Hi, I recently put together the following system:

Gigabyte 7VAXP
AMD AthlonXP 2000
Radeon 8500
SB Audigy

I tried to install Windows XP and depending on different combinations of enabled/disabled Integrated Peripherals I would crash in the Windows install process. Usually, it was a BSOD saying Windows is trying shutting down to protect your system and then it would say:

STOP: 0x0000007e (more hex numbers)

Does anyone know what could be causing this? I thought maybe it was the RAID/ATA, but I have my hard drive plugged into IDE1.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

David

I would reseat your memory and set your bios to default mode and try again. Check your raid settings in the bios, and if necessary, disable raid until windows installs the driver for it. What brand and amount of memory are you running? I had a friend who gave up on xp when she found out her system didn't have enough memory to run it properly.

I think o1die is right. It may be a ram issue. Yes reset your bios to default.. How much ram and what kind? Good luck. Take care.

Hang in there. It can only get better!

thanks for the tips.. I've been able to get Windows XP installed, but that was after doing a recovery from a previously failed install, so I'm not sure how stable or good this current version of XP I'm running is. Do you think I can just keep running it or I should reinstall until I get a good install?

I have Corsair XMS memory (DDR400) 256 MB so that should be enough and I gave XP a 15GB primary partition to install itself.

A question on the RAID though: In the 7vaxp bios there is a choice for RAID/ATA, I assume this means that I can use IDE3/4 for ATA devices or for RAID devices? Does the Promise controller handle both? I ask because I have a ZIP IDE drive I want to set up but I'm not sure if IDE3/4 are only for RAID use.

Thanks,

David

I'm having some problems like that too.

I checked out my cpu, memory, and vid card on another computer. And they all worked. So I rma'd my mainboard back.

Now it's pulling this stop stuff on me too. I used this system for 3 or 4 weeks without problems, and now it just went funky.

And the strange thing is my video goes completely wonky. Like the vid card had gone out, but it's a good card. I tested it out for an entire week on another computer while my mainboard rma'd.

And if I let the system cool down for about 30 minutes, it will work ok for about 3 or 4 minutes. Then it does the stop deal, or the video deal. Like something was heating up and going out of sync.

It's really got me guessing. I think I'm going to move my memory to slot 3, instead of slot 1 (right next to the cpu). After that, I guess I'm going to rma my memory stick. It's Geil, but I'm not stressing any of the timings right now.

The power supply is good and plenty. It's been tested on another system for a long time too.

It could be the northbridge overheating, but I seriously doubt that. It's not working that hard at bootup; if I was having problems during games or a cdrom burn, that would be different.

[edit: Well, I tried swapping the memory over to slot 3. I managed to get it working for a little bit longer this time, but the video went competely wonky and it rebooted. I'm guessing it's the memory that's bad. I tested it in another computer, but I didn't really stress test it or anything. I guess the heat just pushes it out of tolerance, but that's kind of crazy seeing how it's got thermal tape and a copper spreader. Rma time...]

[Edit2: Well, I got it to work a little bit longer, but not much. The windows install was going along and the graphics went funky again. But I could see through the garble to where the install was still proceeding. I just can't pinpoint this problem. Damn it. If this is a memory issue, it is a very, very funky memory issue. Usually you don't get graphics corruption *only* with a memory issue. Usually the machine blue screen right off the bat. I guess I'll see about stuffing it my other machine, and letting Sandra take a whack at it for a while before I rma it.]

I recently bought this board and had the EXACT SAME PROBLEM. I am using DDR333 Corsair memory though. The default memory timing is CAS 2. In order to run at 333mhz speed, I had to manually change the timing to CAS 2.5 (hit CTRL+F1 in the BIOS.) Also, make sure you update the BIOS to the latest version before you do anything.

This is lame, because my memory is rated to CAS 2. Here's what I found, while getting my comp set up:

XP 2200, Corsair XMS DDR2700 C2, Gigabyte 7VAXP--no overclocking

266mhz DDR, CAS 2=stable. SiSandra burn in for 24 hours.
333mhz DDR, CAS 2=UNSTABLE. Windows would not load. Randomly rebooted itself.
333mhz DDR, CAS 2.5=stable. SiSandra burn in for 24 hours.

I am, however, having problems with the Firewire ports. Windows reports them as operating, but nothing happens when you plug a device into them.