Since I put in my new AMD Athlon T-Bird 1.4Ghz CPU on Saturday, I've been experiencing stability problems. Nothing show-stopping, at least not yet, but annoying in their way - mostly small things crashing, or sometimes not-so-small things. I've tried removing items from the startup list and also using CacheMan to tweak the memory settings, but with limited (I think) success so far, and I'm not quite sure what to do next. The latest problem is that Explorer crashed on me, and when it reloaded, I could no longer see the icon for the dialup connection even though I know it's active, and it doesn't show up in the task list either. (Things like msgsrv32 are crashing out, too.) I'm beginning to think I might need to apply a BIOS flash to either the Award BIOS or the mainboard BIOS, or both.

System specs:

AMD Athlon T-Bird 1.4 GHz CPU
512 MB PC133 SDRAM
ECS K7VZA mainboard, BIOS version 3.02 (or thereabouts - dated 7/19/01) with Award Modular BIOS 6.00PGABit Siluro GF4 MX (GeForce 4 MX440 GPU)
Windows 98 SE

-Joe-


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Alternate email: joea64@yahoo.com

Actually, your problem sounds pretty much like a VIA chipset board trying to run without the VIA chipset drivers (Via 4 in 1), or heat related, or both.

Start with the VIA drivers, then look at adding a case fan for exhaust.

Save the BIOS flash as an absolute last resort.

BTW, the mainboard BIOS is made by AWARD...the latest for your board is V3.6a 03/18/2002.

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mjc
Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.


Please Post Questions in the forums, not my email. Thanks

H'mmmmmmmm. I _thought_ I had installed the latest Via 4-in-1 drivers last month, but maybe it didn't take properly, so I'll try again. I'm not sure I have any real way to check if the drivers _are_ in fact installed and operating properly. In any case, perhaps a new version of the Via 4-in-1 drivers has been released since early last month, so I'll check at the ECS site.

As for the heat: I'm a bit more skeptical about that. The CPU has been running at temps ranging from 113 degrees F to 120 degrees F since I installed it. I believe this is actually well within normal tolerances for an Athlon, since the maximum safe temperature for a T-Bird is 95 degrees C. The system board's temperatures are stable at 75 to 77 degrees F. Right now, I have the power supply fan, plus a Thermal Integration Ti-V77 heatsink/fan installed on the CPU, plus a FC3000 turbine/exhaust fan installed into one of the expansion slots (you may remember this from last month, when I definitely did have heat (and dust)-related problems), plus a heatsink/fan on the GPU. In fact, I don't _think_ the case has room to install any more fans; I looked last weekend when I was installing the Athlon, and I didn't see any obvious places to put a 70mm case fan. There's a heat wave going on in my area (Washington, DC) and my air conditioning is not working quite right (I'll have to see if I can scrape together the money to get it fixed).

It's possible that I may end up having to get a new case; the current one dates from 1998 and was originally built to hold a Pentium II system, so it's certainly old by current standards though I always thought the ventilation was decent.

In any case, I'll try the VIA drivers first.

-Joe-

Originally posted by mjc:
Actually, your problem sounds pretty much like a VIA chipset board trying to run without the VIA chipset drivers (Via 4 in 1), or heat related, or both.

Start with the VIA drivers, then look at adding a case fan for exhaust.

Save the BIOS flash as an absolute last resort.

BTW, the mainboard BIOS is made by AWARD...the latest for your board is V3.6a 03/18/2002.





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Alternate email: joea64@yahoo.com

OK, I think I definitely should try installing new VIA drivers first. I just went to the VIA website (www.viaarena.com) and compared the version number there with the version number at the ECS site (www.ecs.com.tw), and the ECS file is at version 4.36 (December 2001) while the VIA file is 4.40 and brand-new (June 2001). As I noted in my previous post, it's possible the 4-in-1 drivers didn't install correctly on my previous attempt, so I'll try again and see what happens.

-Joe-

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Alternate email: joea64@yahoo.com

With heat issues, you have to consider more than just the CPU. The northbridge, the video card, etc. all are going to be effected by the heat. The CPU is now putting out more heat, and the circulation pattern most likely has changed so one of the other components may not be getting the cooling it once enjoyed.

Another area to consider, is your power supply, it may just not be up to the task of andling that new CPU.

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mjc
Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.


Please Post Questions in the forums, not my email. Thanks

Wonderful. :\ You know, I put in a brand-new power supply just last month, and it's just a _little_ too late for me to take it back to the store for a refund/exchange. It's 300W. Am I going to have to spring for something like a 350W now? I'm beginning to get tight on money, so I really can't spend much more on this machine until I get more $$$ - I've laid out close to $400 on power supply, monitor, hard drive, video card and CPU in the last two months. For the record, the current temperatures, according to SiSoft Sandra, are:

Board temperature - 25.4 C / 77.7 F
CPU temperature - 47.5 C / 117.5 F
Power supply/aux temperature - 44.3 C / 111.7 F

These temperatures have remained stable with minor fluctuations since Saturday, which indicates to me at least that while cooling may not be optimum, such as it is, it's working. The power supply fan and the turbine exhaust are both expelling significant quantities of hot air.

