Computer savy part 2

I just picked up my new mobo, a Abit NF7-S and 256 DDR333 RAM. I put them in my computer and followed directions to the letter. When I turn on my computer, I cant run any games or my DVD player. The computer screen goes blanc and I have to reboot.

I can play the card games and pinball but not high end stuff.

I even tried reinstalling my video card driver but that dosent work. (this computer isnt hooked up to the internet)

Its a:

• AMD Duron 800Mhz
• Abit NF7-S Motherboard (new)
• 256 DDR333 RAM Crutial (new, in DIMM slot 3)
• 20gig hard drive Western Digital, master
• 6.4gig hard drive Maxtor, slave
• 52x24x52x CD-RW/16x DVD combo LG
• 8x4x32x CD-RW Creative
• GeForce 4 MX440 64mb DDR w/TV out, PCI
• integrated surround sound
• integrated LAN
  </LI>

Any ideas on how to fix this problem?

Wild Card said:
I just picked up my new mobo, a Abit NF7-S and 256 DDR333 RAM. I put them in my computer and followed directions to the letter. When I turn on my computer, I cant run any games or my DVD player. The computer screen goes blanc and I have to reboot.

That line really suggests a graphics card problem... Generally happens with incompatible graphics modes, or a bad connector.

If you have onboard graphics, Try manually pulling out the card, and rebooting with the onboard card. Then uninstall the drivers. Shut down, put the card back in and reboot, check if it recognizes the card. This helped me once when something shook loose when I shifted the PC. Just plugging it back didn't work, I had to pull out and start again.

I've had a read on a few sites and some people had the same problem (not always with the same board)

Perhaps its because my Power Supply is underpower. Mine is a 235Watt.

Hmm, this would be easier if I could see it, but as far as I can tell it could be, as fraggard said, a conflict between the video cards. You don't need to take anything out just read the book that came with the board and go into bios and disable the built in card, if it doesn't have this option you have to do it in windows and its really annoying because it could come back and detect it later. Other then that, your power suppy is enough, you can tell because your computer is coming on, if it wasn't enough it wouldn't even start. Another thing you should change is the DIMM slot, put your ram in slot one, you always start in slot 1 for everything. Check your connections and if the problem persists take the damn thing back and get a new one. Yes, you should be able to take it back because it is malfunctioning, and it's A-bit, yuck. Next time try checking out MSI, I've never had any problems with them.
Hope that helps.

[edit] I looked up that board on A-bit's site, and it turns out it doesn't have built in Video, sorry about that, I thought it did for some reason. But it does have Raid, unless you got one without it, check to see if you're hooking your drives up to the raid slots and not the normal IDE slots, unless you want to use raid, but it's a pain in the ass to set up and get working properly. If you have raid on the board and you're not using it, you should turn it off in Bios, your book should go through every menu screen in bios and tell you what everything is for. Also check to see if somehow you overclocked your processor, I don't recomend doing that, it tends to overhead if you do. Other then all that it could, and most likely is, your video card. All the problems you are having are centered around it. Graphics cards sometimes dont work properly, I bought a GeForce4 about a year ago and I had to take it back and get another one because the fan wasn't glued on.
That's about it though, other then actually sending the computer I couldn't help anymore. And I wouldn't expect for someone to send me their computer. Anyway I hope all that helps. [/edit]

Change your memory timings in BIOS. I expect they currenty have some settings on 2 clks, try changing these ones to 3. A 235 watt PSU should work fine, the GeForce 4 mx PCI isn't exactly the most power hungry component. You could try checking the heatsink on it for excess dust or see if it is very losely fitted, but that seems unlikely to me. You could also look at your setting (in BIOS) for "AGP apeture size" (or similar) - if the graphics card only has 32 megs of memory, set this to 64.

