Very Strange Mobo issue 1

[ukjane]

I've posted a couple of topics about my mobo problem before. Basically what happens it the machine boots fine for a while, then at some point it just refuses to boot anymore and the mobo is shot.

The 1st board the BIOS chip was hot and fried, 2nd one the same and the 3rd one which the supplier fitted and tested himself, he noticed the IDE chip getting hot as soon as he installed it, this was before he actually put it in the case as well, so the case cannot be causing the problem. Anyway, several reboots later after playing about that board fries too, IDE chip fried, too hot to touch.

Something is causing a feedback of power or something. When the chip was starting to get hot, we only had the board out on the side, not in a case, with only graphics, mem, PSU and processor. The mem is different to the other 2 mobo's and so is the PSU, the only components that are the same are the processor and graphics, could these components cause this problem?

The supplier has taken my whole machine away for testing and to contact the mobo manufacturer to check if it is a bad batch.

I didn;t realise until now that the a chip on the board was actually overheating and frying which is what is causing it to not boot!!!

My supplier has never seen this problem before, and like I say the only components that are being re-used are the processor and graphics.

Also, another strange problem, when he has it all plugged in floppy, DVD Rom and CDRW, the CDRW and DVD were being detected in the BIOS as a drive but the decription was something vedry strange, like a long list of really weird characters. When he removed the floppy drive the CDRW and DVD were being detected OK by the BIOS. When the chip actually fried it was in the case with everything connected, but when it started to get hot it was out of case with minimum items connected.

Can anyone hazard a guess??

 

[Scotsdude]

it sounds like a bad batch to me....what make of mobo was it? Scotsdude
Help us help you - let us know when our insane scribblings help!!

 

[ukjane]

Hi

It was an Abit AT7-MAX2. It's a really good board, the supplier offered me just the AT7 board or an ASUS board but they wern't what I wanted.

Is there an equivalent to this board I could ask about. I'm looking for
onboard 6.1 sound (if possible),
8X AGP
min 4 PCI slots
plenty IDE connectors
Firewire
Ethernet
min upgradable to 2GB RAM.

Is there another board I could ask for???

 

[stuartd]

Post back the results from the supplier please - I always use A-bit, so I'm interested to know . . .

 

[ukjane]

Hi.

I've spoken to my supplier today and his engineers cannot find a problem with any of the other components. they have spoken to Abit and even they don't know what the problem is, they havn't admitted a bad batch, but havn't said it couldn't possibly be the board.

So my engineer is putting an Asus board in today and will test that. Not really happy because I know the Asus board they are going to use will be cheaper and not have the functionality that I wanted. But I really don't know what my rights are.

I'll keep you infomed. I've got to call back this afternoon to find out the model number of the Asus board they are using. However I doubt they are using another processor. I am just about at the end of my tether....

Jane

 

[excessive]

Just an idea, if the drive chip overheats, could it be an intermittent problem with one of your drives? Abit doesn't usually put out defective product.

 

[Cindy1]

Just thinking, did you check to see if there were jumpers on the board for the core of the cpu and make sure they were set right?
Cindy

 

[ukjane]

Well the latest is that we now have an Asus N8X Deluxe board in their, so we shall see how it goes. Can't get XP to install though, something about memory_management and it blue screens, but i'll look it up on microsoft.com.

Cheers.

 

[paparazi]

Ukjane,
We have used both of these motherboards, the Abit is slightly slower but far more stable, shame you had problems.
The Asus moby in our opinion is not stable at all, but might get there in time with bios and driver revisions, it is particularly picky with memory.
Please keep us posted, I am interested to see how you get on. Martin Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[Comtech]

I seriously doubt that it's a motherboard issue at all.
I think it's power supply. Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

 

[togi]

It sounds more like a power supply problem to me also!

 

[ukjane]

I thought the PSU too, anyway with the new board we have put in a new Aluminum 550watt PSU.

Having REAL issues getting Windows XP on their though. Firstly wouldn't install XP, said something about memory management, and blue screen, did managed to get it installed, just kept trying and trying. After a driver load for the mouse, it won't boot up, file corruption, cannot even use F8 to get into Safe Mode or Last Known Good Config - Arrgghhhh - the problems start all over again.

 

[Comtech]

Time to dig out the manual, and check all BIOS settings. It's possible you have RAM timings too fast, or other conflicts. Something is obviously not right, if it takes you more than 1 try to get XP installed. Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

 

[ukjane]

I've upgraded the BIOS to latest revision and the error I get is STOP 0x0000008e which according to microsoft is either faulty ram or ram not supported by XP. Strange because the RAM is just plain old DDR RAM 1 x 512MB DIMM 2100,the BIOS detects the RAM correctly.

I have some other RAM, so I can try the different RAM, but it's OEM and I didn't really want to use it.

 

[Comtech]

Go back into BIOS settings, and see if you can drop the CAS level from 2, or 2.5 down to 3.
Try and underclock the RAM if you can, drop it to 200mhz from 266 (or 100mhz from 133mhz) depending on the board.
It could be something that simple as CAS timing too agressive.
Maybe set the BIOS to "Failsafe Defaults", and tweak from there.
I would get DocMem from

http://www.simmtester.com

and run it.
If there's something flaky in the RAM, that will find it.
If RAM checks out, get the PSU tested. If the 3.3v line is more than 5% below spec, you can get the "bad RAM" error. Not that the RAM is bad, but the voltage needed to run it correctly is too low. If it's more than 5% above spec, it could be causing heat problems. Remember that most RAM is built on a .15 or .11 micron core, which doesn't take much fluctuation in voltage to cause an error. Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

 

[ukjane]

Cheers i've downloaded Doc Memory and i'll give it a go. It's useful to keep in my pack as well for work, cheers....

 

[ukjane]

Ah ha..Faulty RAM it was, put different RAM in, same spec and XP loads first time. Am going to return the memory and get it swapped then.

Thanks Guys - thought you'd like to know it was sorted.

Thanks alot for your help.

 

[Comtech]

You're most welcome Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

 

[Cindy1]

For what it's worth I think memory is the most frustrating to troubleshoot. There is no reason for it's errors and not always the same ones twice. Good job peoples!!!
Cindy