Athlon/KT7 issue, help needed?

tHE vAGGABOND

New PC Problem

KT7, Thunderbird 1.2, 256 133 ram, GF2mx, SB Live – IBM HD. Up to date drivers and also the 4 in 1’s

OS installed. It works fine, and the machine is dead fast. Problem is that now and again applications just die. I thought it was dodgy Black and White and Tribes 2 for a while over the weekend. But what ever I do it just **** out back to the desktop, no warnings or anything. App just dies.

Another problem is that explorer.exe crashes all the time. I don’t really use Windows that much anymore, therefore don’t really know if this just happens everyone?

CPU is not over clocked, and CPU temp is fine and I never get a blue screen. I thought it may be dodgy ram, and therefore got more, new ram. The result is exactly the same problem, with either and/or both sticks in the machine.

I’ve scanned the HD and there are no bad sectors.

I’ve tried both 2k and 98 and get the same problem with each OS.

Anyone got any ideas?

Yurmasyurda

Did you try upping the core volt?

Canaboid

Up core voltage by one notch.
Use 4in1 4.29 (no longer beta). Other versions cause problems. Download here http://www.viahardware.com/download/index.shtm#4in1

gandalf

Also be aware that the Creative SB Live has issues with Athlons using the VIA chipset. I get the occasional lock ups in UT. Not that bad any more only once every 2 weeks or so.

Gandalf.

tHE vAGGABOND

I'll up the core volt tongight, and check the version on the 4 in 1's tonight - cheers!

Gand, I have the latest SB Live drivers, but I suppose its just these things not working with Athlons more than anything!

Renton

I had problems with a Athalon 1 Ghz server I built a while back, if you are checking the CPU Temperaterure in the BIOS, and it seems okay, thats because the thermister cools very quickly on a reboot, and the temperature reading is very unaccurate. (un/mis/not ?) Em So basically what you want to do is make sure you are getting at least 5200 RPM's out of your cpu fan, it should probably say this in your Bios aswell. The other lads are right aswell, you shud up the voltage, and make you have the right VIA 4-in-1 drivers, but If you are getting explorer crashes it seems likely that its overheating,

Dont be fooled by the BIOS telling you what temperature you are getting. If you dont have a good enough fan, goto http://www.overclockers.co.uk and order yourself a slightyly more kickass fan

RentZ

Gerry

It sounds like overheating to me, but it could a few other things. Heres some things to try:

take the side of the case off, see does it crash.

take out the sblive, see does it crash.

Windows shouldnt crash, I can leave win2k running for weeks without crashes.

If taking the case off worked, you need a better cpu cooling fan, and possibly some case cooling as well. You can check the cpu temp in windows by installing via hardware monitor from the abit cd.

If taking out the sblive worked, you can try what canaboid said basically

If neither of the above suggestions help, its unfortunately a case of mucking with bios settings.

Try changing the cpu drive strength, also try enabling memory hole. Disable agp 4x and fast writes. Cant think of much more right now, perhaps someone who has one of these boards may be able to help more.

Mills

Had much the same problem with almost exactly the same system when I upgraded my machine, KT7A, Thunderbird, GF2 and an SB Live, it took me about 2 weeks to find the problem. On the BIOS settings sheet I'd been given with the motherboard the CPU Drive strength was 3, I tried changing it to 2 and I haven't had the problem since. There are so many things that it could be though, just a case of working your way through all the suggestions

Canaboid

I got mine working eventually. You may need to research what pci slots are assigned what IRQs and swap the card accordingly. I disabled acpi on win2k and assigned resources manually.
Also disable serial and parallel ports in bios if they are not needed.

astrofool

www.geforcefaq.com probably has an answer for it, or the best place is:
http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kt7/kt7faq.htm

lots about the KT7 there

Megatron

I posted a similar topic a few weeks back .
ME seems to run fine ..... Win98 goes mental,
win95 i installed but it nearly ate me !!!

i never tried the whole cpu drive strenght ...
must try that tonight ...

---

No !!!!! I will crush you with my Bare hands

tHE vAGGABOND

erm, it appears to be stable now...

New install of 2k, on ntfs. PCI cards in the right slots as per the KT7 faq (link on OC.co.uk)

I got 2 hours of tribes 2 and an hour of Black and White on it last night. Both at max gfx settings. I did not get a l33t machine to turn down gfx settings to make games look quake brown

Solution: I had the 4 in 1's installed allright, but I did not have the USB filter thing installed - never herd of it b4 yesterday TBH.

Something mister Yurmasyurda said made sense too, turn off all services in the bios you dont need. I do that in my unix kernal, so why not the bios of this machine. So Paralell port and com ports are disabled, along with a few other things. Saving IRQ's if nothing else.

The second ram stick I bought appears to be a bit dodgy, as ram can be now and again. Machine will crash in all types of ways with it in, and is fine with it out of the box. I will contact my vendor

Seems to work for me now! Thanks for the help ya'll.