As a test for the power, try unplugging the CD drives and the secondary hard drive and see if it still crashes with these devices unplugged - if it does, you know for sure that it isn't a power issue, if it does, add devices back one at a time until it stops working and then you will know what was cuasing the problem - you could also try this for other PCI cards if you like - take extra ones out (e.g. sound card, network card), and see if you still have the same problem.

Normally, if you are sure that the problem is due to hardware and not software or BIOS settings, you can easily find out which part is causing the problem by taking everything out and adding things in (even extra memory sticks) one by one until the problem shows up again.

Wild Card said:

• AMD Duron 800Mhz
• Abit NF7-S Motherboard (new)
• 256 DDR333 RAM Crutial (new, in DIMM slot 3)
• 20gig hard drive Western Digital, master
• 6.4gig hard drive Maxtor, slave
• 52x24x52x CD-RW/16x DVD combo LG
• 8x4x32x CD-RW Creative
• GeForce 4 MX440 64mb DDR w/TV out, PCI
• integrated surround sound
• integrated LAN
  </LI>

Any ideas on how to fix this problem?

First off, get a board with an AGP slot... and second, get an ATI =D

High-end video cards formed in PCI often have issues... bitchvidia, expecially, pays less attention to the PCI model than the AGP. i read up on this because when i had my old compaq proliant server, i used a geforce4 PCI 420 64mb... pretty similar to yours. Probly every 3 times my comp was starting up, i lost video... and had to manually restart! grr so frustrating

so anyway... ATI ATI

I didn't notice you said it was a 64 meg part, but you should still have graphics apeture set to 64 or 128. I'm sure it would be nice if he could afford to just go and buy a new motherboard and graphics card but that doesn't seem like a practical solution to me. Have you got the card in the 1st PCI slot? If not, move it there. Make sure it's in properly - may sound stupid but I had a card that didn't fit properly and sometimes I would have no video until i nudged the card a bit and reset :smile:

This may sound like a silly suggestion, but have you made sure to connect the 12v power supply to the mother board?. Its a small square plug , but it's obvious where it connects. I had a similar problem which I solved the very same way. Also, definitely consider investing in a 350 watt power supply or better. The newer graphics cards require more power. The fact that you can run lower end card games indicates something along those lines. Hope this was helpful.

Jinx, If I hadent pluged the power to the mobo, I wouldnt be able to turn the damn thing on :smile: . I have both a 235watt and a 250watt powerbox. Me and my friend are gonna see if we can crack a deal with Dray for a 300 and up powerbox for maybe 20$.

I kinda find it hard to belive its my graphics card messing up though cause it worked fine on the previous board and on the computer I had it on before. Its only a few months old, so its still clean and all. Its in the first PCI slot and connected proprelly as well. The reason I bought it PCI is because at the time, I had my other computer wich had no AGP slots in the board. It was an old DND computer.

I do have, however an old NVIDIA TNT/TNT2 32mb AGP card but I dont think it will work on the new mobo. The board says it supports 4x and 8x AGP only and I think the card is 1x.

I quickly looked at everything in BIOS and setted stuff proprelly. My CPU isnt overclocked, booting only for the HDD.

As for memory, the manual said when installing memory (with the exception of dual channel) start in DIMM slot 3 and then slot 2 and finaly slot 1. So its in DIMM 3 right now.

As well, the indicator light on the floppy drive is always on. There is no disk nor is it reading anything but the light remains on.

Before buying the board I read a bunch of reviews on many different sites and asked questions in forums and such and no one had complaints on the mobo, they all liked it very much. Mind you I like it as well, I just hate the manual cause its soo badly written in English and it dosent say much in frensh either.

I can play pinball and solitaire though. I've tryed taking out 2nd HDD and CD drives but still had the same problem.

One more thing, the mobo has 2 power clips, the normal rectangular one and a second square one with 4 pins. My PS dosent have the ladder clip and the manual says the board dosent need to have it connected to work.

