kacklepatra

well the more i read the more i agree, 15 months ago it was fine, but with video cards getting more beastly and processors getting more cores it is time to upgrade, but if the memory is in good shape, could it be the pwr causing my HD to corrupt? or might it be an overheated southbridge, i mean the sata cable came out a darker shade of yellow, almost brown, where it plugs in next to the heatsink. virus scan turns nothing up and everything was installed and dowloaded from behind a hardware firewall, so i doubt thats it either.... seems like somethings broken

no fair! u beat me by like 10 seconds fixing that, im just so distraught that i immedialtely did a quick reply before i saw i had forgotten fix location, anywho i have done the firt 2 steps of memtest sucessfully before posting, i will try to get ahole of prime95 but its gonna suck cause i dont have a working floppy on this machine that im using to post

ok a few things, the kingmax memory i have was on a dfi approved list when i bought it, s/n exactly as it was on the dfi site(i cannot find this now, however) the memory timings are set to auto cl2.5 1t, in orange slots the antec power supply was on the nvidia list of sli approved pwr supplied for dual 6800's, i thought i had been informed 7800's consume less power. All 4 point of power are connected. (a small aquare one, 3 pin near cpu, a 4pin, and the atx)It is 550 watts, and i use several fans plus a nic, if you guys say get a bigger one I will take your word for it but id rather not spend the money on such a boring upgrade if i can help it. i never install the nvidia ide driver becuase in the past, and with several MB's it has caused problems, i tried out the most recent and i can run the system either way, The stabitly test i did was to run memtest86 while i watched a couple dvd's it ran about 4 hrs with 0 errors. If after this updated info you still think is pwr ill go buy a beefier supply, THANKS AGAIN for your quick replies

Hi everyone, ive been using this system for a little over a year now, had a little trouble getting up and running, but the information I gathered lurking in the forums here allowed for a year of schoolwork and gaming. THX! Ill start at the beginning of this new trial- It began about a week ago when i tried to run an application and nothing happened, double clicked a few times with no result, so i figured id log off and log back in, no sweat, right? wrong- logging off insta-rebooted my machine and after the bios did its thing windows was unable to load, and said to use the recovery console to repair. I followed the steps on the microsoft support page and nothing would work. everything it said to try was thwarted to some degree or another. So i thought my drive must be failing, ran data lifeguard tools everything looked fine so i figured it was just time to give up and install a fresh copy of windows. Windows installed without any difficulty, ran all the updates/sp2 directx and started to install my software, ANYTHING that i downloaded other than drivers reported corrupted data and would not work, finally on one of the required reboots my registry was corrupted and i was back to square one unable to launch windows. Tried another HD a 160gm maxtor with the same results, and yes i changed the drive to "auto" in the bios to support large drives of that size. So now im thinking back to the days i built the system and whats different now, and i remember the second gig of ram i added, so i enable memtest in the bios and begin to scan each chip, 2 of the modules would not even boot the system - just beep, and the origional gig tested out fine with no errors, so i figure i fixed the problem and reinstall windows, after updating to the newest bios. Reistalled windows, all updates, drivers, and directx was able to dowlaid and patch all the games i had problems with on the first new install, and everytghing was going smoothly played games all night for 2 nights, today i get up to do my online classes and there it is again - Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: windowssystem32configsystem i noticed the southbridge chip fan was not spinning, it gets very hot to the touch and was between 45-47degrees in bios, i removed the broken fan and the bling in an attempt to give the heatsink more surface area. could this be the culprit? I am this close | | to running out to buy an asus board, as a replacement even though all thats mimssing is a tiny fan that i cant seem to find a replacement for. I cleaned all heatsinks/fans was keeping an eye on temps in the bios and nvidia control panel, nothing seemed out of place- I do not overclock at all. period. Ive been building systems for years, and i dont think i made any noob mistakes that led to this, any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks again in advance

I know theres official DFi reps on these forums, abit and asus have released bios updates for thier nforce4 motherboards to fix the problems with soundblaster x-fi. What are DFi's plans in this matter? or will my first dfi board also be my last?

Most Nforce4 motherboard vendors are releasing bios updates to fix the compatability issues with the soundblaster x-fi. WIll DFi be releasing such a bios? Is one really needed? thx.

i finally got it to work. The power cord going in near the south chip was being shared by a fan, the drive, and the dvd drive. taking some load off allowed me to boot successfully doh. Thx for your help.

i have replaced the cord with a more heavy duty that came with it-not the uv reactive one dfi supplies and i got the same result. i did let nvidia boot agent run for like 5 minuites and it finally said it could not detect a drive and to check/replace the wires. I can feel the drive spin up and get warm so between the brand new one and the old one they are both getting power. hope this helps a bit.

same problem here only my system NEVER boots no matter how many times i try. Was rock solid for months

Ok guys, I really need help on this one. My board has been runing fine for a few months. I was playing a game and the screen froze...no big deal its new. Drivers will fix it right? cntrl-alt -delete on winxpsp2.... nada. Wow im actually gonna have to hit reset. So i reboot and the system posts, but detects only my ide cdrom, nothing is detected on my native sata, especially channel 3 wich is where my drive is hooked up to. sytem proceeds to irq page says backup cmos ok, then loads nvidia boot agent and hangs. No os not found msg wich i think is odd since at this point im thinking it is a faulty hard disk. I run the western digital boot disk diagnostic- Drive not found. hmm must be broken, so i run out and buy a new disc thinking im gonna have to reload everything and i get it connected and......same thing happens. I am at a loss to what could be causing this after the system ran stable for so long. I didnt change anything, no new harware was installed, or drivers just reboot and now dead

Mem test is rounding its 15th pass now with no errors. i checked out a post by Angry with a list of reccommended ram, my 2 512's that are on this pc are on the list . My mushkin isnt - but before i switch shouldnt i be seeing errors under memtest? If i dont get errors in memtest, could memory still be the problem? should i just up the voltage? is there any way to do this without having to manually configure everything in the bios? Sorry for the newbness

Im running it right now had it on about 4 or 5 hours now 12 passes all passed, i have some kingston ram i got from best buy, and was thinking of switching the ram between computers but if this is the problem wouldnt i see failures in the memtest? Also I was trying to install some games before i started runnning memtest. I actually got to play BF2 for a lil bit then i tried to install another and got IRQL not Less than or Equal i read in other posts that this can be caused by memory

so, i should take the memory settings off auto in the bios, and configure it like in those posts? i had previosly seen the other post about the correct order to boot, and install since i put this all together just a couple days ago. was waiting all week for the video card to arrive so i had nothing to do but read up on my new toy. DFI is new to me, ive built many computers using ASUS boards. Theres still hope, at least i can post and load windows normally now. I just tried a quick game of battlefield2 and it was great but when i quit the program the system froze, makes me think heat but the only thing hot in my system is the power supply. hrm...

man these boards move fast, almost to the second page for the second time in 10 min - Please Help me!

btw i am not overclocking at all to my knowlege, and dont really care to in the near future. Just want a stable system first mushkin Series Value Model 991145 Type 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Tech Spec Capacity 1GB (2 x 512MB) Speed DDR 400 (PC 3200) Cas Latency 3-3-3-8 Voltage 2.6V ECC No heres more info on the ram