This is a dumb statement! Well, not really (it's not dumb to seek the easy way out) but you must solve these little setup problems - most PCs have them when built ;^( I will review the situation and comment this afternoon. We'll get it running...
what is the bus speed of your videocard as you have 66.6mhz in your Frequency/Voltage Control picture
The AGP specification is 66MHz (that's pretty standard). Some quick issues... 1) Latest BIOS is 7043v20.zip 2005/4/11 [bold]EDIT: bad info - see later post[/bold] 2) Your mobo has onboard audio - and you have an Audigy. Something maybe not set right...? 3) Latest VIA 4in1 installed? I have your motherboard manual + your BIOS photos. I'll have to comment later (duty calls). Regards
you have onboard sound enabled in your Integrated Periphs picture but you have a Creative Audigy Z2 soundcard so why both or is that your onboard soundcard??
Yes! Exactly... LoL :^) You don't need new equipment if gross misconfiguration errors are preventing things from functioning. Hey ddp: I downloaded the mobo manual for PT880 Neo (thanks for the link) but it gives MS-7043 as the MSI number. Didn't Noctis say something different? He said MS-7008 for his mobo...? Help! Noctis?
Hooo, boy... Here is a different link to the mobo: http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=527 Let's download another mobo manual...
This is good! The newest BIOS is 7008v19.zip 2004/11/26 This BIOS update claims to free IRQ5. I notice your onboard audio is claiming this IRQ - so disable the onboard AC97 audio in BIOS. If you have this v1.9 BIOS installed, IRQ5 should therefore be released :^) I dunno what wants it (I don't think the Audigy wants it) but free IRQs are good. Some USB (or something sharing IRQ11) will jump off and take it. I have never seen so many things sharing IRQ11, while IRQ10 is blank, before. Note that the video should have an IRQ all to itself (either 10 or 11, whichever) but you just don't see them sharing like that... I would like to see the Ethernet (NIC) bail over to IRQ5. I would also like to get something claiming IRQ10. These resources can be re-allocated by the ACPI OS, however this hardware setup is [bold]not[/bold] irrelevant because it will identify fundamental setup & config problems that are important! Back soon...
Also, disable 'Serial Port Connector - COM A' in BIOS. This is usually called COM1 and is a legacy throwback to old AT-style serial mouse (or external modem :^) You don't need it - this will free up IRQ4. More soon; L8R...
This was the only part I didn't really quite understand. As far as updating the BIOS, that has already been done.
As stated above, I made the changes I could figure out on my own. Still locking up. Here are the IRQs per Windows Device Manager...
FYI - I installed a new PSU that has 28A on the 12V rail. While I can notice a significant increase in the performance of my 6600GT, the computer still freezes up after 10 minutes of strenuous activity.
The cpu is definitely clean. I don't have a heatsink, I installed liquid cooling after the problems began.
Okay, lemme see here... If you load BIOS defaults, load the 'Optimal Performance Defaults' not the High Performance Defaults. Use PCI slots 2/3/4 Avoid slots 1/5 PCI delayed transaction Enabled AC97 Disabled AGP master 1 WS Write/Read Enabled Disable USB BootROM, Disable LAN BootROM Disable onboard RAID Note: they sell a 'D-Bracket' LED panel for your mobo, which can debug a flaky system by LED code - they have an extensive guide to all the possible lights, in the mobo manual. Ensure the MSI CoreCenter is not installed, and is not dynamically overclocking in the background. If stability cannot be achieved, we must run just 1 stick of 512MB in single-channel mode, to see if any difference/improvement. Run that CPU-Z and tell me what it says. Don't worry - we'll get this fooker tap dancin'! :^)
Okay, did all of the above (except the LED, have to track that down). The computer is still locking up. I did come up with two questions from this, though. First, is CoreCenter something that runs directly from the mainboard, or is that a Windows application? The most recent lock-up occurred without me ever even booting Windows - happened during the POST after adjusting the BIOS. Second, according to CPU-Z, my RAM is running in single-channel mode. How can I change that to dual-channel?