In any case - I installed the new (4.40) versions of the VIA 4-in-1 drivers about an hour ago. Everything seems to be working OK so far.

-Joe-

Originally posted by mjc:
With heat issues, you have to consider more than just the CPU. The northbridge, the video card, etc. all are going to be effected by the heat. The CPU is now putting out more heat, and the circulation pattern most likely has changed so one of the other components may not be getting the cooling it once enjoyed.

Another area to consider, is your power supply, it may just not be up to the task of andling that new CPU.





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Alternate email: joea64@yahoo.com

If you have problems go back to the 4in1 v4.35 or below their better for ME and W98. You can install IDE filter 1.20 and VAGP driver 4.10 separately. Some have good luck with the higher versions but with 4.40 I haven't read many good results even with those running XP so good luck.

Which Athlon 1400MHz CPU do you have the 100 sys clock/200 FSB or the 133 sys clock/266 FSB model? Are the JP9 and JP10 jumpers set correctly for the system clock of the processor. For the 100MHz processor JP9 should be short pins 2-3 and JP10 short pins 1-2. For a 133MHz clock JP9 short 1-2 and JP10 short 2-3. You can find more info on this on page 16 of your Mainboard User's Guide. What CPU did you have before the 1400MHz Athlon?

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Antec SX1040B 400W, Soyo P4S-Dragon Ultra, Intel P4 2.0GHz(northwood), 768MB Samsung PC2700 DDRSDRAM, 2 WD 100GB HDDs, ATI A-I-W 8500DV 64MB AGP video, SB Audigy MP3, Creative Inspire 5.1 Digital 5700 speakers, Plextor 40X12X40 CD-RW, Pioneer slot load DVD-ROM, Multi-boot Win ME, XP Pro, XP Pro striped down for games, Viewsonic G90mb 19" monitor.

athlon freely admit there is a problen with the 1.4 chip the way round it is a really good cooler the 1.4 has a tendancy of getting very hot even with decent coolers fitted i installed the cooler master with the copper heatsink and pipes going through this fixed the prob for me since i have put a xp 1800 chip in i find it great

For rond36: I have the 133mhz sysclock/266mhz frontside bus version of the Athlon 1.4Ghz. I verified this with the guy at the store - in fact, I made a point of asking what version it was; and I made a particular point of making sure the jumpers were set correctly, which is verified in the BIOS; the readout is correct for this version and the RAM is running at PC133 (it can _only_ run at PC133 when the CPU is set to 133/266 on the K7VZA). I was running a Duron 800 at 100mhz sysclock/200mhz FSB previously.

For matrix: please see my second post in this thread, where I discuss the type of cooler I have. The Thermal Integration TI-V77 is purpose-designed for high-speed CPU's like the T-Bird and Palomino (Athlon XP), and has a copper core. This particular cooler has received many good reviews (as I researched last weekend) on various sites, particularly those devoted to overclocking (which _requires_ outstanding coolers - and, incidentially, I do _not_ overclock). The temperatures have actually remained _very_ stable all week - right now, the CPU is running at 48 degrees C / 118.4 degrees F. The system board and power supply fan temperatures are exactly the same as the last measurement I posted yesterday. The CPU has never gone higher than approximately 120.5 degrees F, at least not whenever I've checked the temperature. I also have a very powerful turbine/exhaust fan installed in one of the expansion slots which produces nearly twice as much airflow as a standard 80mm case fan and works in both directions, to blow cool air in and pull hot air out. Without it, I'm sure the various temperatures would be considerably higher - in fact, I had real problems with heat (and dust _and_ an inadequate power system) last month, before I installed that fan.

To all: Going on to 25 hours now since I installed the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers and rebooted. I've only had one program crash so far - Netscape zonked out on mscrvt.dll (I think that was the name of the file). Actually, I really don't think I should rely on Netscape as an indicator of system stability, as that browser is notoriously crash-prone (I keep telling myself I need to install Opera). No problems otherwise thus far.

I am looking into the possibility of buying a new system case, as I suspect that the current 1998-vintage case in which I house the system is not really adequate to the cooling demands of a 2001/2002-vintage system. I would _like_ to buy an aluminium case, as I've heard those are the very best for cooling, but they're also the most expensive. I saw a nice Antec case in the local Micro Center which is about the size of my current case, has the same number of drive bays, places for two extra case fans, and a removable side panel, but the cost is higher at $60 than I really want to pay. Of course, that's probably because of the included 250W power supply; I _really_ don't need a PS since, assuming I do buy a new case, I am going to move _everything_ over there including the 300W PS I bought last month. Who has some good recommendations on a "bare" (without PS) case? I need a mini- or mid-tower with at least 2 external 5.25" bays, 3 3.5" bays (internal or external), GOOD ventilation and expansion space for at least one more case fan, and some feature that allows for easy access to the system's innards (such as the aforementioned removable side panel). Front-panel USB is a nice extra goodie but _not_ required.

