Lanpartyut nf3 250gb troubles

[DFItrial]

Is this a Bad motherboard?

 

I have multiple problems with this board.

 

1st: The hard drive is booting up slowly or not at all. Its starts the boot process and gets to the windows splash screen and I can here the hard drive stop spinning. It sits there for about 1min doing nothing and then I hear the hard drive start up again and the system boots. I have the same problem when opening certain applications. Its like the hard drives have a delay in them or something. Thought it was maybe the hard drive so I tested with multiple(4)drives (sata and pata both), fresh installs of windows xp and windows 2000. I have run memtest86 and no errors I have also tested the hard drive on other machines with no problems. I have swapped out memory and (this did not help). PS (430W) tested with other machines and is good.

 

2nd If the system actually boots up, it freezes after I open two or three windows (not open at the same time) (i.e. try to open my computer 3 separate times ). Nothing on the system respond and I have to pull the power cord to get it to shut down.

 

3rd. Everytime I load the nVidia chipset drivers included on the cd I get stop errors and the system will not boot. The only thing I can do is reinstall windows to remove this error.

 

4th. The internet will not connect (I see a lot of people have this problem). I cannot trouble shoot this because if I try to get to the IP setting the system freezes (see #2 above)

 

This board was bougth only 3 months ago and never overclocked.

[cyberfossil]

PUT YOUR SPECS IN YOUR SIG!!!

 

read this :cat:

[cyberfossil]

did you install the nvidia ide drivers? if you did uninstall them and run the stock microsoft drivers. need more info on you hardware like make and model #. to be of any help to you.

[DFItrial]

Sorry, I added hardware to sig.

[red930]

DFItrial,

 

Read the stickies all the way through. Print them out for future reference. I used "copy and paste" to build a Word document so I can have them available at all times.

 

If you don't understand something listed, copy the text to a post and give us the specific area you are having trouble with. This will allow us to give you a better response.

 

This is copied directly from the stickies...

 

"NOTE: NF2/NF3 OWNERS - IF YOUR SYSTEM FREEZES UP AFTER INSTALLING THE SW-IDE DRIVER IN THE NF2/NF3 CHIPSET PACKAGE, PLEASE UNINSTALL THE CHIPSET DRIVERS AND RE-INSTALL AND TELL THE SW-IDE DRIVER PROMPT TO "NO" AND DO NOT INSTALL THEM!!! SW-IDE DRIVER IS WELL KNOWN FOR HOSING/LOCKING/FREEZING/NO-BOOTING ETC AFTER INSTALLING!!!"

 

Good luck.

[cyberfossil]

need more info on your power supply like make and model. did it come with your case? if so it may be suspect also.

[red930]

Try starting with a simple build. Use the stickies to reset your CMOS and load BIOS defaults.

 

Start with one stick of memory and an optical or floppy drive and run several passes of memtest on each stick to qualify them.

 

Perform an install with just one stick of memory, hard drive and optical drive.

 

Take it slow and make sure things checkout before you move to the next step.

 

Let us know your progress.

[DFItrial]

I don't remember power supply model but it is an Enermax 430W (will have to wait until I get home for the model).

 

 

Also

 

At first I did intstall the SW-IDE drive this is when the system had stop errors and I had to reformat the drive and reinstall windows. After that I did not install this driver and I still had the slow system and freeze ups (but it did boot).

 

 

I did try with single sticks of ram (no go). I don't know how much more bare bones I can go 1HD, FD, DVD drive and video card. Guess I could remove the DVD drive and FD.

 

 

 

 

thanks for the quick replies

[nSaNe]

could that be a faulty HDD... thats what i would check out.

[cyberfossil]

he already said he tried 4 different hard drives. just some other thoughts. what are the voltages reported in the bios? are the drives detected by auto ? try to set to LBA. are the drive settings set with UMDA enabled? are you using the right end of the connector for master in the ide drive?/jumpers for master slave? try booting without the optical drive. is throttling enabled?

[DFItrial]

The drives are detected in auto. I also tried with setting them to LBA. Tried with UDMA enabled and disabled (no difference). Double-checked the cabling (OK). I tried setting up the comp with just HDD and video card (still problems). I also tried a new Antec True 430W with all voltages reading correct.

 

Could these symptoms be a indication of a bad processor. (the blocks that scroll across the windows xp splash screen stutter at startup and system freezes when opening a window and moving it around on the screen.)

[RGone]

Ok some things to try all at one time not separately but as a total configuration. Note: for official bios or 9/14 and NO LATER bios.

 

1. Go into bios right side menu and load optimized defaults save and exit and reboot.

 

2. Re-enter bios and turn off ALL unused items. If you are using PATA drive or single SATA drive make sure you do nOt have IDE raid turned on at all. Turn of serial port, firewire, parallel port and such in bios IF you are not using. Reboot and Re-enter bios. Make sure you have DISABLED boot other device and that in Hard drive boot priority that you have chosen the correct hard drive to boot first.

 

3. Now in bios again In Picture #4 here set voltages as follows. CPU Vid Control =1.55Volts. CPU VID Special Control = 110%. Chipset Voltage = 1.7V. AGP Voltage = 1.7V. Dram Voltage = 2.8V.

 

4. Again in Pic #4 above set CPU Bus Frequency=200 and just below it AGP Frequency =67.

 

5. Again in Pic #4 where you see DRAM Configuration enter and set the DRAM Frequency Set to 166(DRAM/FSB : 5/06.

 

6. Now reboot and see how the setup works. You will have to make sure that you have not overlooked any setting or made error as I am used to just thumbing thru the bios and I know what I am looking for and you may have to take your time and get them all set rightly.

 

Let us know.

 

RGone...