HELP!! NEW MSI KT266a and Athlon XP 1600 Woes!!

[Guest]

I just purchased a MSI KT266a, non-raid, non USB 2.0 and a Athlon 1600 XP with a Thermalright SK6 HSF.
The problems that i'm having are:

1. When all settings are set to auto, only 100MHz FSB is showing in the BIOS and it will run at 1050, 10.5 Multiplier. When I up the FSB to 133, the POST shows Athlon 1600 XP and after POST and initial Windows XP load, it hardlocks or restarts. The cooling is extreme so I know it's not a Heat Issue. Here is my setup:

Antec 1040b w/Enermax 330 Watt PS(5 Case Fans)
MSI KT266a Mainboard
Athlon 1600 XP w/SK6 and Thermal Paste
512MB Crucial PC2100
Visiontek Geforce 3
2 30gig IBM 75GXP Deskstars
Liteon 24X CDRW
Toshiba 16X DVD
Philips Rythmic Edge Soundcard
Kingston 10/100 NIC

I know that I put thermal paste on the CPU and some on the actual wafer itself. Would thermal paste in the Bridge Burn holes from AMD cause problems like this?

Please Help!!

 

[Guest]

On the Athlon getting goo down in the wafer I didn't see a problem after I got a XP chip I was told was dead when the person smeared it all over the entire chip, core...wafer and all...wouldn't post. His comment was that the packet of silicone was so large he assumed you put it all over. I got a free chip out of it anyway, cleaned it up and by the way take a VERY GOOD piece of towel such as a shop towel disposable kind and dip it into the thing and it should come out......anyway personally I don't see it causing a problem because it is nonconductive and the hole leads to copper.

Ok...the MSI K7T266 Pro 2 I assume is the mobo? If you got the problem after post and hardlock restarts this typical and common problem to this board is fixed by the clearing of CMOS with the jumper under the battery. Obviously unplug the computer before doing this......and this time setup all using default settings and for 100% sure don't use the feature for performance settings in bios until you get it stable. It tells you it helps provide the optimum settings for speed but I've found it not to be true.

Now...when you reboot F1 into bios after delete key......it prompts you to F1 then setting basic bios. The reboot, reboot problem for us was the memory other than Cas Latency of 2 nothing else was happy in memory...2.5 under STD is even better until we clear up the problem.

The tweaks that bonified work.....Turn on 4X not auto, Fast Writes....apature, com 1 com 2 off, sound off, modem riser off, enable USB....disable on board game port.
Only tweak 101 things seem to work......the issue of 166fsb clock DOES kill USB as the KT266 issue had done.


SO HOW IS MY MSI?? Don't know ask the guy I sold it to for 100 bucks in a system I built him where he didn't want ANY tweaks, just a computer, no oc, no optimizing.

I hagled based on my having an MSI to go out and buy the ASUS A7V266e or the Soyo so highly recommended. Based on the fact the ASUS has given us some recent RMA's with other boards (DDR) we also couldn't get one locally so I opted on the good deal at www.tcwo.com for the Soyo Dragon Plus and let me tell you with an 1800+ chip and this new Aluminum Lian Li case.....just a Thermaltake 6CU+ @7,000rpm and some Arctic Silver I'm at 106F and was able to clock OVER 166 without loss of any USB or funky acting boots.....PR showed 2344 and I increased on Mad Onion's test on 2001 from the MSI at 8110 not overclocked to the SOYO not overclocked to 8440 and that isn't with anything than the standard bios.

P.S. some of the info. on the forum at MSI will clue you in on how troublesome the board can be. I can handle the blue screens, os problems, even a bios flash but this MSI was TORTURE. Can you swap the mobo out?? If you can I'd do so....also while I think of it, there WAS an issue with using all 3 DIMM slots....Bios update to 3.2 fixes that issue.


Good luck

Bob

 

[amebapk]

haha, me got this problem also..
but i finally fixed it, go to the Bios Main Menu, and set "High Performace Defaults".
restart
all done..
good luck

 

[Guest]

Things i've tried but to no avail....same problem:

New power supply
Updated BIOS from MSI
VOLTAGE for CPU
Memory Swapping, Settings, and different Slots
PCI Cards in different slots
Swapped all components except CPU and Motherboard
Tried MSI Forum BIOS setup guide
Took everything apart and piece by piece install

Tried everyting that I thought of as well as suggested to me and still same thing.