-Joe-

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Alternate email: joea64@yahoo.com

Depending on the version of Netscrape.....yes.

You might also want to look at Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org/). I have been running it for quite a while now, and it seems very stable. the few minor annoyances I have had with are mostly due to non-standard HTML coding on various websites, and an occaisional problem with the Quicktime plugin (mainly not wanting to play).

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mjc
Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.


Please Post Questions in the forums, not my email. Thanks

Downloading Mozilla now; I hope I can transfer my Netscape settings, bookmarks, passwords and all, easily. And as it turns out, Directron has a very good price on a midtower ATX aluminum case, so I _might_ get one of those after all - but I want to shop around this weekend first and see what I can see.

-Joe-

Originally posted by mjc:
Depending on the version of Netscrape.....yes.

You might also want to look at Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org/). I have been running it for quite a while now, and it seems very stable. the few minor annoyances I have had with are mostly due to non-standard HTML coding on various websites, and an occaisional problem with the Quicktime plugin (mainly not wanting to play).





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Alternate email: joea64@yahoo.com

I don't have NS installed, but it is supposed to be an easy import...everything I have imported from IE went ok, and the Linux version imported from NS without a problem (have the Linux version of NS, but no the Windows).

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mjc
Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.


Please Post Questions in the forums, not my email. Thanks

I just installed Mozilla, and it imported everything from Netscape automagically - I didn't even have to do anything. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif The look and feel is virtually identical to NS 6.x (in fact, I see that Mozilla 1.0 will be the base of Netscape 7.0), too, so there shouldn't be any learning curve involved.

-Joe-

P.S. Incidentially, it's going on to 34 hours since last boot now, and still only the one Netscape 6.x crash; perhaps installing the new Via drivers really was what was needed. I'm still going to look into a new case, anyway.

Originally posted by mjc:
I don't have NS installed, but it is supposed to be an easy import...everything I have imported from IE went ok, and the Linux version imported from NS without a problem (have the Linux version of NS, but no the Windows).





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Alternate email: joea64@yahoo.com

[This message has been edited by joea64 (edited 06-28-2002).]

Well, it's been 47+ hours now since the most recent system boot, and still only the one Netscape crash to report. I haven't really put Mozilla 1.0 through its paces yet, as I have been out at work most of the day; however, it looks very good so far. In my considered judgment, it's really Netscape 6.2.2. more than anything else that's been responsible for the system instability this past week; virtually all the component crashes have occurred when Netscape was open, even if the window was idle at the time of the crash. It's possible there's something inside the Netscape code - probably the junk that AOL larded onto the basic Mozilla frame - that doesn't like my T-Bird.

I have also bought a new case today. It's not an aluminum one, but it's a very nice box nonethless, with a snazzy dark-grey-and-beige front panel with chrome buttons, ATX form factor (I discovered that my current case is actually an old AT case "converted" to take ATX boards - the new one is purpose-built for ATX), a 350W power supply, good ventilation, an extra case fan, front-side USB, and _ten_ drive bays - 4 5.25" and 6 3.5"! I particularly appreciate the last feature because now I can try another idea of mine, which is to space out the various drives I have installed - currently, they're all packed together next to each other, which I would very strongly bet contributes to increased heat. With the 350W PS, the lack-of-power problem that MJC speculated about earlier should also no longer apply. And with a total of five fans now in the system (PS fan, secondary case fan, turbine fan, CPU fan, and GPU fan) plus good ventilation, there's really no excuse now for the system not to run at least a few degrees F cooler overall. I will be transferring the innards of my system to the new case either this weekend or over the July 4th weekend.

-Joe-

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Alternate email: joea64@yahoo.com

sounds good, and yes, Moz is minus the NS "lard", if you are familiar with NS 6 and higher then Mozilla feel "right" from the beginning.

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mjc
Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.


Please Post Questions in the forums, not my email. Thanks

Well, to tell the truth, I just had a crash with Mozilla a few minutes ago. It wasn't due to anything with the hardware, though; I think I got it confused by trying to cut-and-paste too huge a block of text into a post in another message board. (For that matter, when I tried the same thing again with Netscape, breaking said text up into chunks, NS lost the scroll bar and I had to restart the program to get it back.) Anyway, the odd thing is that the crash-notification window went into a loop and I couldn't get the program to shut down - ctrl-alt-del wouldn't respond - so I had to hit the reset button. Netscape 4.7x gave me a couple of similar crashes where the crash-notification window simply wouldn't close no matter what I tried until I hit reset. Any ideas?

-Joe-


Originally posted by mjc:
sounds good, and yes, Moz is minus the NS "lard", if you are familiar with NS 6 and higher then Mozilla feel "right" from the beginning.





