I've posted this sad story on a couple other boards...thought I'd try you guys, too. 
Back in February, I built my first new personal system in 3 years:
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
Asus A7V266-E mobo
512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR SDRAM
With the release of GeForce 4 imminent, I decided to wait on the video card, so I continued using my trusty GeForce 256 DDR. System was rock solid. CPU temp ~46C at idle and as much as ~53C under load. One quirk...a slight, regular, crawling video jitter (I didn't get this on my old system with the same monitor and video card.)
Last week I purchased a new PNY Verto GeForce 4 Ti4400...got the card, installation went flawlessly, and my system ran perfectly...
...for about 2 hours.
The first problem happened while running the nvidia werewolf demo for about the 5th time (boy that's a cool demo)...the screen suddenly went pink and green dots, and my system appeared to lock up. No big deal, happens to everyone occasionally...I hit the reset button...and to my suprise, instead of seeing my normal BIOS screen, I got random vertical lines alternating with inverse video boxes and other various poop. ACK! Shut down, reseated the card, power on...same problem. Did it again, same problem. (Verified that the fan was running on the video card, btw) Boy was I crushed...I called NewEgg and got an RMA # and boxed up my apparently fried new video card.
Then, just for grins, I decided to put the video card in my server. Server comes up fine! Rebooted my server, still comes up fine. ACK #2! At this point, I basically tried everything I could think of on MY box to try to get the card to work...changed from jumpered to jumperless and back, changed voltages, flashed the BIOS, cleared the BIOS, removed all other expansion cards, underclocked the CPU. Note that I was getting a single POST beep on EVERY boot, just no video...hmmmm...
I put my new card back in my server, in case it was just a fluke. BTW, server specs:
Intel Pentium II 350 (o/c to 466MHz)
Asus P2B
256MB Crucial PC133
Made this guy out of parts from my old box, basically do my routing in software on him...anywho, the new card is back in my server, server boots up fine. Load one of the nvidia demos and let it run for an hour or so, runs fine.
At this point, I was pretty much willing to do anything to get my video card to work, so I purchased an Antec TruePower 430W power supply at my local CompUSA. It was basically the only other thing I could think of doing, and I did have a cheapie 300W PowerMan in my case. Brought it home, slapped it in, and guess what...scrambled BIOS screen. Screaming in frustration, I gave my box the 3-fingerd salute and BEEP...I GET A NORMAL BIOS SCREEN. System comes up fine, runs fine for hours under load.
Now I only get the scrambled BIOS screen on cold boot, but this stuff makes me veeeery nervous. Because of the video jitter I mentioned earlier, I'm beginning to wonder if the problem isn't the motherboard. Anyone know of any problems with the voltage regulator on any revision of the A7V266-E?
Back in February, I built my first new personal system in 3 years:
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
Asus A7V266-E mobo
512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR SDRAM
With the release of GeForce 4 imminent, I decided to wait on the video card, so I continued using my trusty GeForce 256 DDR. System was rock solid. CPU temp ~46C at idle and as much as ~53C under load. One quirk...a slight, regular, crawling video jitter (I didn't get this on my old system with the same monitor and video card.)
Last week I purchased a new PNY Verto GeForce 4 Ti4400...got the card, installation went flawlessly, and my system ran perfectly...
...for about 2 hours.
The first problem happened while running the nvidia werewolf demo for about the 5th time (boy that's a cool demo)...the screen suddenly went pink and green dots, and my system appeared to lock up. No big deal, happens to everyone occasionally...I hit the reset button...and to my suprise, instead of seeing my normal BIOS screen, I got random vertical lines alternating with inverse video boxes and other various poop. ACK! Shut down, reseated the card, power on...same problem. Did it again, same problem. (Verified that the fan was running on the video card, btw) Boy was I crushed...I called NewEgg and got an RMA # and boxed up my apparently fried new video card.
Then, just for grins, I decided to put the video card in my server. Server comes up fine! Rebooted my server, still comes up fine. ACK #2! At this point, I basically tried everything I could think of on MY box to try to get the card to work...changed from jumpered to jumperless and back, changed voltages, flashed the BIOS, cleared the BIOS, removed all other expansion cards, underclocked the CPU. Note that I was getting a single POST beep on EVERY boot, just no video...hmmmm...
I put my new card back in my server, in case it was just a fluke. BTW, server specs:
Intel Pentium II 350 (o/c to 466MHz)
Asus P2B
256MB Crucial PC133
Made this guy out of parts from my old box, basically do my routing in software on him...anywho, the new card is back in my server, server boots up fine. Load one of the nvidia demos and let it run for an hour or so, runs fine.
At this point, I was pretty much willing to do anything to get my video card to work, so I purchased an Antec TruePower 430W power supply at my local CompUSA. It was basically the only other thing I could think of doing, and I did have a cheapie 300W PowerMan in my case. Brought it home, slapped it in, and guess what...scrambled BIOS screen. Screaming in frustration, I gave my box the 3-fingerd salute and BEEP...I GET A NORMAL BIOS SCREEN. System comes up fine, runs fine for hours under load.
Now I only get the scrambled BIOS screen on cold boot, but this stuff makes me veeeery nervous. Because of the video jitter I mentioned earlier, I'm beginning to wonder if the problem isn't the motherboard. Anyone know of any problems with the voltage regulator on any revision of the A7V266-E?
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