A7V Nightmare in the Making!

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I just bough parts to upgrade my pc. I decided to basically build a new machine. After reading lots of reviews (most of them here at Tom's), I decided on a T-Bird/A7V combo. Much to my dismay, my machine crashes every time I run anything with 3d graphics or video.

I've been searching the internet for faqs and tibits of information, but nothing that I've tried has worked. I have the latest version of the bios and 4-in-1 drivers. I've tried numerous bios settings, hoping to put an end to what I suspect are agp-related errors. Nothing has worked.

Please help me! I don't want to believe that the Intel fans are right about AMD setups, but 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
zip drive
cd
cd-rw
Asus v7700 GeForce2 GTS
Monster Sound MX300
3Com WinModem
Diamond Fireport SCSI card

Thanks,
-Conrad
 

RavenPrime

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Dec 31, 2007
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First off, I suggest you upgrade to Win98 SE or higher. Second you can find step by step instructions for setting up an A7V at <A HREF="http://www.amdzone.com/index.cfm" target="_new">http://www.amdzone.com/index.cfm</A>. Third, use the Detonator3 drivers rather than the Asus driver for the video card. Other points to know:
1) don't put any cards in PCI slot 1 (shares IRQ with AGP),
2) Avoid using PCI slot 2 (shares IRQ with ATA/100 controller) or disable the ATA/100 controller if you are not using it,
3) upgrade the BIOS to 1005c,
4) upgrade to the Via 4in1 driver v4.25a,
5) upgrade the ATA/100 controller driver to v1.60 (Build 33) unless you have it disabled in the BIOS.

<i>Guess my favorite football team!</i> :cool: James
 
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Thanks, James.

I did some more poking around. I disconnected everything but the video card and the hd, and found that I could run 3d programs without crashing. I started adding devices back, and it seems that the conflict is with my Monster Sound MX300.

I tried the sound card in each slot. Crashes every time. I've read that the thing to do is to use slot 3, set the IRQ manually to 5, and reserve IRQ5 for legacy devices. I tried this, too, with no luck. This makes me think I need to replace the sound card, as there are no jumpers or dip switches that will let me set anything in HW on the card.

Any thoughts?
 
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It's interesting that it was the sound card. I have a classic Athlon 600 in an Asus K7M with a SB Live Value. I update drivers whenever something new comes out. And ever since I built the system it hangs for a second when the sound driver loads. And sometimes it crashes (about once in every 10 boots).
 

blah

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The MX300 and KT chipsets are having the problems in the hardware itself. There is no cure for that, luckily I am running my MX300 on KT7 board (had to return A7V back, too many problems with it) in the slot 5 (no other slot likes it), so you might try to play with it a little, but I did not want to have any problems in the future upgrades (DDR, whatever) so I just bought the Live!5.1 Platinum. I think that will give me couple of years head acke free upgrades. But at this point still using MX... hehe

K7 + KT7 + MX300 + VooDoo3000 = :smile:
 

phsstpok

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Dec 31, 2007
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What you have done has worked for some people but it seems more like luck. I don't mean you have done anything wrong just getting the combination of things right is very difficult.

The general problem is that there is an incompatibility between the KT133 (and KX133) chipset and sound cards with the Aureal A3D chip(s). (At least that is what I have gathered from reading). 16-bit sound blaster emulation requires a dedicated IRQ. The KT133 chipset doesn't seem to like this. What makes the situation different with Aureal sound cards is that conflicts are not properly detected resulting instability to say the least. Instead of Windows reportin resource conflicts you get crashes and sound problems. You can try to isolate the IRQ using PnP options in the BIOS for legacy hardware. However, it is more reliable simply to turn off 16-bit emulation. Turning it off, of course, means that 16-bit sound won't work, (no sound in DOS games). This should not be a be a big handicap plus you get back an IRQ.

The fix varies for each sound card but it usually involves disabling sound blaster emulation in Device Manager and removing references from AUTOEXEC.BAT where the 16-bit TSR would be activated.

I'm being little general here because I never had to do it. You can read more about the problem in Paul's Unofficial KT7 FAQ, http://www.icrontic.com/faqs/kt7faq/kt7faq.htm. Look in the Sound Cards section. The fixes are not KT7 specific.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 02/02/01 02:26 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
 
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hallo my friend
your soundcard is use a vortes2 chip
there are ways to make this work on a via mb
look at the vortexofsound site
there you can find the latest drivers and install instuctions

personaly i was trying to get an vortex 1 card to work on a kt7, but that one seems to be really mission impossible

I want a tbird
 
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I am using nothing but aureal sound cards in four athlon systems using abit ka7 and kt7 motherboards. Follow these steps. Remove your proprietary drivers and install the reference aureal drivers. Disable the sound blaster emulation in windows, you don't need it for anything but old dos games. Make sure that the sound card is not in the first pci slot. You should be able to run smoothly.