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Alternate email: joea64@yahoo.com

Nope, sorry, no ideas... http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif

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mjc
Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.


Please Post Questions in the forums, not my email. Thanks

Ok, it's done - I moved everything this morning into the new case. The transfer went with only a few minor glitches; I misplaced my DVD-ROM drive and went searching around for it frantically for ten minutes until I realized it was still fastened inside the old case http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/tongue.gif and then had problems getting the floppy drive to work because I had put the drive cable in backward http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif . As of now, I think I will have to go back in one more time and turn around a couple of LED plugs; the power and HDD activity LED's aren't working, and I think I must have plugged the leads in backwards. Otherwise, the system booted up smoothly and Windows 98 is running normally.

Temperature readouts are also satisfactory: (all readouts are from SiSoft Sandra version 2002.1.8.59, and normal fluctuations of up to six or seven degrees F either way should be taken into account for the CPU and power/auxiliary temperatures)

System board - 25 degrees C / 77 degrees F (this readout has remained rock-stable all along, no doubt due to the beneficient influence of the turbine fan)
CPU - 45.4 degres C / 113.7 degrees F
Power / auxiliary - 40.9 degrees C / 105.6 degrees F

An interesting note is that, with the installation of the chassis fan, the CPU fan is now running at a lower speed;

Chassis fan - 5625 rpm
CPU fan - 3184 rpm

I speculate that this is because, with the presence of an additional case fan, the CPU fan now has a considerably lighter workload. In the old case, it was customary for the CPU fan to run at 5500 - 5600+ rpm. Please note that while the CPU fan is running more slowly, CPU temperatures are solidly in the 112 - 120 degree F range they have been all along.

-Joe-

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Alternate email: joea64@yahoo.com

Whatever's causing the stability shortcomings, it's not lack of power and it's not heat (which has remained admirably steady since I moved to the new case) - in fact, they seem to have gotten _worse_. I've had four BSOD's this weekend, all while using Netscape 6.2.2 or Mozilla 1.0 - the first three, with NS, froze my system and made me use the reset button, and I was able to recover from the last one, with Mozilla, only by ctrl-alt-del. I've also had several smaller crashes that haven't taken down the OS/desktop itself.

What to do? Well, for starters, I've downloaded the newest version of Opera. I remember from the first time I tried it, a couple of years back, that it wasn't particularly easy to migrate NS bookmarks over there, and it stopped working for some still-unknown reason after a few months, but I'll try it again anyway. I'm also beginning to wonder if the RAM sticks, or one of them anyway, might not be at fault. IIRC they're generic PC-133 SDRAM, perfectly adequate to the Duron I formerly had installed, but I am now beginning to wonder if they might not be having trouble keeping up with the T-Bird. And then again, maybe I could go to the last-resort expedient and flash either the VIA or Award BIOS'es or both. Aside from that, right now I'm at a bit of a loss.

-Joe-

How old is your installation of Windows? The symptoms that you describe sound like how my Windows 98SE acted after over a year of use. A fresh reload is usually a last resort, but is sometimes necessary.

My current installation of Win98SE is about two months old; I last installed the OS and all its attendant drivers in early May when I was having serious heat/power problems which caused the computer to freeze so many times that the registry eventually got corrupted beyond repair. That hasn't happened so far, thank heavens. I'm keeping a very close eye on system resources and if I don't let the various heaps get too far down and don't try to run Netscape with anything else, I _should_ be all right. I'm still considering whether it may be best to get new RAM, though.

-Joe-

Originally posted by Reid
How old is your installation of Windows? The symptoms that you describe sound like how my Windows 98SE acted after over a year of use. A fresh reload is usually a last resort, but is sometimes necessary.

I have had a fair amount of marginal memory. I have always just moved the clock speed down until the system was stable, then moved the CPU multiplier up. For my needs, the performance loss was not significant.

Unfortunately, that particular tweak is probably not available in my case. My mainboard (the ECS K7VZA) will only let PC133 memory operate at PC133 when a CPU with a 266mhz bus speed is installed (such as the T-Bird 1400). When I first built this system with a Duron 800 (which has a 200mhz bus speed), I experimented with keeping the RAM at PC133, but this caused similar system instability problems, so I backed down to PC100. As I said, though, I can't do that with a CPU with a higher bus speed.

As regards what sort of new RAM I could get, I'm leaning toward name-brand this time around; I've always been a little bit skeptical of name-brand hardware because usually I can't see what there is to justify the price premium, but I have been advised that in the case of RAM, reputable name-brand memory really is worth the extra cost. I know Crucial gets a lot of good recommendations, but as far as I know it's only available online and I don't generally like to purchase hardware online, mostly because of the excessive shipping costs from most vendors; I prefer to buy in person where I can hands-on examine the merchandise beforehand. (So that makes me old-fashioned, I don't care. :) ) What other brands should I look at?

P.S. Fourteen hours since my last boot now without a crash - knock on wood!!

