crashing/blue screen on Abit IS7G

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit (More info?)

Hi Folks,

This is a bit of info rather than a query for help.

For many months now, my other half has been using an IS7G based machine
that I built up for her. Its been behaving impeccably apart from one BIG
problem and that is occasionally, when accessing/inserting a DVD/CD (or
worse, trying to burn a disk), the machine will blue screen and perform
a system dump.

I've tried everything. Reinstall XP, update the BIOS, update the DVD
Drives BIOS's, try different drives/burners, update the graphics
drivers, change the graphics card make, update the software (Nero was
the worst offender, in fact probably the main/only offender) etc etc.
Even changed to a big power supply!!
Still the same prob.
I posted here. Nothing doing. Bloody blue screens every now and again!!

The machine spec was
Standard 2.4GHz HT P4
1GB RAM
Radeon 9700 AIW Pro
Two 120GB Maxtor PATA drives with Abit V2 SATA converters connected to
the Intel Onchip SATA controller as a striped pair.

Recently, I've been swapping bits around our machines and have upgraded
her machine to have 2 * 160GB Maxtor true SATA drives.
This time, the setup is the same, but I've disabled the Intel controller
and am now using the onboard SI SATA one.

Guess what....... touch wood, but no blue screens at all so far!

Oh, and these new drives are pretty fast. The sustained data transfer
rate has gone up from around 85MB/s to nearly 110MB/s.
SO it also looks like there isn't that much of a problem using the SI
PCI bus method over the dedicated intel one.

Once I'm sure she's got all the data off the old 120GB drives, I'm
sticking them in my A7V600 board - we'll see then if its the SATA
convertors that were a prob (although I doubt it)

It was one of those problems that wasn't so frequent that it made you
want to scrap the machine, but it happened often enough to make an
otherwise great machine a pain in the butt!

Hope this helps anyone else in the same situation.

Oh - and of course its solved the problem with the V1 boards of the hard
disk light not working when using RAID

Cheers


--
Gareth Jones

 

[TomG]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit (More info?)

interesting info... there are enough of us using the Intel ICH5R in raid
configuration out here on either the IC7 or IS7 boards, including me on an
IC7-G (raid 0) to tell you that there is nothing pervasive with respect to
the controller that would cause a BSOD issue. there were some issues with
the Intel SATA bios early on but by and large, it has settled down with the
newer SATA bios for the most part.

the bigger issue, personal opinion, is what devices were using what
resources in the first config versus what the current config is doing...
you could have a completely different setup at the OS level which is helping
to alleviate something that was causing heartburn in the first setup...

--

Thomas Geery
Network+ certified

ftp://geerynet.d2g.com
ftp://68.98.180.8 Abit Mirror <----- Cable modem IP
This IP is dynamic so it *could* change!...
over 130,000 FTP users served!
^^^^^^^




"Gareth Jones" <gareth@thelecturer.com> wrote in message
news:rw87auJdujkAFwtM@swansea.demon.co.uk...
> Hi Folks,
>
> This is a bit of info rather than a query for help.
>
> For many months now, my other half has been using an IS7G based machine
> that I built up for her. Its been behaving impeccably apart from one BIG
> problem and that is occasionally, when accessing/inserting a DVD/CD (or
> worse, trying to burn a disk), the machine will blue screen and perform
> a system dump.
>
> I've tried everything. Reinstall XP, update the BIOS, update the DVD
> Drives BIOS's, try different drives/burners, update the graphics
> drivers, change the graphics card make, update the software (Nero was
> the worst offender, in fact probably the main/only offender) etc etc.
> Even changed to a big power supply!!
> Still the same prob.
> I posted here. Nothing doing. Bloody blue screens every now and again!!
>
> The machine spec was
> Standard 2.4GHz HT P4
> 1GB RAM
> Radeon 9700 AIW Pro
> Two 120GB Maxtor PATA drives with Abit V2 SATA converters connected to
> the Intel Onchip SATA controller as a striped pair.
>
> Recently, I've been swapping bits around our machines and have upgraded
> her machine to have 2 * 160GB Maxtor true SATA drives.
> This time, the setup is the same, but I've disabled the Intel controller
> and am now using the onboard SI SATA one.
>
> Guess what....... touch wood, but no blue screens at all so far!
>
> Oh, and these new drives are pretty fast. The sustained data transfer
> rate has gone up from around 85MB/s to nearly 110MB/s.
> SO it also looks like there isn't that much of a problem using the SI
> PCI bus method over the dedicated intel one.
>
> Once I'm sure she's got all the data off the old 120GB drives, I'm
> sticking them in my A7V600 board - we'll see then if its the SATA
> convertors that were a prob (although I doubt it)
>
> It was one of those problems that wasn't so frequent that it made you
> want to scrap the machine, but it happened often enough to make an
> otherwise great machine a pain in the butt!
>
> Hope this helps anyone else in the same situation.
>
> Oh - and of course its solved the problem with the V1 boards of the hard
> disk light not working when using RAID
>
> Cheers
>
>
> --
> Gareth Jones

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit (More info?)