I quickly looked at everything in BIOS and setted stuff proprelly

Did you try changing the memory timings? They may be set to 2 clks now and 3 clks may offer more stability.

As well, the indicator light on the floppy drive is always on. There is no disk nor is it reading anything but the light remains on.

Does the floppy drive work? If not, plug it's data cable in the other way round.

I've tryed taking out 2nd HDD and CD drives but still had the same problem

Doesn't seem like it's running out of power then.

Is there somebody you know who will let you test their bigger PSU that has the square 4-pin connector in your PC? This is the next thing I would try if it was me (after the memory timings thing).

I'll look into the memory timing stuff. The floppy drive does work, and the data cables are keyed so they only go in one way.

I am trying to find someone with a better PS than mine to test it out as well.

[edit] I had put back my old motherboard and all the old stuff but the comp freezes up after windows loads. Im going to put the new board and stuff in and give it a try. [/edit]

I didnt see any option of the sorts in the BIOS for the memory. I'll check again.

Also, new development. Now when windows loads, the cursor changes to the hour glass thingy and the comp freezes. I can still move the mouse but cant click anything. Ctrl+Alt+Del dosent bring up the task manager but if I press it a second time, the computer resets.

Boot in Safe Mode ?

I just saw the scariest message ever...

Your CPU has failed

Where does it say that? If the CPU is broken you don't get any output at all (not even VGA BIOS or memory test).

T'was right after the memory test and detecting the drives.

could the 200MHz system bus of the cpu be in conflict with the 333MHz of the memory?

Ok, I fixed the CPU failure error. I reset the CMOS memory and loaded optimized settings.

I can get into windows. I only have the HDD, floppy, video card, and ram pluged in, nothing else.

But I still cant play games or watch DVD's. The computer freezes and I have to turn it off.

So in other words, I'm right back where I started. :smile: Silly being happy about that but its better than a f**ked CPU.

fishy, what do you mean 200Mhz system bus?

I think he means when you have the memory running async from the 'bus', but on that CPU it seems unlikely. You could try setting the memory clock to lower than it is, but I still think you should slacken your memory timings. You said you made sure that they are 'correct' but you need to try different settings that are more easy on the RAM.

Ok Jeff, I'll give it a try at 3.

Wild Card said:
But I still cant play games or watch DVD's. The computer freezes and I have to turn it off.

If you think it's the mobo/processor- does this happen if you get your PC to do something else fairly 'heavy load', like scandisk or defrag?

Or if it's the graphics card, try running 'dxdiag' and perform some of the drawing tests...

Well timings at 3 caused a CMOS error something right after memory check and drive check. So I put it back to 2.

Lep, so far the scan disk isnt completed but it is working.

As for this dxdiag thing. Im dont what that is.

DirectX Diagnose: checks your DirectX installation for problems.

Run it by using the start->run feature, and typing "dxdiag".

Defrag finished ok.

Dxdiag crashed. Im going to get my friend to bring his video card and we'll try it. Its a GeForce 4 (I think) AGP.

I just installed my brother's video card into my computer. Its an old AGP 32mb TI card (NVIDIA GeForce 2 I think)

But yea, my computer works now. I am going to reformat though.

It takes so damn long to boot however :sad: . Its almost a minute just to detect the IDE devices...

Hee, I fixed my problem. The hard drive was the only one on the cable and it was set to MASTER. Thats why.

As opposed to CD drives, hard drives when by themselves must be set to single, not master. (dont know about cable select though.)

Hands up who hates jumper settings!

hands up

lol strange that, you'd think it just wouldn't work at all :/

Dodgy Motherboard. lowering the speed the memory runs at should never cause a CMOS error.

hard drives when by themselves must be set to single, not master.

Every hard drive I have seen has only 3 settings, one of which is 'Master/Single drive' - i.e. the same setting for either... What make of drive is it?

my hard drive has master and single seperate.

Master is ::|::

Slave is :::|:

CS is :|:::

Single is :;;::