A7V HELP!!!

[Mario741]

Hello, I need help. Can someone help me? I have AMD 900, Asus a7v mb, 128 ram, GeForce 200 MX NVIDIA 64MG, SBlaster Live, 20 gb westerndidgital HD 5400rpm at100
I am not overclocked, I have a problem with my data getting corrupt I called westerndidgital. They think I either need a Bios update or that I need to change the setting in the Bios.
The tech said that there is a fix out there? I already have bios update 1006. Also is 4.35 4 in 1 drivers ok?
Any Ideas?
Thanks in advance!
Mario

Life is too short, don't mess it up!!

 

[svol]

If I'm right your mobo has the 'famous' Via 686b Southbridge which can give data corruption problems in combination with the SB Live!, but better check in your manual if I'm right.
If I am then check these links for more info:
<A HREF="http://www.viahardware.com/686bfaq.shtm" target="_new">http://www.viahardware.com/686bfaq.shtm</A>
<A HREF="http://www.viahardware.com/686b_1.shtm" target="_new">http://www.viahardware.com/686b_1.shtm</A>

Also update your BIOS to the latest version, it may help.

My case has so many fans that it hovers above the ground .

 

[NickM]

Mario, you don’t need to post your message everywhere, it brings some confusion...

You’d better provide more info on your problem, just briefly, as you’ve been already asked:

- How old is the system?
- Have you installed or updated something recently or before it happened?
- did you have at least one day (or one week, month) when you were happy with your system, and everything worked fine?
- How it happened and how often?
- What is the exact error message(s) you get?
- Have you performed virus scan with the latest updates?
- Why do you think you need a new BIOS and why the 1006 BiOS update had been performed?
- Why do you think you need new settings for your BIOS?
- Are you sure that BiOS flash and driver update were performed properly, in proper order?
- Can you say that the power supply fan working properly?

Unfortunately, as you’ve already been told, there’s an issue with corrupted data and instability with your Asus A7V.
You can try google.com or excite.com and look through articles there like this:

<b>Asus AV7 Instability Troubleshooting:</b>
<A HREF="http://usitweb.shef.ac.uk/~aca00lad/articles/010-1.htm" target="_new">http://usitweb.shef.ac.uk/~aca00lad/articles/010-1.htm</A>

“<font color=blue>…If I had a dollar for everytime someone said "Im not overclocking, but I have stability problems" to find out the WERE overclocking, started having problems, and just set it back to normal.. I would be rich. You can use the same partition copy to return yourself back to a stable setup if this occurs as well. … <b>Also, if you change BIOS's the copy of the partition you made with the original BIOS, may not work as stable with the new BIOS so keep that in mind as well...</b>”</font color=blue>

From what they posted, ...you'd better reformat and reinstall Windows after BIOS upgrade...

But there are other sugestions in that article and different opinions at other sites.
Also check out those:

<A HREF="http://www.a7vtroubleshooting.com/articles/cebit/" target="_new">http://www.a7vtroubleshooting.com/articles/cebit/</A>

<A HREF="http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/497/2001/2/0/5252201/" target="_new">http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/497/2001/2/0/5252201/</A>

and others as well. And I hope somebody of the owners of the A7V will help you soon with your famous VIA south bridge problem.

 

[Mario741]

Ok lets see.
-System is less than a year old. It has run 8 months with only minor headaches.
-I upgraded the bios to 1006 8 monthes ago to stop the crashes I was getting with the video performance.
that took of it until now!
Trouble seem to start when I upgraded to IExplorer6.0
The system crashed a day later. Since then I have written my hd back to 0's 4 or 5 times. I tried reinstalling windows98 then I tried 98SE. I was getting different errors: Ranging from registry (3 times) to SD32.exe to vnetbios.Vxd It seems that I'm loosing data!
- its is getting worse, I can now barly get windows installed before it starts crashing!
- I used Nortons and pc-cillin virus protections. ( I always kept it updated)
-Powersupply is 300 watts aprroved- Hasn't given me any trouble!
-I HAVE NEVER TRIED TO OVER CLOCK THIS COMPUTER OR ANY OTHER!!
The westerndidgital tech suggested trying a new cable,that is where I am.
Thanks again!


Life is too short, don't mess it up!!

 

[NickM]

> <font color=green>"...Trouble seem to start when I upgraded to IExplorer6.0
The system crashed a day later."</font color=green>

That's weird.

<font color=green>"Since then I have written my hd back to 0's 4 or 5 times..."</font color=green>

What's the utility?
I see, you are mentioning your HDD all the time. It also looks suspicious to me. And that SD32.exe eror is related to HDD...
I would try another HDD (sorry, if you don't have that possibility), even an old one, any capacity but proved working fine.
Try also your machine with all other IDE devices disconnected, and only your HDD on primary, then on secondary IDE controller.
If you don't have a spare proved working HDD, in case you're thinking about Win98 reinstall once more in order to continue troubleshooting, re-partition and reformat your HDD on smaller capacity. Just make <b>one</b> partition only enough for your troubleshooting. The rest of the space should be un-partitioned. A new cable is a good idea. I would try an old proved working regular IDE cable also.

Somebody asked about BIOS default. How about that? OK, yours has never been overckloced. Good. But can you just try to low settings a bit (for FSB along with the RAM and processor) and see whether it helps? Everything I'm suggesting is for troubleshooting purpose only, to isolate the problem.

 

[Mario741]

Ok here is an update. I have kept it simple. I followed the a the advice from the posts. However I think the major problem is that I was getting data corruption from transfering too big of a file on my network. The SoundBlaster was causing the corruption. Asus has a fix, but I haven't tried it yet. So far so good.
Here is the link to the Asus a7v, sb fixhttp://download.asus.com.tw/mb_dl_menu.asp
Thanks for all the help!


Life is too short, don't mess it up!!

 

[lrmv]

Make sure the SoundBlaster is in the MIDDLE slot, it's the only slot that doesn't share interrupts with other cards. This is known to cause problems with the A7V.


<i><font color=purple>Running within specs is the key to a stable computer!</font color=purple></i>
<font color=red>LRMV</font color=red>

 

[Mario741]

It is! But the Asus site is down AGAIN!! Asus support! Hah!

Life is too short, don't mess it up!!