In message <hvrkc.5152$pJ1.724@lakeread02>, TomG
<tgeery-NOSPAM-@cox.net> writes
>interesting info... there are enough of us using the Intel ICH5R in raid
>configuration out here on either the IC7 or IS7 boards, including me on an
>IC7-G (raid 0) to tell you that there is nothing pervasive with respect to
>the controller that would cause a BSOD issue. there were some issues with
>the Intel SATA bios early on but by and large, it has settled down with the
>newer SATA bios for the most part.
>
>the bigger issue, personal opinion, is what devices were using what
>resources in the first config versus what the current config is doing...
>you could have a completely different setup at the OS level which is helping
>to alleviate something that was causing heartburn in the first setup...

You may be correct. The trouble is, many people don't have the
time/knowledge/inclination to delve deeply enough to find out.
In my case, the machine was being used on such a regular basis that I
could never get on the dratted thing to have a fiddle and sort it out
before now!

Most machines just install ..... and that's it! They should just work (I
know.... I know it never happens like that ;-)
But in this case, I wiped XP, even went from the original to a new SP1
installation and the problem was still there.

You have now just made me think of a possibility - I have a feeling the
motherboard was one of the first IS7's . Although I updated the BIOS,
I'm now wondering if I downloaded the corresponding Intel SATA OS
driver.... hmmmm....... can't honestly remember (that was months ago!)
But I recently had a problem with an early Abit MAX V1 athlon board with
PATA RAID where a different BIOS/Driver config gave funnies when they
didn't have exactly the same version numbers.

Whatever, I thought I'd post it as I've googled periodically to check
and a few others also seem to have had similar probs but no-one came up
with a definitive answer.
At least it looks like if you have the BSOD prob and you're using the
onchip SATA, its certainly worth trying the onboard one.

Personally, I think its worth it just to get that bloody hard disk LED
to work at last ;-)



--
Gareth Jones

 

[TomG]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit (More info?)

I have an early version of the board too and I did remember to update the
SATA drivers as the bios got updated... just for reference.

--

Thomas Geery
Network+ certified

ftp://geerynet.d2g.com
ftp://68.98.180.8 Abit Mirror <----- Cable modem IP
This IP is dynamic so it *could* change!...
over 130,000 FTP users served!
^^^^^^^




"Gareth Jones" <gareth@thelecturer.com> wrote in message
news:vG+a3CLWBlkAFwud@swansea.demon.co.uk...
> In message <hvrkc.5152$pJ1.724@lakeread02>, TomG
> <tgeery-NOSPAM-@cox.net> writes
> >interesting info... there are enough of us using the Intel ICH5R in raid
> >configuration out here on either the IC7 or IS7 boards, including me on
an
> >IC7-G (raid 0) to tell you that there is nothing pervasive with respect
to
> >the controller that would cause a BSOD issue. there were some issues
with
> >the Intel SATA bios early on but by and large, it has settled down with
the
> >newer SATA bios for the most part.
> >
> >the bigger issue, personal opinion, is what devices were using what
> >resources in the first config versus what the current config is doing...
> >you could have a completely different setup at the OS level which is
helping
> >to alleviate something that was causing heartburn in the first setup...
>
> You may be correct. The trouble is, many people don't have the
> time/knowledge/inclination to delve deeply enough to find out.
> In my case, the machine was being used on such a regular basis that I
> could never get on the dratted thing to have a fiddle and sort it out
> before now!
>
> Most machines just install ..... and that's it! They should just work (I
> know.... I know it never happens like that ;-)
> But in this case, I wiped XP, even went from the original to a new SP1
> installation and the problem was still there.
>
> You have now just made me think of a possibility - I have a feeling the
> motherboard was one of the first IS7's . Although I updated the BIOS,
> I'm now wondering if I downloaded the corresponding Intel SATA OS
> driver.... hmmmm....... can't honestly remember (that was months ago!)
> But I recently had a problem with an early Abit MAX V1 athlon board with
> PATA RAID where a different BIOS/Driver config gave funnies when they
> didn't have exactly the same version numbers.
>
> Whatever, I thought I'd post it as I've googled periodically to check
> and a few others also seem to have had similar probs but no-one came up
> with a definitive answer.
> At least it looks like if you have the BSOD prob and you're using the
> onchip SATA, its certainly worth trying the onboard one.
>
> Personally, I think its worth it just to get that bloody hard disk LED
> to work at last ;-)
>
>
>
> --
> Gareth Jones