-Expletive Deleted- gaming machine issues. Perspective?

[weekendwarrior]

So I have an -Expletive Deleted- system that just arrived last friday, and I've been running into issues. And most likely creating more issues, but it's all in the name of getting it fixed.

The system is a -Mythical Spyplane- 7500.

Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
CPU: AMD Athlon 64X2 4200 (2.2GHz)
RAM: X DDR SDRAM PC3200 4x512DIMMs @333MHz
Storage: Hitachi 2x250GB SATAII 7200 Drives (RAID Stripe)
Hitachi 2x160GB SATAII 7200 Drives (RAID Stripe)
Hitachi 2x160GB SATAII 7200 Drives (RAID Stripe)
Video: NVidia GeForce 7800 GTX 512 (Single)
Sound: Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Extreme Music
Other: X TV Tuner Card
Optical: Samsung DVD+-RW Dual Layer (w/ Lightscribe)
X CD+-RW/DVD
Additional: X Added four 90mm fans to cool HD stack.


The system came with Windows XP MCE 2005, and I have not formatted it yet. I was planning to put multiple XP partitions on a RAID 10 or 0+1 with the four 160s, one for gaming, and one MCE, to run Virtual PC with anything else I want to do. However, this has gone awry:

Before making any modifications, drivers, hardware, anything:
Could not install FEAR, Could not install Half Life 2, Could not run Call of Duty 2 after an install.
The machine has long boot delays, and occasional blue screens.

Installed hardware monitoring software (ASUS-specific) to keep an eye on temps. Temps stay in the 100 degree range most of the time. (Nowhere near my Athlon 64 3200, but it shouldn't be unstable, either.)

Creative's soundcard creates static on my speakers through the digital interface to my receiver.

||Decided to try to start the machine over with a new installation of Windows XP. Installed the four SATA 160s on the additional Silicon Image RAID controller, initialized them as a RAID 10. Booted into the MCE partition on the other two drives, and formatted the RAID 10, which took hours. The SI chip is slow. Horribly slow. Decided to move them to the NVidia RAID controller, which is much faster, had to re-initialize them in a 0+1. Installed Windows on the RAID. Installation proceeded without issues, until machine rebooted and began GUI portion. When it was finished copying files, it BSODed and rebooted. Windows Partition starts to boot, and BSODs every time.||

So I went back to using the Win MCE on the 250s, and right now, I am kind of stuck. -Expletive Deleted- doesn't believe in releasing up-to-date firmware patches or drivers, and in fact is about six months behind. Using new reference drivers with the old BIOS quadruples the instability to a reboot-after-three-minutes level, or a won't-boot-at-all. Updating the BIOS using the reference ASUS BIOS voids my four year warranty.

So... any ideas?

(Let me say now that I mean useful ideas.) "Dump that -blank- and get a -blank-." is not a useful idea.

 

[pat]

If you have good faith in your PSU, then put the ram voltage a 2.7 volts...

 

[Vascular]

Have you tried Alienware customer service??
You paid enough for that thing call em.

Creative's soundcard creates static on my speakers through the digital interface to my receiver.

What receiver are you speaking of??

 

[weekendwarrior]

I've got a Pioneer receiver. I use the SPDIF to run it. It's working... at the moment.

And yes, I called the tech support, but they wouldn't hear of the possibility of allowing me to upgrade my firmware.

Another issue I'm having is that Windows installer is seeing the hard drives on the array directly, not the actual array or volume itself. (On the NVidia card.)

 

[kittle]

looks like you have 2 basic choices here.

1) Fight alienware and make them give you a system that works. RMA it over and over until it behaves.

2) Screw alienware and try to fix it yourself.
- to this end, id start by yanking out everything you dont absolutely NEED to boot - soundcar, extra HDs and such. unplug the HDs, or better yet take them out of the case while you work.

Install windows on a single HD and work from there.