Just a few thoughts on your ongoing problems, as some time back I to was suffering from the same sort of problems you have posted about. I,m not saying that following any of my suggestions will sort out your problems but you will not lose anything by trying them. (I may be wrong but looking at your post I don,t think windows in itself is at fault as you say problem persist in safemode.) And they may be of help and relevance to others if not yourself But after carrying them out on my system the problem dissappeared. The following suggestions are in no particular order except step 1. 1. Disconnect both optical drive units, remove any other adapter cards with the exception of the graphics card. Disconnect any external devices 2. When you do restart system I would enter Bios and set to default (F7) Personally from looking at your bios settings I would then a, Disable logo screen show b, Disable Hard Disk S.M.A.R.T. As I believe this can cause heavy loading on system startup and slows startup. And can in certain situations can actually cause startup problems c, AGP aperture size I read in some forum somewhere should be set to 64MB, why I don,t know, maybe some one on this forum knows. d, Try setting all other AGP options to enabled one at a time and reboot to try and prove all are Ok e, Don,t know you graphic card but ensure you have AGP mode speed set correctly. f, If you have the option to disable Sleep State in Power Management Features I would try that g, In your Intergrated Peripherals Page I would disable any service that you do not use, especially the sound options and the Legacy USB support function if you don,t use it. h, With reference to your question as to running in memory Dual Channel mode I suspect that this option is either automatically selected by bios or more likely set up by selecting Top Performance in Advanced Chipset Features, not knowing the board though just a guess on my part. It may come into effect also by selecting Loading High Performance Defaults at the first Bios options page. 3. Inspect if possible the contact between the cpu and cooling fan, I personally would get some cpu @ heatsink cleaner and re-apply the appropriate paste to the cpu. (this may not apply to your system as I know the square root of "**** all" about liquid cooling) 4. Inspect and clean the fan blades on all fans in your system, check that they all rotate freely, if you can do this by actually removing the fans from the system all the better. (extra suggestion here - buy a can of compressed air from somewhere like Maplins) In particular ensure nothing is obstructing the smooth operation of you cpu fan Make sure the the intakes and exhaust grills on your PSU fans are also clear and clean. Infact I opened up the PSU and blew out all the crap and dust in there. 5. Remove and reseat memory modules, try just using one stick when reinstalling at a time to try and prove/disprove if any are causing your problems. Also inspect and clean contacts on modules and memory slots if required. Another good use for the compressed air. 6. Other tips I picked up is a, Uninstall in totality both sound and vidoe card drivers then when reinstalling drivers or on completion of a O.S install, install the sound card drivers first, shut down Pc. for at least 20 secs. Reboot then install graphic card drivers, this in my experience has worked fine. b, When physically cleaning your system, removing or installing cards etc. use an anti-static wrist strap and mat if possible. c, As I understand it if you do a re-install of windows booting from the CD the setup will overwrite your previous settings of windows (assuming you install to the same directory) but if you run setup from within windows it will basically repair your installed windows. but you will still require to d/l updates etc. Here,s an example of a problem very similar to the one discussed in this post which took a very long time to rectify on a computer belonging to a friend of mine and which in the end was very simple to fix. (don,t think it applies in this case - liquid cooling?) I had carried out all of my own suggestions from above plus more and reading countless forums etc. But could not fix the damn thing. I then realise that this problem only seemed to raise it ugly head at certain times, this was the ambient air temperature, on further investigation I found that the fins on the heatsink under the cpu fan had clogged up with dust, after cleaning the fins out lo and behold the problem dissappeared. This was something I had never heard of before. I asked a another friend of mine (a senior company computer service engineer) about this and he explained that dust does get drawn into this area and builds up quite quickly and can need regular cleaning as the cpu obviously gets hotter as the heatsink is not doing its job correctly, (hence the link to ambient air temperature) The reason he was knowledgable about this is that he has to deal with a lot of server problems (running 24/7)and this is one of the first thing he checks, he reckons he can cure upto 50% by checking this. Again an ideal use for the compress air and small soft pencil brush. I would therefore agree with Induna's post with reference to the side panels as all your doing is letting dust accumulate inside your PC. Especially if your unit is at floor level. (remember dust drops and settles, also retains heat and can affect conductivity i.e short out connections ) Anyway I hope my post may be of help if not for Noctis it may help other users. Apologies for the lenght of my reply.
Further to my last reply, something in the back of my mind was bugging me about your irq settings,so I decided to check it against mine as I have a Via chipset board and I noticed you have no irq allocated to you mouse, now I know sometime back on another system of mine the system would freeze and in the end it turned out it was caused by this exact problem, don,y know if that will be the same for you, but it might be worth checking out.