-Joe-


Originally posted by Reid
I have had a fair amount of marginal memory. I have always just moved the clock speed down until the system was stable, then moved the CPU multiplier up. For my needs, the performance loss was not significant.

The better memory I have purchased was the Kingston brand and I bought it through AllStarShop (http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/shop.asp). I recall that their shipping costs were reasonable.

Actually, Crucial usually has really good shipping deals....like free shipping and ther prices aren't too out of line.

I'm going to have to do something _soon_ to work these problems out - I just had a spontaneous reboot (again, while using Netscape 6) and I can only remember that occurring on one or two other occasions on any computer I've owned. Scared the dickens out of me. :eek: I'm beginning to wonder again if the problem might not be the power supply after all - the _new_ power supply, that is.

-Joe-

Originally posted by mjc
Actually, Crucial usually has really good shipping deals....like free shipping and ther prices aren't too out of line.

Before you go and start buying stuff or while your waiting for stuff to arrive give via4in1 4.32 or 4.35 a try. I'd start with 4.35 first. The higher versions 4.36 and up seem to wig things out with win 98se. You and go here (http://forums.viaarena.com/categories.cfm?catid=3&zb=799466) and read up on it.

OK, I'll do that - but two questions:

1) Where could I find version 4.32 or 4.35?

2) I've already installed version 4.40. How would I back out and go back to an earlier version?

-Joe-

EDIT: As of 6:11 pm, I've gone back to the 4.35 drivers - I _think_. I ran the setup program, then uninstalled the 4.40 drivers when the program asked me if I wanted to install or uninstall drivers. I was instructed to restart the computer, which I did, and when Win98 resumed, it searched for the "new" drivers, found them and installed them. When I check "My Computer", I find that the VIA drivers listed there have a date stamp of 8/16/2001. Did I get the right version, or is there a step I missed?

-Joe-

Originally posted by setoguro
Before you go and start buying stuff or while your waiting for stuff to arrive give via4in1 4.32 or 4.35 a try. I'd start with 4.35 first. The higher versions 4.36 and up seem to wig things out with win 98se. You and go here (http://forums.viaarena.com/categories.cfm?catid=3&zb=799466) and read up on it.

You can go here (http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=2) or here (http://www.viahardware.com/download/index.shtm) to download any version you want. Extract it to a floppy and run it in safe mode. The install has a uninstall feature. I would use 4.32 or 4.35. they seem to be the best by popular opinion.

Well, then, I guess it's off to find a floppy if I did this wrong. I didn't know it had to be done in safe mode...

-Joe-

P.S. Or maybe not. I just checked RegEdit to see what version I have, and it says here the 4-in-1 version is at 4.34 with the Viamach version at 1.40a. So maybe I _did_ do it right after all! We'll just have to see whether this system is any more stable....


Originally posted by setoguro
You can go here (http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=2) or here (http://www.viahardware.com/download/index.shtm) to download any version you want. Extract it to a floppy and run it in safe mode. The install has a uninstall feature. I would use 4.32 or 4.35. they seem to be the best by popular opinion.

Well, I re-installed the 4.35 4-in-1 drivers last evening. I uninstalled them, then booted to Safe Mode and reinstalled them. I also have the 4.32 drivers on hand if needed, and VIA has old 4-in-1 drivers going back for several iterations before that; however, the chipset version is stamped 7/19/2001, and the 4.35 driver is dated 8/16/2001, so I don't think I should go back much further than 4.32, which is probably the version on the driver CD that came with the mainboard. I also tried another trick I was told about on the VIA Arena forums, which is to clear out the CMOS (on the ECS K7VZA this is done by powering down and unplugging the system, then shorting a certain jumper). Apparently, this cleans out any old information that is clogging up the BIOS and preventing new devices from operating efficiently - I should have thought of that, given that I've done such extensive upgrades in my system over the last two months. I also plugged the power strip into which the computer is plugged into a different socket; problems with the incoming current can cause a lot of system problems that mimick problems caused by other components or software.

-Joe-

Originally posted by setoguro
You can go here (http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=2) or here (http://www.viahardware.com/download/index.shtm) to download any version you want. Extract it to a floppy and run it in safe mode. The install has a uninstall feature. I would use 4.32 or 4.35. they seem to be the best by popular opinion.

Here is a thought to try to at least keep you up till you can get the t-bird checked out [could be a bad cpu]....pull off the case covers for 24 hrs and see if you get better performance.

