Hi All,
I've posted about this before, and several times on AMD Zone. I've got the following setup:
MSI 6167 w/Athlon 500
SB Live!
Matrox G400 Millenium (Vanilla, not max)
3Com Fast Etherlink XL (3c905b)
IBM Deskstar 7200 RPM 13.5 GB HD
Ever since I got the machine (last November) I've had random hardware lockups, in one of three varieties:
1) Starting a D3D application, the system locks up, with looping sound and frozen screen. (UT, for example). Sometimes I can Ctrl-Alt-Del to reset, but usually I end up hitting the power switch.
2) During normal use (ie, using Netscape) the screen suddenly becomes a garbled mess of green lines and random pixels. Again, I usually have to hardware reset. This doesn't happen often, but when it does happen, it usually comes in spurts. (A few times a day, then not again for a week.) After rebooting from this situation, scandisk usually finds errors in the boot sector of the drive.
3) At boot, when Win98SE is about to load, I get a garbled mess much like the above, but based on the windows logo. This happens after having done nothing to my system, other than shutting it down normally. For these, I have to go run scanreg and restore an older "fixed" registry, even though that does nothing, since I can then re-restore the newer "broken" registry and everything works again. Sometimes, restoring doesn't help, and I have to try a few times before it boots. (This also led to my resintalling Win98.)
So, what I've tried thus far:
- People suspected my generic, 250w power supply. I'm now using an Antec PP303x.
- People suspected my generic PC100 128 MB RAM. I talked to my system vendor, and they sent me a different brand stick.
- I most recently tried forcing AGP1x, AGP2x, and disabling bus mastering. None of those worked. (Actually, they seemed to make it worse.)
- I've fiddled with the memory timings in BIOS, setting them to the least-aggressive options.
- Many people have suspected IRQ problems, and I have spent more time than I can count trying to get things in IRQ slots they'd like. Currently:
05 - SB16 Emulation
06 - Floppy controller
07 - ECP Printer port
08 - CMOS/Real time clock
09 - (Not listed in Win98) ACPI Controller
10 - IRQ Holder/AMD 756 PCI to USB
11 - IRQ Holder/SB Live!/3COM 3c905b
12 - IRQ Holder/Matrox G400
(I'm using a USB mouse, but I've also had a PS2 mouse.) Before anyone suggests it, there is NO way whatsoever to get these three cards to all occupy DIFFERENT, GOOD IRQs on this motherboard. The SB Live always steals 10 or 11 before the G400 can get it (even if I install just the G400 first, then add other cards). I've tried both PCI devices in EVERY combination in all the PCI slots. This is (sadly) the best arrangement of IRQs I can get. ACPI can not be turned off in BIOS (except in older revisions of the BIOS, where the option doesn't actually do anything, and still nothing will take IRQ 9.) Also, there is NO support whatsoever in BIOS for reserving IRQs for specific devices/slots.
I'm at my wits end. I've tried anything and everything I can to stop these irritating (and at times work-disrupting) problems, but to no avail. Does anyone have any more ideas? Could it still be RAM? Should I just toss the 6167 and get a better mobo? I bought the system complete, hopefully the vendor will cooperate with a more expensive solution, but I know there are people with this setup, and no problems. Help!?
-Brian
I've posted about this before, and several times on AMD Zone. I've got the following setup:
MSI 6167 w/Athlon 500
SB Live!
Matrox G400 Millenium (Vanilla, not max)
3Com Fast Etherlink XL (3c905b)
IBM Deskstar 7200 RPM 13.5 GB HD
Ever since I got the machine (last November) I've had random hardware lockups, in one of three varieties:
1) Starting a D3D application, the system locks up, with looping sound and frozen screen. (UT, for example). Sometimes I can Ctrl-Alt-Del to reset, but usually I end up hitting the power switch.
2) During normal use (ie, using Netscape) the screen suddenly becomes a garbled mess of green lines and random pixels. Again, I usually have to hardware reset. This doesn't happen often, but when it does happen, it usually comes in spurts. (A few times a day, then not again for a week.) After rebooting from this situation, scandisk usually finds errors in the boot sector of the drive.
3) At boot, when Win98SE is about to load, I get a garbled mess much like the above, but based on the windows logo. This happens after having done nothing to my system, other than shutting it down normally. For these, I have to go run scanreg and restore an older "fixed" registry, even though that does nothing, since I can then re-restore the newer "broken" registry and everything works again. Sometimes, restoring doesn't help, and I have to try a few times before it boots. (This also led to my resintalling Win98.)
So, what I've tried thus far:
- People suspected my generic, 250w power supply. I'm now using an Antec PP303x.
- People suspected my generic PC100 128 MB RAM. I talked to my system vendor, and they sent me a different brand stick.
- I most recently tried forcing AGP1x, AGP2x, and disabling bus mastering. None of those worked. (Actually, they seemed to make it worse.)
- I've fiddled with the memory timings in BIOS, setting them to the least-aggressive options.
- Many people have suspected IRQ problems, and I have spent more time than I can count trying to get things in IRQ slots they'd like. Currently:
05 - SB16 Emulation
06 - Floppy controller
07 - ECP Printer port
08 - CMOS/Real time clock
09 - (Not listed in Win98) ACPI Controller
10 - IRQ Holder/AMD 756 PCI to USB
11 - IRQ Holder/SB Live!/3COM 3c905b
12 - IRQ Holder/Matrox G400
(I'm using a USB mouse, but I've also had a PS2 mouse.) Before anyone suggests it, there is NO way whatsoever to get these three cards to all occupy DIFFERENT, GOOD IRQs on this motherboard. The SB Live always steals 10 or 11 before the G400 can get it (even if I install just the G400 first, then add other cards). I've tried both PCI devices in EVERY combination in all the PCI slots. This is (sadly) the best arrangement of IRQs I can get. ACPI can not be turned off in BIOS (except in older revisions of the BIOS, where the option doesn't actually do anything, and still nothing will take IRQ 9.) Also, there is NO support whatsoever in BIOS for reserving IRQs for specific devices/slots.
I'm at my wits end. I've tried anything and everything I can to stop these irritating (and at times work-disrupting) problems, but to no avail. Does anyone have any more ideas? Could it still be RAM? Should I just toss the 6167 and get a better mobo? I bought the system complete, hopefully the vendor will cooperate with a more expensive solution, but I know there are people with this setup, and no problems. Help!?
-Brian
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