crashing occasionally after load optimized bios?

[SeanFL]

I upgraded my bios last week on the DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D to 4/2006. Then I loaded the optimized settings.

 

All has been fine with the exception of the system has crashed 3 times on me in the past 4 days. It's an audio/video workstation and it has never done that in it's 10 month history. Last time it happened after about 12 minutes of recording audio...a hard crash. This past time when it happened, when Windows rebooted, it came up and gave me the "report error" option and I took it. It reported back "Error caused by a device driver."

 

It sure seems odd that it's started after I upgraded the bios. Any ideas on what to try next? I don't want to keep losing audio. Thank you! Sean

[Sharp]

Hello,

 

What BIOS were you using before?

 

Always run memtest before flashing the bios and after flashing the bios.

Run it for at least 3 hours.

 

Make sure that all 4 power connectors are plugged into the board

# 24pin ATX connector.

# 4pin +12v P4 connector, near the ATX connector.

# Floppy power connector, under the CPU socket.

# Hard drive power connector, on top the chipset fan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Insert the memory into the Orange slots

 

 

Have you ever tested your PC with memtest?

Have you recently changed any hardware?

Your power supply is also on the low side.

[SeanFL]

I was using 11-14-2005. Can I go back to it easilly and see if that fixes it or does that cause more problems?

 

I have not run memtest yet...I'll do that next. And try a long overnight cmos clear possibly?

 

Sean

[ganders75]

If you update your BIOS, or change core hardware in your system (like the PSU, or CPU) you should always do your stability test again from scratch - starting with a full MemTest run. Your new BIOS may require different settings to your original one. Also, Optimised Defaults will often not work with these boards. You should find some known good settings for your memory/cpu and work from there... Check the stock speed database, or bleedinedge OCZ forums for more info...

[SeanFL]

I've tried some of the tests and things seem fine. Today it crashed after just a few minutes of recording, so I've been trying to figure out if some software has gone corrupt or what. Reading the last line of your post ganders75, makes me think that the next step should be to take the fail-safe or default bios settings and see if that helps. Sound like a good next step?

 

This machine had been rock solid until the bios update...and I'm guessing I may not have selected the "optimized" setting when I originally set it up. If I'm not OC or anything else, will I see measurable performance differences between optimized and fail-safe?

 

Sean

[PUTALE1]

I had similar problem when I update the bios. Try to reset the CMOS, and don't use optimized bios setting, rather go into your bios and reset all the options. Also, you may want to reinstall AMD's Dual core driver (it helped me).

[tasr]

I think SAMSAMHA is on the money. Loading defaults may only get you so far.

 

This is why Stability testing is important. It will determine if you need to tweak those “Default” setting. The main culprit is these types of situations is memory timings.

 

Have you tested with Prime95?

[SeanFL]

thanks to all so far. The standard bios settings have helped, but I just had another crash today. A friend came over with a floppy ready...First step was to run Windows Memory Diagnostic (we'll run the other tests mentioned above tonight when the machine isn't needed).

 

and within 30 minutes I got an error on pass 2 (full test).

test: Erand. Address 09230168.

 

I realize I may need to test the sticks independently to figure out which one failed. Does this test tell me which one had the error?

 

And does this tell me that one of the ocz sticks is bad or do I need to adjust something in bios?

 

Thank you. Hoping to get crash free soon. Sean

[Praz]

It's possible that it could be faulty memory or incorrect settings. Instead of using the Windows Memory Test run MemTest from within the Bios. We are more familiar with what the different tests mean in Memtest.