Then again, it could be simply a cause of bad interaction between the VIA drivers/chipset and the nVidia drivers/chipset. I have continued to have crashes today, most of them centered on the nvdisp.drv file, and have found out from the VIA Arena Forum that there is in fact a history of issues between VIA and NVidia hardware and software, particularly when the most recent versions of drivers for each are installed. I was rather disconcerted to read about that. I'm beginning to wonder if I may not have to go whole-hog and buy a whole new motherboard. :(

-Joe-

Then yet again, I've been running for 13.6 hours now without a crash. Here's what I did last evening; I reverted my graphics drivers to standard VGA, then uninstalled the 4-in-1 drivers yet again, then booted to Safe Mode and reinstalled the 4-in-1 drivers from a floppy, then booted back to Normal Mode and reinstalled the nVidia drivers. So far, no crashes, I have done several things this morning that caused crashes in the nvdisp.drv file yesterday and nothing bad has happened (knock on wood). I suspect that from now on I am going to have to be cautious about how long I keep Netscape up and running in a particular session, because that is the one application, more than any others - of course it's the application I have been using the most frequently lately as well - that has been involved in the various crashes, freezes and hangs that have been bedeviling me. (PowerDVD has had several crashes/freezes of its own, but those have a much more identifiable source - excessive stop/start/fast-forward/fast-reverse activity, which I think overloads the buffer.) Anyway, I suppose I may have to start using IE more or install Opera, or else keep trying Mozilla.

-Joe-

After all the tsouris about various drivers and components, it might just all come down to - or in large part come down to, anyway - the humble power supply sitting up in the top rear of the ATX case.

My system was in a mulish mood this afternoon (actually, because of two embarrassingly elementary mistakes I made - first, I didn't seat the AGP card properly, and then, I mis-set the boot sequence in CMOS so that the hard drive to be booted from was HD-1 - the _slave_ drive - not, as it should have been, HD-0, the master drive. :p ) Anyway, in the middle of trying to figure out what was going wrong, I swapped out the power supply. I took out the 350W PS that had come with the case I bought last Saturday, and replaced it with the 300W PS that I bought back in May for my old case when I was having so many problems with heat, dust and flaky power.

I'm wondering now if that's what I should have done in the _first_ place, along with backing out from VIA 4-in-1 version 4.40 to version 4.35, for three reasons:

1) The 350W ran quite hot - indeed, the portion of the case under which the PS resides felt quite warm, if not outright hot, to the touch. Now that the 300W is in place, that same area feels considerably more _moderately_ warm to the touch, if you know what I mean.

2) The 300W is known to me to be AMD-certified; not so the 350W. In fact, now that I look at it, there's a small circle on the lower righthand corner of the label with the legend "P4". (The 350W was made by L&C Technologies, the 300W by A1 Electronics.

3) Finally, the worst stability problems I've been having (repeated BSOD's, that spontaneous reboot) came in the past week, _after_ I moved my system to the new case with the 350W. One can't help but think that they're in some way related.

Conclusion: that 300W PS, AMD-certified, may be better for my system, especially with the right version of VIA drivers installed, than a flaky and very possibly el-cheapo 350W PS which may have been intended for P4's and not for Athlons.

-Joe-

I feel your pain Joe.

I have the exact same mobo with a 1.2 ghz chip in a machine that belongs to my boss. It locks up periodically, especially when installing MS Office or Chessmaster 6k. I have 256 mb of pc133. OS is win 2k.

I've tried a 400w P/S to no avail, and also running it with the cover removed, as suggested by Randy. The latter seemed to help a little. It's also got a case fan which I installed.

I'm thinking that I would like to eliminate cooling once and for all as the problem, so I'm getting ready to hunt for the best fan I can afford. I've installed no chipset drivers, and the bios hasn't been updated.

I'm also thinking of clearing out a 5gb partition and installing Linux to see if Windows might be the problem. There are ony 60 mb worth of patches to install for win 2k, but hearing that you sre having problems with 98 dissuades me from that notion somewhat.

Gotta run. Will be in touch.

Originally posted by yawningdog
I feel your pain Joe.

I have the exact same mobo with a 1.2 ghz chip in a machine that belongs to my boss. It locks up periodically, especially when installing MS Office or Chessmaster 6k. I have 256 mb of pc133. OS is win 2k.

I've tried a 400w P/S to no avail, and also running it with the cover removed, as suggested by Randy. The latter seemed to help a little. It's also got a case fan which I installed.

I'm thinking that I would like to eliminate cooling once and for all as the problem, so I'm getting ready to hunt for the best fan I can afford. I've installed no chipset drivers, and the bios hasn't been updated.

I'm also thinking of clearing out a 5gb partition and installing Linux to see if Windows might be the problem. There are ony 60 mb worth of patches to install for win 2k, but hearing that you sre having problems with 98 dissuades me from that notion somewhat.

Gotta run. Will be in touch.

I've got a total of five fans going in my system currently - the PS fan, the CPU fan, the GPU fan, a FC2000 turbine/exhaust fan which is installed in an unoccupied expansion slot, and, added this past weekend along with the new case, a second case fan situated directly below the PS fan. At this point, actually, I doubt heat is the problem as such, especially with a slightly cooler PS now installed. Therefore, I'll reserve the removed-cover expedient (in my particular case, it'll be a side cover) as a last resort if the heat quotient should get out of control. For now, though, the motherboard is steady at 77.7 degrees F, the CPU holds within a 115 - 120 degree F range, and the power supply is approximately 108 - 109 degrees F. These temperatures have been broadly consistent over the whole period since I installed the Athlon, so I see no particular percentage at this point in further tinkering with temperature, particularly as I don't have the money to invest in a more expensive cooling solution such as one of the newfangled liquid-based setups.

