL133 are horrible.