Motherboard Problems

I'm sorry to bother you all again with my problems, but:

I finally got round to changing my motherboard, as for the past two months I have been using a shitty one that I found in the street, which didn't have integrated sound and refused to play games.

So I have my new motherboard now, which seems to be very good; it as an Asus A7N8X-X(socket A) with an Nforce 2 chipset. It seemed to be really good when I looked at the specs of it.
It was bought used off ebay by the way, but the guy had 100% positive, and more than 100 rating, so I don't think I've been scammed here.

Right now, I'm running an XP 3000+ (2.17Ghz) and 2 sticks of PC3200 ram.

Anyway, my problem:
When I boot up, my CPU frequency is set to 1.3Ghz, with ram timings of 100Mhz. This is what it states on the first page as soon as I switch on. Windows boots fine with these settings.

However, when change the settings to [AUTO] on the BIOS, so that when I switch on, the page says AMD XP 3000+ and ram timings of 166Mhz, as things should be, but it refuses to load Windows.

I have also played around with the settings using user defined and nothing is working. My CPUs temperature is around 40 degrees, so it's not going to overheat when I clock it up to what it should be.
I have read the manual, and there is only one jumper setting on the board, which is for FSB set to either 300/333/400 or set to 200. I have changed the jumper to both these settings and it hasn't solved anything.

I also have no sound, although I have installed all the drivers, and the control panel recognises I have a sound card (integrated) installed, yet I have no sound. I have not tested extensively yet on this, so this is not a priority.

Please could anyone suggest why I can't clock my processor to its correct speed? [EDIT] I'm on TNL chat now if you want to ask any more questions or talk to me.

Thanks a lot

Burky

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Burky

Anyway, my problem:
When I boot up, my CPU frequency is set to 1.3Ghz, with ram timings of 100Mhz. This is what it states on the first page as soon as I switch on. Windows boots fine with these settings.

However, when change the settings to [AUTO] on the BIOS, so that when I switch on, the page says AMD XP 3000+ and ram timings of 166Mhz, as things should be, but it refuses to load Windows.

---

the only thing i can think of is you either have crap ram (hense not hitting the 166 fsb hood), or when you set it to auto your divider is wrong. normally you can't run ram fsb and cpu fsb the same (unless you have a p4 and good ram like myself), so most amd users use a "divider". something like 5:4.

have you run any types of ram apps to nix the bad ram idea?
and like i said before you really should take this to the sharky forums. you'll get it fixed quicker there.

Ok, I've stuck it on Sharky's.
I'm fairly sure it's not my ram, as I use Corsair Value, not some cheap stuff.
I don't know anything about "ram apps", could you suggest any for me to try out?
I also have no idea about dividers; is this just the ratio of the FSB frequency to the ram frequency?

Things have got worse:
If I set it to 2.17Ghz (as it should be), it will start to load windows, but never get there (I let it load 15 minutes and then stopped it).
If I set it at anything else, I get the blue screen, complaining about an unmountable boot volume.

I just tried reinstalling windows with the CPU set at 2.17Ghz and it won't get past the first "setup is loading windows" screen.
I'm really stuck here. I need to sort this out.

Do you think the motherboard was faulty in the first place and that the guy selling it was ripping me off?
I had a similar case to this with an AsRock one, where it would work fine for a day (this new one worked fine all today at half speed) and then I started getting blue screen errors when starting up. I have never bought AsRock since then.

It consistantly thinks it is at 166mhz now for the ram and the CPU is and AMD XP 3000+. Just the damn thing won't work.

It could very well be the mobo was faulty in the first place. I can't remember offhand any motherboard testing tools, but if you want to test the RAM, grab memtest86+ from http://www.memtest.org/ .

Here's another list of diagnostic tools of all sorts you could give a try...

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?id=7&sort=7

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Burky

It consistantly thinks it is at 166mhz now for the ram and the CPU is and AMD XP 3000+. Just the damn thing won't work.

---

166fsb is the correct setting for that cpu.
if you had problems with another mobo i'd be hard pressed to imagine it's the mobo's giving you the problems.
and normally if you have a problem installing windows it's ram related.

That's my point, at the correct settings it's not working.

see my edit above, i still think its ram related.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by DArque Bishop
It could very well be the mobo was faulty in the first place. I can't remember offhand any motherboard testing tools, but if you want to test the RAM, grab memtest86+ from http://www.memtest.org/ .

Here's another list of diagnostic tools of all sorts you could give a try...

---

My computer won't even boot now, even when at 1.3ghz so I can't use any of these tools. I'm going to reinstall windows later on 1.3ghz settings and see how that goes.

I also wrote off to the ebay guy, listing what was wrong (including the sound, I tested different sets of speakers and it still didn't work), and asked if he experienced any of these problems and if he knew what to do about it.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Dragonmaster Dyne
see my edit above, i still think its ram related.

---

Ok, I'll just go and try that.

I just tried before reading this message putting in a different hard disk and tried to install windows on it and I kept getting the blue screen. I hope it is a ram problem, at least then I don't have to go through all the bullshit of ebay.

I'll tell you how it goes.