Upon doing further research, I find that the 350W PS was a L&C brand. I further find that the L&C power supplies, while AMD-approved, are deprecated by knowledgable users as being of inferior quality - in fact, it even appears that these PS'es, marketed under the Deer brand name, have an unfortunate habit of literally exploding.

You might try installing the VIA 4-in-1 drivers - but avoid the version 4.40 drivers at all costs, unless you have XP. 4.32 and 4.35 are indicated for Win98; I'm not sure which version is best for Win2K. Perhaps setoguro might know? I haven't updated the BIOS either; as mjc said earlier on, that should be held for a _real_ last resort. After the problems I've had with the "latest and greatest" (ha!!) VIA drivers, I'm that much less inclined to monkey with the BIOS.

I'd like to try out Linux myself. The main problem is that I don't know if my DVD-ROM drive will run under Linux; the CD-RW drive I installed today, though, will work under Linux, and I imagine most of my other hardware will.

-Joe-

Well with 4in1 4.40 I've read there is a problem with viaagp1.sys for Win2k.

VIA has included the WRONG viaagp1.sys for Win2k. This will CRASH your Windows if you install the 4.40 drivers. The fix is to replace the invalid file with the valid one from one of older versions of 4in1 drivers.

So is it worth the trouble? Also is the performance increase that great? Again from what I've read so far there dosn't seem to be but I have more time to look into it. (my multiboot isn't up and running yet) I think when I get it running I'll go with v4.38 for w2k.

Hot lead.

I have it on pretty good authority that a bios flash will fix this problem. I went to the ECS bios download page and found a neat little note that bios version 3.3b includes support for the Athlon XP chip. I've al;ready downloaded and flashed mine this morning, will post later today with an update to this thread.

Originally posted by yawningdog
Hot lead.

I have it on pretty good authority that a bios flash will fix this problem. I went to the ECS bios download page and found a neat little note that bios version 3.3b includes support for the Athlon XP chip. I've al;ready downloaded and flashed mine this morning, will post later today with an update to this thread.

That sounds good, but will it work just as well for T-Bird-based systems? You've got a 1.2ghz and I have a 1.4ghz. Let me know because if it does work, then I guess I'll have to go ahead and flash the BIOS as I was thinking I might have to a couple of weeks back. Or maybe not; this system has been stable for 24 hours and 15 minutes now, which is just about as long as it's been stable for the last week or so! (Of course, I'll have to go into the innards of the system and set the BIOS flash jumper to write. I think it's write-protected at the moment, which is very good for defending against nasties like the Chernobyl virus but presents a certain obstacle to easy BIOS flashing.)

-Joe-

I just got here and wanted to ask you if you just had replaced your motherboard and if you are still using the same hard drive with the same installed win98SE or had you reinstalled your win98se after changing your motherboard. Sometimes changing the motherboard requires reinalling the OS.

Originally posted by ziba-june
I just got here and wanted to ask you if you just had replaced your motherboard and if you are still using the same hard drive with the same installed win98SE or had you reinstalled your win98se after changing your motherboard. Sometimes changing the motherboard requires reinalling the OS.

Not sure which one of us you're asking, but as for myself, I've been using the same motherboard, an ECS K7VZA, with ECS board BIOS version 3.2e and Award modular BIOS (system CMOS) version 6.00PG, since I assembled my current system in September of 2001. I've reformatted and reinstalled Win98SE twice since that time, the latest at the beginning of May this year, which makes the current installation 2 months old as of today. As you see, part of the difficulty is that there are two separate BIOS'es which can be flash-upgraded here, the Award modular BIOS (which controls, of course, the CMOS) and a separate BIOS for the K7VZA itself.

In advance of a report, I've downloaded the requisite files - at least I _hope_ they're the correct ones - from the ECS site. I have the most recent version of the ECS mainboard BIOS, a flash utility for the Award BIOS, and something called "WinFlash" which seems to be an utility to flash the BIOS in Windows, although I'd think that would be (1) foolhardy and (2) really intended for Windows XP, not Windows 98, so I don't plan to use that last unless somebody tells me differently. I wonder if I may have to go to the Award site to search for a file for the Award modular BIOS.

-Joe-

Looks good so far. Here's what I did.

1. Download awd816a.exe (flash utility) and vza36a (zipped bios version 3.6a)
2. Unzipped bios to bin file and saved it (the bin file, not the folder too) to a floppy along with the flash executable.
3. booted to dos with a boot disk.
4. put aforementioned floppy in a: and at the prompt a:/awd816a vza36a.bin
5. Followed instructions from there. I did choose to save the old bios and I did not bother with any jumper settings.

