Abit KG7-RAID crashes

[Guest]

I seem to have a 'slight' stability problem. My system crashes, or hangs to be more precise, all the time.

I suppose I should give a description of my system:
Abit KG7-RAID (Latest available drivers)
K7 1400 (266)
Taisol Processor fan (noisy as h...ll)
2x256Mb DDR-SDRAM 266 MHz (Samsung)
2xIBM GXP60 40Mb hard-drives in RAID-0 configuration
Plextor 24x10x40 CD-RW
3Com 905B-TX NIC
Soundblaster 128 PCI
Leadtek 320II ? (TNT2-Ultra) AGP

...and just about everything seems to be placed on IRQ-11. Should and can I change that? Is that the cause? Or is it Soundblaster making my life misserable?

I run W2k PRO SP2

Help, someone!!!

 

[peartree]

Only one question left- how long has this been going on in relation to how long you've been running this mobo/system. I could suggest that you install Windows XP, as some problems I was having went away as soon as I did.

p.s. consider changing that cooling fan! Too much vibration can't be doing good for your cpu. Enough vibes and the thing could walk right out of the socket.

 

[Guest]

Few things to consider:

1.Remove the sound card and see if that improves it, or try it in a different slot like pci#3 which worked for me.

2.Check all jumpers and connections on the m/board.

3.Memory voltage should be set to 2.5v.

4.Swap DDR sticks around or take one out for test purposes, check handbook for Dimm placement/requirements for installation.

5.Check the FSB is not too high. (My Samshite pc2100 didn’t like it one bit).

6.Vcore voltage should be around 1.8v for that CPU.

7.Power supply should be 300-350w or above, some yum cha units of high wattage don’t deliver enough amps.

8.Try manually allocating the IRQ's.

9.Re-load o/s.

10.If all else fails remove all peripherals, then only have the basics installed to start up the system. Once it’s stable at default settings individually add in each component until you isolate the offender.

Good luck!




<font color=blue>Lizards</font color=blue> hide under rocks,<font color=red>Trolls</font color=red> hide under bridges & jump out to ruin posts<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by scotty3303 on 09/14/01 01:16 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

Well, I put it togehter this week. It wouldn't surprise me if things would go away if installed XP. On my old system everything worked fine after I had installed W2k. I do think it's the IRQ's. ...or IRQ-11 to be more precise. Why does the system insist on placing e.g. the NIC, Soundcard, AGP and the RAID-controller on the same IRQ?

If I choose to set the IRQ's my self, I have to do this in the BIOS. Right? OK, not a problem! How do I know what IRQ's are free? Will the BIOS tell me to get lost if I pick the wrong one? I've fumbled a bit with this, and many IRQ's seems to be 'reserved'. For what and to whom? When I look in the W2k system information the system is only using 3 or 4 different IRQ's. (Most of the stuff is placed on 11!) On my Dell workstation at work, there is not more than 1, or 2 at the max, on each IRQ. So, there's no danger in me setting the IRQ's in the BIOS? Do I have to set all, or just some?

(Thanks for the help by the way!)

 

[peartree]

Well, the real 'culprit' here is Plug and Play. That's the main mechanism behind IRQ sharing in modern systems. Yes, you can often go into the system BIOS and set 'Plug and Play Operating System' to No, but I really recommend aginst it.
It's perfectly okay to let the system put things where it wants them. Just be thankful that modern systems are able to put all that stuff more or less 'on one IRQ'. Now, if I had to choose something that might not be set up right, I'd look into the RAID situation. I don't have experience with a RAID board, but I've seen an awful lot of people have difficulty setting up RAID arrays. One thing that often works is to set the system's drives back to default, then set things up carefully, item by item, making sure that you understand each thing.
What KIND of crash do you get?