Help! GA-ZXR giving me headache

[Guest]

Hi,
I have just purchased this board and I am having serious problems with it. My system is as follows:
GA-ZXR Revision 3 board
2x 128mb 100MHz Dimm
AMD Athlon 1.4GHz 266MHz FSB
ATI All In Wonder Pro video card
Maxtor diamond max 31GB disk

I can not run windows ME, it blue screens and says system halted. When detecting hardware during reinstalling windows ME it crashes when detecting devices and installing drivers.

I have been told this is because I had a 200W power supply, I changed to a 300W and still no joy. Now I am told I need PC 133 NP CL2 Ram. I previously bought revision 1 of this board, and got no response from it. I was told I needed revision 3 to get the 266MHz fsb cpu to work. I am getting a bit cheesed off now, as its costing me more and more and MORE money, and I am still not getting anywhere. Can you please tell me:

- If my setup will work
- If I am being given Bullshit by the retailer (who wont take it back as they say its my ram that’s the problem)
- What settings I should be running.

Thanks,

Chris

Chris McMillan
=============================
ICQ: 267759
me@chris-mcmillan.com
http://www.chris-mcmillan.com

 

[Boondock_Saint]

Well, here is the info on your board taken from Gigabyte's website itself:

Socket A for AMD Athlon™ /Duron™266/200MHz FSB processors
Provides 3 DIMMs up to 1.5GB SDRAM
Provides AGP 4X slot & AMR slot
Creative CT5880 4 channel audio
Up to 4 UDMA ATA 100/66 IDE RAID devices and 4 UDMA ATA 100/66 IDE devices supported
Provides RAID 0 or RAID 1 function
Supports 4 USB ports
Supports ACPI & STR (Suspend-To-RAM)
Multi-FSB, Multiplier settings
Multi-CPU voltage, SDRAM voltage, AGP voltage settings
Supports DualBIOS™, EasyTune III™& @BIOS™
H/W monitoring & PC99 connectors

That would rule out your processor being not compatible from a bus speed point of view, but I am not sure if your BIOS would support it. Some mainboards needed or need an upgraded BIOS to get the full use of 1.4GHz CPU's.

200 watts is WAY too low, good that you upgraded it. I would say that 300 watts is the minimum, with 350+ watts being a good number.

I am not sure on the issue concerning your SDRAM speeds. You put in 100MHz DIMMS, but I do not know if these would be backward compatible with 133MHz FSB. I would think they would be, as you are moving down, not up.

I am curious as to their saying the RAM is the culprit. It qualifies as hardware, but does it really need to be detected by WinME? Only the BIOS and bootup really do that. I am not sure though, so don't take my word for it.

 

[DOOM]

Did you set up your system like that BEFORE you installed Windows ME? If you already had ME installed on your drive, and then changed your mobo, you probably need to reinstall Windows.

I run Win2k, and I get stop errors under the following circumstances:
- A hard drive is connected to the system, but disabled in BIOS
- My memory settings in BIOS are incorrect (e.g. CL2 when they should be CL3)
- The settings for one mem bank are different than the other

These could just be issues with my motherboard, but maybe the info will be helpful to you anyway.

Good luck.



-DOOM
"Ultimately, there is no knowledge -- only belief."

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

you cannot run 133fsb with pc100 ram.. your essenitially overclocking your ram.. the reason why it is crashing is because your overclocking your ram and your ram is overheating. set it to the right speed of 100mhz fsb and it should be fine if not then get new ram as i'm sure it's bad from you overclocking the ram.

pc100 = 100mhz fsb supported no higher
pc133 = 133mhz fsb supported no higher
pc1600 = 100mhz fsb ddr
pc2100 = 133mhz fsb ddr

ok?

so tune down your fsb to 100 and it should be fine.



<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=9933" target="_new"> My Rig </A>

 

[Guest]

Thanks for all your help guys, I was a bit curious as to why I could get all the way to installing hardware in windows setup before it crashed if it was my ram or that psu that was the problem. I shall get some PC133 memory and see if its any different.

I'll keep you posted and let you know what happens.

Thanks again,

Chris