The chip I'm using is an Athlon XP with 266 mhz fsb. If I understand you correctly Joe, your t-bird is the same chip only 200 mhz faster in the clock. This should work for you, even if it doesn't fix your problem. Oh yeah, insert whatever legal mumbo-jumbo disclaimer suits you here. You can, after all, totally ruin your bios cmos if you screw this up, but I found it to be fairly straightforward.

Originally posted by yawningdog
Looks good so far. Here's what I did.

1. Download awd816a.exe (flash utility) and vza36a (zipped bios version 3.6a)
2. Unzipped bios to bin file and saved it (the bin file, not the folder too) to a floppy along with the flash executable.
3. booted to dos with a boot disk.
4. put aforementioned floppy in a: and at the prompt a:/awd816a vza36a.bin
5. Followed instructions from there. I did choose to save the old bios and I did not bother with any jumper settings.

The chip I'm using is an Athlon XP with 266 mhz fsb. If I understand you correctly Joe, your t-bird is the same chip only 200 mhz faster in the clock. This should work for you, even if it doesn't fix your problem. Oh yeah, insert whatever legal mumbo-jumbo disclaimer suits you here. You can, after all, totally ruin your bios cmos if you screw this up, but I found it to be fairly straightforward.

To be absolutely specific here, which is important when dealing with things like BIOS flashes, my CPU is an Athlon Thunderbird 1.4Ghz. The Thunderbird is the generation immediately previous to the Athlon XP. My particular CPU also has the 266Mhz FSB, in fact; I verified this when I bought it and set the appropriate jumpers. (This is important, too, because the higher-speed varieties of the T-Bird come in 200mhz and 266mhz FSB varieties.)

I agree that the procedure looks reasonably simple, and it appears I did download all the correct files. I had a good long stable run this time around (the system finally hung due to stupid-user interaction :) ), so I'll continue to monitor the situation for a while longer before making a final determination as to whether I should update the BIOS.

-Joe-

P.S. I will have to at least open the case to make sure that the BIOS jumper is set so the BIOS can be written to. Otherwise, the flash won't do anything, period.

It looks OK so far. I followed precisely the same procedure as done by yawningdog, except that for some reason, the program didn't give me an option to save the old BIOS. The flashing went without a hitch, though - I sat a _long_ way away from the computer to prevent any uncontrollable urge to turn the thing off while it was in progress :) - and reboot proceeded normally. I noticed that new control software was loaded when Windows rebooted for something called an "ACPI fan", which slightly mystifies me, as I don't _think_ I have anything in the system that qualifies - maybe the chassis fan?

Anyway, though I've only been booted up for less than 10 minutes, nothing untoward appears to have happened thus far. In fact, the system appears to be responding slightly _faster_ than previously.

I might note here, BTW, that as part of the general tinkering with my system, when I installed the new "old" VIA 4-in-1 version 4.35 drivers, I installed the AGP drivers in standard (not turbo) mode. This appears to have had the effect of slowing down my AGP to 1x (66 mhz) mode. In view of the reported conflicts between nVidia and VIA drivers when a graphics card is attempted to be run at 4x AGP, that may be just as well. I can't really say I've noticed any real degradation in overall system performance, but I expect I have to play a game or something to see what the real effect is.

-Joe-

So far, so (mostly) good, after flashing the BIOS to 3.6. Explorer crashed and then restarted on the first boot after about half an hour of operation, but (as usual) Netscape was involved - two instances of the browser, one involving a page with lots of animated graphics, had been loaded, and I suspect the memory choked on it. Also, Netscape flaked out again about two minutes ago the first time I tried to post this with an error in mscrvt.dll, but it didn't take the system with it so I just restarted the browser. Overall, though, the system's rather more stable than it was before - no more BSOD's (so far) and only one freezeup in the last four days or so, caused by user intervention (when I was trying to manipulate folders in a directory that was seeing heavy download activity). I conclude from this that I am going to have to try again with Mozilla, install Opera 6.x, or else resign myself to using IE; Netscape 6.2.2 crashes _more often_ than any other single application or combination of applications I have used since I first put this machine together.

-Joe-

I had a flash of enlightenment today; maybe the file cache is partially at fault.

You see, I'd reset the file cache in RAM to a fixed size of 64 MB just about two days after I installed the Athlon; previously, the file cache had been set at a fixed 32 MB. _Perhaps_ not coincidentially, I started having real problems with Netscape stability (and other crashes) right around that time.

And I know that, from last September right up until the 24th of June, I'd been running the file cache at a fixed size of 32 MB (minimum / maximum) and the system had been a good deal more stable.

So...I reset my RAM file cache back to 32 MB about half an hour ago. *Knocking wood* Everything seems OK so far.

I guess this is just another example of the old proposition that bigger is _not_ necessarily always better. And as for all the conventional wisdom that you _have_ to have a big file cache on systems with lots of RAM, I would say this; no two PC's ever operate quite alike!

-Joe-