Hello -

My system continues to lock up unexpectedly; with no particular application setting it off. Anyone have any theories on this or experiencing similar problems? I'm running:

Asus A7V (1004c Bios & most recent Promise Driver)
IBM 30G ATA-100/7,200RPM
128 PC-133 Crucial CL2
800MHz Thunderbird
Linksys 10/100 NIC
Asus 50x CD
Asus v6600 video (w/Nvidia 6.31 Drivers)
Win2000SP1 (clean install)
Windows Via AGP Hot Fix Patch
AMD Win2000 Graphics Patch

Appreciate your feedback. Thanks, Jim

I had this problem with Nvidia beta 7.17 drivers but you are using 6.31 so... Does your computer have a good cooling solution?

Good point... the cooling is what I would call adequate. However, I check it periodically with the probe and its pretty much at 125F, well within tolerance.

Is your 2000 installation running ok?

Alot of people have reported problems with A7V + Geforce + W2K

Have a look at some on the other posts in the "Mainboard & Chipsets" section. Some of the solutions are to downgrade your bios to rev1003, but look at the posts for exact details

Hey thanks guy! I'll check it out

I have use WIN2K since March 2000 on 4 different machine with no problem at all. PIII550 + P3BF + TNT2 Ultra, PIII667 + P3V4X + CL GeForce DDR, PIII866 + CUSL2 + CL GeForce DDR, TBird 1Gig + A7V + Abit siluro GeForce 2 GTS 64 Meg. So far never had a lock up except on installing 1 of the CL driver which crash my Win2K.

Try the following :

One thing for sure never put any PCI card in PCI slot that share with the AGP (On Most MB ie 1st PCI slot). Try put your NIC is 5th PCI slot and if u got a Sound Card put in slot 3. Slot 1 of A7V share with AGP , Slot 2 Share with Promise controller, Slot 3 share with onboard sound/AMR, Slot 4 share with Slot 5 and USB.

Take out all the PCI card except AGP card then put in other card 1 by 1 to see which card causes the problem. If the problem comes from those card then try the latest driver. If the problem still there then try rearrange your PCI Card, some card just dont like to share with 1 particular card. Some are Card's driver problem. Last resort take out the problematic card .

How's your case ventilation? Try open the case and use some fan to blow directly to the MB. TBird , GeForce and A7V are all hot stuff...

By the way i am using 7.17 + DX8 now and i have not encounter any crash or lockup so far. Even 3DMark2000 run faster, i got 1500 point xtra over 6.31+DX7. But i think Win2k need more Ram. I have read a post that by adding another 128 Meg Ram to 256 Meg ram, he got 900 points extra in 3DMark2000. Win2K like more ram, more ram he got faster he run.

My current system (100% stable, no crash and no lock up at all), Bios : APG 4X enabled, Fastwrite enabled, Memory Optimal, Bytemerge Disable, AGP Aperture 256 Meg, all power management disabled, USB disabled.
Win2K SP1, Via AGP patch, AMD registry patch, VIA 4In1 4.24A, DX8, AGP 4.03E, TBird 1Gig, A7V + GW FOB 38, 3 X 128 Meg VC Ram, Abit Siluro GTS 2 64Meg (Det 7.17), SB Live Player (Latest Liveware )(PCI 3), 3COM905B NIC (PCI 5), 2 X 20 Gig Seagate Baracuda ATAII (Promise Controller, Driver Version 160Build25, both as master), AOpen 52X CD-ROM (Onboard ATA66 Controller as primary master), ASUS DVD-ROM (Onboard ATA66 Controller as Secondary master), 300W PS.

Hope this help. Good Luck

Thanks Wow -

The more I look around the more its seems the common demoninator is ACPI... the guys that disabled it on the A7V and did the "standard pc" win2000 installation (and therefor were able to manually assign irq's) are all running solid.

I've had my older K7V box set to this for 4 days (did it from inside win2000, not good! better to clean install) and it just kicks ass. Am going to clean install my A7V/Tbird today this way.

Thanks for the tips! Jim

Hello;

Here is my experience.
I have the a7v, win2k and I have had every problem you can imagine. Crashes, NTFS corruption, lockups.
But I am now totally stable.

Here is what I have done.
I have gone back to my vendors graphics driver (Elsa), I have applied the win2k hot fix, and the win2k agp registry fix, I have gone to the windows update and downloaded all compatability patches, I have applied the IE 5.5 sp1 patch, I am using the via 4in1 driver version 425a, the promise ultra 100 driver version 32, I replaced all ata66/100 disk cables.

I played the game of turning off acpi, it had NOTHING to do with any of my problems. I am now running 2 instances of win2k with acpi, both are stable. I can run wintune2000, 3dmark2000, everything that people have problems with.

Its strange, but my hunch is the ie 5.5 sp1, and the lastest win2k compatability update is what really got win2k back on track.

GOOD LUCK ... and hang in there ...

Hey thanks Lost In Space.

For some reason this topic is going real heavy in "mainboards & chipsets" area thats where we've been posting about it if your interested.

I tryed all the stuff you mentioned but it didnt work in my case; then I dumped acpi using the "upgrade install" and selecting "standard pc" (I detailed this in the thread mentioned above); it really worked great on my stuff and I'm flying now go figure.

In any case it's good to see there is more way up this mountain than one, but also a bit unsettling because it makes it tough to determine what the problem actually is.

I like Asus but I wish they and Via kept their eye on the ball a bit more about this or a least posted a workaround it would sure save us aggrevation. Thanks, Jim

I was having similar problem after I installed IE5.5 sp1 and DX8.0. After reformatting sefveral times I found it to be a problem with IE5.5 sp1. With 5.0 I haven't had another lockup. I've seen others with problems with the new browser upgrade. Unfortunately I had to reformat since just reinstalling IE 5.0 did not fix the problem. Apparently 5.5 SP1 left the problem on the computer after it is uninstalled.