A7N8X Deluxe and Barton 2500+

[ghoward]

I just built a new computer for a friend using the A7N8X Deluxe motherboard, an AMD Barton 2500+ processor, and two 256MB sticks of Crucial PC2700 RAM. The BIOS is booting the computer VERY slowly -- probably somewhere around five minutes just to get to the reading boot devices phase. None of the options in the BIOS setup are helping to fix this problem (though I did have to adjust the frequency setting to get the FSB to run at 333Mhz instead of 200Mhz). BIOS POST says "Memory Frequency is at 166 Mhz." In addition, while my new Western Digital Special Edition (8MB cache) hard drive is showing up in the BIOS POST and setup just fine, when I try to install WindowsXP Home (albeit slowly), the OS setup claims no hard drive is detected on the machine. I have tried flashing the BIOS to version 1002A (the BIOS file current as of 2003/02/26), and the flash was successful, but it hasn't fixed my problem. My motherboard's PCB revision number is 1.06.

Can any of you suggest how to fix this problem? I doubt this is relevant, but I had to guess a little to match up my Antec Sonata's wires for the front panel audio connections to the motherboard's headers. The system is also running a Sapphire ATI Radeon 9500 Pro, a Lite-On CD/RW drive, and a generic floppy drive. I have hooked up my case's IEEE1394 port and two USB ports and connected the Game Port that takes up a PCI slot. Thanks for your help.

Greg Howard
http://www.project-echelon.com

 

[tRiXtA]

I own almost the same set up as you. Try disabling your firewire (iee1394) and / or your serial ata and apparently that helps speed your boot up alot. Also, I cant recall where, but i have read about people having issues with their wd 8 meg cache drives... maybe check out <A HREF="http://www.nforcershq.com" target="_new"> Nforcers HQ</A>

Good Luck!

Check out my <A HREF="http://www3.sympatico.ca/rdykens" target="_new">webpage</A> for hardware / software support and lots of computer tweaks!

Rob

<b>The pentium 2 I once adored is dead! Long live my barton excruciatingly ripping 700 fps in soldier of fortune!!! </b><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by trixta on 03/27/03 02:26 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[sterlon]

If you are not using the sata disable it and you will find it is much faster booting.

OH crap its on fire again

 

[tRiXtA]

maybe i am mistaken i thought i just wrote that right above you. I dunno. ?

<b>The pentium 2 I once adored is dead! Long live my barton excruciatingly ripping 700 fps in soldier of fortune!!! </b>

 

[ghoward]

I have disabled SATA using the jumper on the board, but it hasn't fixed anything. I looked through the nforcershq.com forums and found nothing on issues with the hard drive in recent posts. I just got off the phone with Asus, and they told me to run Memtest-86 and see if maybe the L1/L2 caches are malfunctioning. No problems in the test so far. Their other suggestion was to reseat the processor and heatsink, but I haven't tried that yet. Anyone else have problems like these? The system is still booting VERY slowly and XP setup isn't seeing the hard drive. Help please!

Greg Howard
http://www.project-echelon.com

 

[ghoward]

Figured it out. In case anyone runs across the same thing, the problem was that Western Digital drives can get picky about their jumpers on nForce boards. Apparently, setting the drive to either Master or Slave mode causes all sorts of problems like the ones I described above -- slow boot times, OS's not installing, etc. Setting the drive jumpers to standalone or cable select modes fixes the problem.

I now have everything installed fine and the system is running well. 3DMark 2001SE score is 12279 and the 3DMark 2003 score was somewhere in the 3600 range, I believe. Thanks for your help anyway, guys.

Greg Howard
http://www.project-echelon.com

 

[vsafin]

aw crap, I especially changed it to master so it would work better. Hmeh...i didnt boot it up yet, but if it doesnt work good I'll change it.