Hi all,

Im hoping some of you may be able to advise me what is wrong with my system. Its a custom built system, spec:

E6750 2.66ghz dual core 2
XFX Nforce 680i Motherboard
WD Raptor 150GB
WD 500GB Storage Drive
XFX 8800GTX Gcard
2GB OCZ 1066 SLI Ram
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Sound Card
Windows Vista 64-bit

Problem:

On boot up sometimes the system will enter BIOS and boot up as normal. However most of the time it will freeze in BIOS and i have to end up manually restarting the pc. At this point it may not enter BIOS at all and prompt me with a constant "Beep" sound. I have to restart it several times or turn it off and try again untill i can access BIOS again. At this point it will have usually reset the settings to default in the BIOS.

So i have to go in settings as set the first boot priority back to hard drive (150GB one) and tell the BIOS there is "none" floppy drive, as this resets to it having a floppy. Some times it will freeze in the BIOS menu meaning another restart.

Once ive done this i save and exit and it will enter windows load up screen, some times it may freeze here or blue screens and i have to restart the pc again. Although most of the time once is have got to this point it will enter vista but it has taken me several manual restarts.

At first i thought it was a hard drive problem, so replaced the 150GB with a brand new 150GB raptor, installed vista 64-bit again and still it happens. I have also replaced the CMOS battery too.

I have even updated the BIOS to P32 version and still the same happens. Updated all my drivers to the latest version and installed the SP1 for vista but nothing :*(

Pleaseeeeeee help me as i am lost on what to do.

Thanks,

Jon

i had something similarly happen to me when i updated my bios. all i did was reflash my bios to the original bios and its working just fine. other than that i have heard that the soudblasters dont like vista 64bit but never heard of problems like that.

Sounds like a bad memory module....
If you can get a copy of memtest86+ here http://www.memtest.org/#downiso (get the iso cd file) you boot from it and it will check your ram for errors.
If you have 2 sticks in there pull one and test them one at a time.
Hope this helps!

In addition to re-flashing the BIOS, check the CMOS jumper pins and verify that it is not in the "clear" position.

If you only get this behavior after installing the drivers, then it may also be a driver issue. The only thing you could do with that is a fresh install and install the drivers one at a time and reboot the machine in between each to see where it hangs. Be sure to install the drivers in proper order starting with the chipset drivers, then the video, then the audio, followed by whatever other drivers.

Another idea is to investigate the BIOS beeps, typically one long beep after boot is due to a RAM issue; and buggy RAM could cause the problems you are having. Has the RAM you're using been validated by XFX to be compatible?

If possible, read the BSOD message, that will at least indicate why the machine is failing and get you pointed in the right direction.

Good luck!

I had issues with my board like this, you have to do a physical cmos reset on the motherboard. Not just the one built in software on the mb.

That helped but it never overlocked like it used to, I had to rma the board adn the new one worked great. Gotta love the lifetime warranty as this was 1.5 years after I bought it. I have evga as well, they are excellent at customer service.

Mine had something to do with the ram timing that was causing the instability. I couldn't even get into the bios with the ram timings that were activated under the epp profiles. So under safe mode was the only way to get back into the bios.

After farting around for a few days, I ended up just rmaing it and all was well. Although this was AFTER I did a bios update, nothing else.

Dosnt updateing bios have a risk thow? thats what my pc builder says.

mm ya if the power where to go out right as you were flashing the bios it would trash your mobo but other than that not that i know of.

Thanks for the advice guys, few ppl told me it is a faulty motherboard but i will run mem-test or prime95 tommorrow and let you know the results, ill also check the jumper pins are in the correct position on the board.

Hey again ppl,

I run the latest version of Memtest this weekend for a few hours on both memory modules and the results showed that both memory modules passed with no errors.

looks like it could be the motherboard but im not sure :x