I've just recently built a new PC using this MB.
WinXP sp1,
1 gig ram,
Western Digital 80gig HD

Some questions that I wonder if anyone here can with:

Hard Drive
On initial install of OS, setup could not detect my HD. Upon seeking advice on a chat room in pcguide.com 's website, someone mentioned that some WD HDs dont jumper properly. They basicly said to unjumper the HD and see if that helped. Odd as it seemed, it did work. The HD is on primary IDE channel, was set to master with jumper, and is the only device on that channel. Should I attempt to jumper the HD again, as master?

BIOS
Im wondering avout the ram settings. I can't recall the exact setting name and Im posting here from work. It was something like RAM Speed, and you could select by SPD, or manual entry if I recall correctly. What is the recommended setting based on your experiences?

Also, is there a good BIOS explanation for either this board/bios or a general info site?

Thanks in advance,
Venti

I just saw, and realized that MJC is a mod on this board.

Special thanks to him for guiding me through some initial pain described in the thread above = )

Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif

"If'n it ain't broke, don't fix it".... In other words, if the hard drive is working without the jumper, leave it alone. If you add another drive to the cable, then you will probably need to jumper it as Master.

For the RAM question, I suspect that you will want to use the automatic setting and that the manual setting is primarily for overclockers.

For the BIOS info, ASUS has some of the best manuals and product support around, so I would look to them for whatever details you need.

Understood on the point above. I failed to explain that it does appear to be broken somewhat. During some game play, the computer crashes to desktop, or reboots itself which lead me to post my vague questions = )

I have 2 WDs on 2 different computers. One 20 gig single master has the jumper shunt in the neutral storage position. The other 40 gig single master isn't jumpered. Why the difference? I don't know I just set them according to the instructions and they work fine.
SPD setting is ok.

As far a crashing durring game play have you checked your temperatures?

You can go here (http://www.amdforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=153101) and do some reading on your MB and any problems it may have also if you wade threw it you will find info on BIOS settings.

Also depending on the games in question and video card you may need to play around with a couple of different versions of the drivers to make all happy.

Also, some performance issues can be solved by installing the motherboard drivers.

Yeah, I agree about checking the temps... Crashing while playing games is usually a sign of overheating and that can be a problem with AMD chips. You may need to look at whether your cooling is sufficient. Check out your temps and/or try running a small fan into the computer with the cover off while playing a game to see if it still crashes.

Setoguro,
The neutral position on the 20 gig is simply a storage pin position as to not lose the jumper. It represents none of: cable select, master, master with slave nor the slave. I think the differrence is whether it is a 'BB' (2meg) or 'JB' (8meg) series Western D. Think of the neutral position like a coat rack in warm weather... :p

Venti,
Only thing I have to add to the heat issue is, what does the pc have for a power supply and what are ALL the peripherals. The crash/reboot/shutdown problems can also be lack of power or power spread too thin. Also if you don't have the motherboard manual I'm sure it can be downloaded from the ASUS (http://usa.asus.com/index.htm) site.

Well,

Attached, is my dxdiag info. Nevermind, was too big, Ill post in next message.

My trouble is, that in several games, I lock up, or crash to desktop. I have so far:
Reverted to old video drivers per one game recommendation
removed sound card
disabled sound entirely
upgraded to dx9.0a
rolled back to DX8.1
reinstalled to Dx9.0
Verified MB bios file is most current available
installed newest soundcard drivers

I'm really pulling my hair out at this point.

My powersupply is an Antec 350Watt Smartblue power supply

Periphals include
DVD player
64 megabite video card, GEForce
SB Live sound
Western Digital 80 gig HD with 8 meg buffer thing-a-majiggy 7200rpm

As soon as the machine has locked up, I rebooted several times, and inspected the temperature as reported in the bios, and its generally under 40degrees C

I see in event viewer, errors occurring at the time I crash, but clicking the link in properties, there is no support info immediately available.

Your thoughts are most welcome, and appreciated

It could be your video card that is overheating and that wouldn't show up in the BIOS temps. You might want to try the fan blowing onto the video card in an open case and see if it crashes still....

Couldn't attach DXDiag info, so I chucked it on the internet.

http://home.mchsi.com/~venti/System_Information.htm

thanks for any input you may have.

Bud,

Unless the board would have some impact on that, the card is resused from my last PC. Not arguing, just info cus for all i know, the can of lighter fluid on my garage is looking like a good option for PC repair at this point.

Info from event viewer, does this mean something to anyone? time corresponds to game glitches, twice, then failure, which lead to a blue screen indicating data dump was taking place

#1
Event Type: Error
Event Source: nv
Event Category: None
Event ID: 6
Date: 5/1/2003
Time: 10:08:33 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ANTEC2500
Description:
Parse Error on CMDCD 00000001 00001800 016d016c 00000000 00850084
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 02 00 4e 00 ......N.
0008: 00 00 00 00 06 00 aa c0 ......ªÀ
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

#2
Event Type: Error
Event Source: nv
Event Category: None
Event ID: 6
Date: 5/1/2003
Time: 10:17:14 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ANTEC2500
Description:
Parse Error on CMDCD 00000001 00000000 00ffdb00 00000000 00ffdb00
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 02 00 4e 00 ......N.
0008: 00 00 00 00 06 00 aa c0 ......ªÀ
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

#3
Event Type: Error
Event Source: nv
Event Category: None
Event ID: 6
Date: 5/1/2003
Time: 10:25:06 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ANTEC2500
Description:
Parse Error on CMDCD 00000001 00000000 0010c3c0 1f800000 00000000
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 02 00 4e 00 ......N.
0008: 00 00 00 00 06 00 aa c0 ......ªÀ
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

#3 was the crash to blue screen

Very odd thing I noticed while testing things.

I bought 2 sticks of Kingston 512 ram. With only one stick installed, no crashing. swapped with the other stick, still no crashing.

When I installed both independently verified as seeming okay sticks, the crash returned.

wtf?

They work ok separately, but not together? I checked the lables on the ram, they are both the exact same numbers, etc on all tags.

Did you try them in both available slots alone? It is possible that one of your RAM slots is bad....

What you are doing is trying to run both those sticks of 512
in Dual Channel mode on that nForce2 Mboard. And they are
not compatable with each other in that respect. To run DC it
pretty much takes a Twin Pack set of DDR regardless of brand.
These Twin Packs are pre-tested to run together in DC. DC uses
slot 1 and 3 or slot 2 and 3.
RAM timings and SPD values on the 512Mb sticks can be real
troublesome when using two of these modules.
In BIOS change the setting SPD to Auto and see if that helps.
Or change it to Expert and set the RAM timings to something like
6-3-3-2 or even 7-3-3-2.
Run Memtest86 on these modules one at a time and find out if
one or both modules give you quite a few memory errors which
is causing problems.
Memtest86 can be found at www.bootdisk.com


RD.